Profile of Ruchira Gupta

Ruchira Gupta, Founder President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide has worked for 25 years for women’s and girls’ rights, especially the ending of their sex trafficking. She founded Apne Aap in 2002 - a grassroots organization working on the issue of human trafficking and women rights. Today Apne Aap impacts the lives and livelihoods of thousands of women and children.
 

Her most significant contribution to civil society, governments and multi-lateral bodies like the United Nations has been to highlight the link between trafficking and prostitution and to lobby with policy makers on shifting the blame from the victim to the perpetrator.
 

She testified in the United States Senate before the passage of Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 2000.Her testimony in the US Senate instilled in the mind of my fellow Senators, the pressing battle to protect the 700,000 women and children worldwide, if not more, who are forced into the sex trade every year. As a result, I introduced legislation that would become the first law in the United States seeking to combat the forcible trafficking of persons” (Senator Brownback).

She lobbied with other activists with the United Nations during the formulations for the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children resulting in the first UN instrument to address demand in the context of trafficking in Article 9, of the Protocol. She has addressed the Un General Assembly twice on the subject.
 

India is a signatory to the Protocol and currently Gupta is lobbying Indian Parliament for a change in the Indian anti-trafficking law, Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA)for more severe punishment of buyers of prostituted sex and traffickers who profit from it along with removal of clauses that punish women and girls. She has already testified to the Standing Committee of Parliament on the subject and launched the 5c (a clause to punish buyers and traffickers) campaign to bring changes in the current ITPA.
 

She has conceptualized and created a manual for law enforcement personnel and prosecutors with UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) that is being used in India right now on confronting the demand.
 

Ruchira has worked in the United Nations in various capacities for over ten years in Nepal, Thailand, Philippines, Kosovo, USA, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia and Iran. In some of these countries she has helped to develop National Action Plans on women’s empowerment and laws against human trafficking.
 

She provided technical assistance as Team Leader to develop the following plans:

• Trafficking Responses in Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Annual Work plan for UNICEF, Iran on bilateral programme with Islamic Republic of Iran on women’s empowerment, 2005 and 2006;
• Kosovo National Plan of action to counter trafficking in persons, 2004, for the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo, United Nations Administration Mission in Kosovo, OSCE, International Organization for Migration, UNICEF-SAVE the Children Alliance;
• Trafficking Responses in Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia: Needs, Capacity Assessment and Recommendations, 2004, for a joint multi-lateral USAID and UN Inter-agency Programme;
• Trafficking in the Asia and Near East region: Problem analysis and proposed framework for response for countries in the Mekong sub-region, 2005; Prepared Technical Assistance and Research to Support USAID Washington and Field Mission multilateral and bilateral Anti-Trafficking Activities;
• Strategic Plan for a South Asian network, Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children, based in Bangladesh, 2003.

Ruchira's list of honours include

• Clinton Global Citizen Award [2009], New York for her relentless efforts to end human trafficking and gender based violence.
• The Abolitionist Award [2007] to honour Heroes in the Fight Against Modern Slavery by Lord David Alton, Templeton Foundation, the UK and Geneva Global
• An Emmy Award [1997] for ‘outstanding investigative journalism’ for her documentary, 'The Selling of Innocents’, on the trafficking of women and children from the villages of Nepal to the brothels of Mumbai.
• She has also been felicitated at the White House ( 2000) for her work to combat trafficking after the US Bill became an Act.

Numerous national and global recognition speak of Ruchira’s consistent contribution towards eradicating human trafficking.

Ruchira is a member of various governmental and multilateral organizations,like:

• Steering Committee member of the Planning Commission, Government of India for the 11th Five-year Plan for Women and Children
• A member of the Working group on Child Protection of the Ministry of Women and Children (2007-8)
• Advisory board member of Asia Society, New York; Vital Voices, Washington DC; Ricky Martin Foundation and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women, Asia-Pacific 

Effectively using the audio-video medium to spread awareness and increase stakeholder engagement, Ruchira’s body of published and documentary work on trafficking is extensive and is often used as a reference by NGOs, activists, professionals and government agencies to combat trafficking:

• The Selling of Innocents, CBC, an Emmy winning documentary on sex-trafficking from Nepal to Bombay, 1995-96
• Manual for law-enforcement officers to Confront Demand for Human Trafficking (Maharashtra Police an UNIFEM, 2007)
• Manual for prosecutors to Confront Human Trafficking (UNODC, 2008);
• Trafficking trends in South Asia, 2009, Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges, Stimson Centre;
• Trafficking and women’s human rights in a globalised world, (Oxfam journal, Issue Gender and Development; 2003
• Paul Merton in India, BBC, Channel 5, UK, 2008, on the new modern India
• Land of the Missing Children, Channel 4, UK, 2005, on teenage sex-slavery in India;
• Saffron Warriors, Channel 4, UK, 2003 on Hindu fundamentalism in India;
• Rape for Profit (Life in the Mumbai Brothel): News Night, BBC-1999
• Kali’s Smile: Radio 4, BBC documentary on role of Gods and Goddesses in Indian popular culture. 1998
• Shiva's Wedding: Radio 4, BBC documentary on role of Gods and goddesses in Indian popular culture. 1998
• Zero Hour. A 13-episode Indian quiz show with pparliamentarians. BITV 1994
• The Brotherhood: The RSS. BBC, 1993

Ruchira has been written about in the following books:

• Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, (Knopf, 2009)
• Revisiting India by Ramin Jehanbegloo (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Sold by Patricia McCormick (Hyperion, 2006)
• Adventure Divas by Holly Morris (Villard, 2005)
• Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud by Sun Shunyun (Harper Collins, 2003)
• That Takes Ovaries by Rivka Solomon (Three Rivers Press, 2002)
• Breaking the Earthenware Jar by Ruth Hayward (UNICEF, 2000)
• In the name of Ram by Abid Surti (1993)

Earlier, a journalist by profession, danger is no stranger to Ruchira, after having covered riots, conflict, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. As founder of a grass roots organization that works on issues of human trafficking and women’s rights, Apne Aap Women Worldwide, Gupta faces constant challenges in her outreach to more than ten thousand women and girls at risk to or trafficked for prostitution in Bihar, Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal from Mafia threats to resistance from sex-buyers. Ruchira lives in New Delhi and commutes to Iran where her husband works in the UN.