The Hindu : New Delhi News : “Need for gender-sensitive law to tackle prostitution”

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Tuesday, Oct 13, 2009
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“Need for gender-sensitive law to tackle prostitution”

Staff Reporter

- Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma

Woman power: President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide Ruchira Gupta (right) along with Jamia Millia University Vice-Chancellor Najeeb Jung at a panel discussion in New Delhi on Monday.

NEW DELHI: The need of the hour is a gender-sensitive law reflecting the voices of women and one that punishes buyers in human-trafficking trade including pimps, brothel-owners and managers, recruiters and transporters, Apne Aap Women Worldwide president Ruchira Gupta said here on Monday.

“However the victims should not be further victimised, rather they should be rehabilitated and provided with sustainable alternate livelihoods,” Ms. Gupta said, speaking at a function organised by Public Interest Foundation to felicitate her for her work in preventing sex-trafficking of women and children. “There are 1.3 million girls trapped in prostitution in India .These statistics were provided by the CBI in May and this is only the tip of the iceberg,” she added.

Speaking about the plight of victims of trafficking, Ms. Gupta who recently won the Clinton Global Citizen Award, said: “Over the years more and more people are being trafficked and the ages of the girls involved are sliding down. Prostitutes are made to stay in cramped 6 X 4 feet rooms and are repeatedly raped by often diseased and elderly men. Tackling prostitution is tough because of lack of related laws and even public perception. Prostitutes are usually from poor, lower caste families and increasingly from minority groups.” Listing the efforts of Apne Aap Women Worldwide to rehabilitate prostitutes, Ms. Gupta said: “Apne Aap Women Worldwide has opened small collectives called Mahila Mandals which are transformed into economic collectives called self- help groups (SHGs). There are currently 67 such SHGs in Bihar, Maharashtra and West Bengal. We also run community classrooms in red-light localities in slum areas. We have a three-pronged approach which include efforts at the grassroots, policy-making and global levels.”

Poverty and migration

Planning Commission member Dr. Syeda Hameed stressed that to address the issue of trafficking it was important to venture beyond the legal framework.

“We must focus not only on the penalisation of the culprits but also address the context of prostitution that includes poverty and migration. We need a systemic and multi-sectoral approach and also must plan out the kind of resources needed for rehabilitation of victims such as legal aid, access to healthcare, education, psychological help and economic resources.

Speaking about the efforts of the Government in this regard, Dr. Hameed said: “The Government has committed resources in the Eleventh Five Year Plan to combat violence against women. There are certain schemes such as “Ujjwal”, the Integrated Child Protection Scheme and the Right to Education which if converged and synergised can help reduce violence against women and young children. .”

Exploitation

Jamia Millia University Vice-Chancellor Najeeb Jung made a distinction between trafficking and migration saying that various forms of exploitation were part of trafficking whereas migration need not result in exploitation.

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