Sunitha Krishnan

Recently I had a chance to see a video of Dr. Sunitha Krishnan in www.ted.com She is an outstanding speaker! Very appealing and emotional!

She has rescued more than 3200 women and children from trafficking! She works on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation. Sunitha Krishnan is actually galvanizing India’s battle against sexual slavery by uniting government, corporations and NGOs to end human trafficking.

In her speech she made a very pertinent point which made me to think a lot. She says our society ostracizes, stigmatizes, and isolates the traffic survivors because they were victimized! Instead of extending a helping hand, our society victimizes the victim! What an irony? This is what she is fighting against. She has undergone lot of hardships in the process of doing this. She has been beaten more than 15 times and she has even lost the hearing in her right ear! Still, she has not given up her fight!

Dr. Sunitha Krishnan is the Founder-Chief Functionary of Prajwala. She has been conferred upon Vanitha - Woman of the Year 2009 by the prestigious Malayala Manorama Group, for her pioneering crusade against sex trafficking.

Prajwala is an organisation based in my city –Hyderabad- and prevents women and children from entering prostitution. They believe that for any long term systemic change to happen, policy framework and policy input is necessary; otherwise civil society’s intervention largely end up as reactionary process without long term impact. It is with this objective in mind Prajwala got into advocacy work, lobbying for policy changes at the state, national and international levels. Both policy and legal lobbying is done by them to bring systemic changes.

For her efforts in the anti-trafficking she has been awarded Stree Shakthi Puraskar(national award), Perdita Huston Human Rights Award and the World Of Children Award. She has been instrumental in rescuing hundreds of children from severely abusive conditions and restoring childhood to them.

See her video here.