Thursday,May,23,2013

The Bandit Queen* of the Social Movement

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Guest post by: Dr. Sunilkumar Lavate, Principal, Mahaveer College, Kolhapur *[EDITOR'S NOTE: India's previous 'Bandit Queen', Phulan Devi (at right), was a seasoned bandit of north India. An ordinary village woman, she was abducted by outlaws and raped. She escaped and turned herself into a 'bandit queen' and avenged all of her assailants. After undergoing [...]

India is a Hub for Child Sex Trafficking, says Clinton

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Despite Indian government progress to combat human trafficking, India continues to be a source, destination and transit country for forced labor and sex trafficking, noted the U.S. State Department in its annual “Trafficking in Persons” report released June 20 in Washington, D.C.* *Source: IndiaWest Speaking to a packed audience in the Benjamin Franklin room at [...]

Saving the Devadasi Temple Prostitutes

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A carry over from the English colonial days of India, the Devadasi are today thought of as the 'temple prostitutes', a fate the befalls many young Indian girls.  According to Wikipedia, the devadasi tradition (देवदासी / ದೇವದಾಸಿ; “servant of god”) … is a religious tradition in which girls are “married” and dedicated to a deity (deva or [...]

Is Child Marriage a Form of Trafficking?

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Source: India RealTime Days before law professor Michele Goodwin was set to speak in Chicago about why child marriage persists widely in India despite almost a century of legislation, a heart-warming story made the rounds. Laxmi Sargara, an 18-year-old who was married to another child when she was a baby, rebelled when her in-laws came [...]

Protect Children During Super Bowl!

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Earlier this year we blogged about the darkest side of the Super Bowl: in recent years it (and other major sports events) has been invaded by human traffickers. They're attracted by the large profits to be made in peddling prostitutes, including girls as young as 13, in the shadows of the nation's most high-profile sporting [...]

Missing girl child means murdered girl child in India

According to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing in India’s population as a result of systematic sex-murder discrimination. Source: Harini Calamur | DNA INDIA A recent poll suggested that India was the fourth-most dangerous place in the world for women. Afghanistan and Congo, in [...]

The Scourge of Modern Day Slavery

guest blog by Caroline Galea | carolinegalea.com The story of Kira beggars belief. Kira is a 28-year-old Moldavian woman who has, for seven years, spent most of her time as a sex slave. Her story was exposed in the British media in the last few weeks and is subject to an ongoing inquiry and court case [...]

Human Trafficking is Violence Against Humanity

Fourteen-year old Gudiya Putul is not in Kingston, Jamaica attending the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), but her name and history were brought to the attention of some IEPC participants Saturday during a workshop about economic injustice and human trafficking. Source: Ekklesia Putul (not her real name) is originally from a village in West Bengal, [...]

Sold: An MTV EXIT Special with Lara Dutta

Very few people are actually aware of how large the problem is. Even if people are aware, they generally turn a blind eye towards the entire situation. For this reason, the level of awareness needs to be increased drastically. “Sold: An MTV EXIT Special”, a gripping documentary presented by Indian actress and UNFPA Ambassador, Lara [...]

Salaam Bombay! Reviewed

Recently we had the opportunity to watch Salaam Bombay! , a 1988 Hindi film directed by Mira Nair, and screenwritten by her longtime creative collaborator, Sooni Taraporevala.  If, like me, you loved Slumdog Millionaire, I might describe Salaam Bombay! as an early precurser to that more recent commercial success. Salaam Bombay! chronicles the day-to-day life of children [...]

180M Children in India “very vulnerable” to Trafficking

Source: BusinessEconomics.in Guest Interview with Nishit Kumar Head of Communication and Strategic Initiatives CHILDLINE India Foundation, Mumbai Q) In your opinion, what are the reasons behind the increasing child trafficking in India? A) Nearly 43% of the country’s population is children below 18. Of these, about 40% are marginalised by poverty, illiteracy, exploitation, abuse, disability, [...]

Under-age Sex Traffic Booming at Super Bowl

The under-age sex trade was booming at the Super Bowl Sunday.  Pimps trafficked thousands of under-age prostitutes to Texas for yesterday’s Super Bowl, hoping to do business with men arriving for the big game with money to burn. In fact, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States. From [...]

Anuradha Koirala Named ‘CNN Hero’ for 2010 Anti-Human Trafficking

Meet Anuradha Koirala, a crusader known for her anti-human trafficking drive through her non-profit making organisation Maiti Nepal and often labelled the ‘Terminator’ by human traffickers. Maiti has saved more than 12,000 girls from sex slavery and prevented 45,000 children and women from being trafficked at the India-Nepali border. For her untiring efforts, September 5 [...]

Child labour – The worst menace of all time

A guest post by Akshay Mahajan at IndiaStudyChannel.com – Child labour, also referred to as child slavery by many, is one of the worst effects of poverty as seen in India and many other countries. What is child labour ? Child labour actually refers to employing children for various tasks at an age when they [...]

WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. Funded Child Sex Slavery

The ‘infamous’ Wikileaks has released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment.  Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of “boy play” where young boys are dressed in women’s clothing, dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the [...]