Prajwala: an NGO helps victims of sex trafficking

 

Sunitha Krishan- anti trafficking crusader

Sex trafficking is a criminal offence under Article 23 of the Constitution of India,  but for commercial gain almost 2 lakhs women and children are pushed into prostitution through threats and coercion each year. Ninety percent of the trafficking in India happens inter-state, and 10 percent is international. It has a $150 billion global industry annually.

The highest number of women and child traffickings has been recorded in West Bengal. Sonagachi in Kolkata is Asia's largest red-light district, containing many hundreds of multi-storey brothels and around 11,000 sex workers.

Prajwala (eternal flame) is an anti-trafficking non-governmental organization in Hyderabad, India. Co-founded  in 1996 by Sunitha Krishnan, an anti-trafficking crusader who herself is a servivour of sexual violence.

Prajwala's main objective is to stop inter-generational prostitution. It is a pioneering anti-trafficking organization working on the issue of sex trafficking and sex crime. Prajwala has pan India and International operations. In 25 years of it's establishment, Prajwala has assisted the police in rescuing over 24,000 women and girls from sex slavery and facilitating their journey for recovery.

Prajwala is working on the five pillars of Prevention, Protection, Rescue, Rehabilitation & Reintegration to break the intricate network of the sex trade and rebuild the lives of those rescued from slavery. Now it has become  the most powerful voice of such hapless victims not only in India but across the world.

Prajwala initiated the Swaraksha and Caravan  awareness campaign in 2017 with the partnership of the US Consulate General in Hyderabad,  held across all the districts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. As part of this caravan, volunteers travel to villages and towns to engage citizens and caution them against trafficking.

They are on target to reach 132 million people covering all 53 districts of the three states. The touring teams also establish a network of community vigilante groups to equip the community to counter the attempts of trafficking in their respective villages and towns.

In 2010, Prajwala built a large rehabilitation center 65 km outside of Hyderabad where up to 600 victims at a time are rehabilitated. With both locations and centers, the work will be more sustainable, safe, and streamlined to fight the flesh trade.

Social activist and Padma Shri awardee Sunitha Krishnan started Prajwala in a vacated brothel building in Hyderabad with the help of another like-minded man Brother Jose Vetticatil.

Sunitha believes that it is the right of every rape-survivor to live her life with dignity as it was not her fault. The rapists should be put to shame for committing such a heinous crime. She says “Let us write about men who commit such heinous crimes. Let us be curious to know who the rapist is and what his background is instead (of finding out about the victim)” In Sunitha’s view, forced prostitution, sex slavery, marital rapes and sexual abuse have always been a part of Indian society. “Only the visibility has increased.”

For pioneering Prajwala’s achievements, Sunitha Krishnan has received over 50 international accolades and awards, including the 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report Heroes from the US Department of State, the 2014 Mother Teresa Awards for Social Justice, and India’s fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri in 2016. Prajwala also created award-winning documentaries and a feature film to increase awareness. She co-produced a film along with her husband Rajesh, 'Touchdriver-Ente(mine) based on sex slavery, which earned critical acclaim.

The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where Hyderabad is located, is one of the country’s largest suppliers of women and girls, due partly to its overwhelming poverty and lower-than-average literacy rate. Prajwala offers shelter to all the children and women who have been sexually and emotionally abused.

Prajwala has 300 employees, but Krishnan runs the organization as a full-time volunteer. “It’s a decision I took, very early in my life—I will never take money for this work,” she says. She supports herself, with help from her husband, by writing books and giving speeches and seminars on trafficking worldwide. In recent years when Prajwala needed money, she put her house up for sale, though at the last minute a philanthropist stepped in with $100,000.

Despite ongoing threats from traffickers, social stigmatization, and daunting physical, psychological and financial challenges, Prajwala have provided entrepreneurial and employment opportunities to more than 6,500 survivors apart  from their rehabilitation and restoration. 

In the care of social workers, medical staff and peer counselors, over 12,000 child and adult victims many of whom are HIV positive have been rehabilitated in Prajwala’s therapeutic shelter homes. Prajwala has succeeded not only in helping victims break the walls of learnt helplessness, but also in convincing the Indian government to implement anti-trafficking policies and legislation nationwide.