Shifting the lens on gender justice is essential. While the corporate world often focuses narrowly on challenges faced by urban women, true progress requires understanding and advocating for women's challenges across the spectrum. By acknowledging and addressing these intersectional challenges, we can create more inclusive strategies for gender equity.
Pallabi Ghosh is an anti trafficking activist, ethnographer, and researcher who fights social evils like human trafficking, gender-based violence, child abuse, labor exploitation, and displacement related conflicts. As founder of Impact and Dialogue Foundation, a public charitable trust, she strives relentlessly to prevent human trafficking and modern slavery, rescue victims, and provide holistic rehabilitation to survivors across India.
1. Pallabi, many of us are unaware ofthe atrocities and abuse women and girls face in many parts of our country. Can you share some data and statistics on the human trafficking exploitation thatis happening in India?
I am sharing some data for everyone to understand. Every 8 minutes, a child goes missing. (NCRB-2020) Twelve thousand women are annually trafficked into India from neighboring countries as part of the sex trade (Estimate by NGOs). 40% is India’s share of the world's trafficked children (UNICEF estimate). Forty thousand children get abducted annually (NHRC). WHO indicates that globally, about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide get subjected to either physical and sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Worldwide, almost one-third (27%) of women aged 15-49 years who have been in a relationship report that they have been subjected to some form of physical and sexual violence by their intimate partner. In 2021, since the pandemic began, 45 percent of women reported that they or a woman they know has experienced a form of VAWG. Seven in 10 women said they think that verbal or physical abuse by a partner has become more common. And six in 10 felt that sexual harassment in public spaces has worsened.
2. How does Impact and Dialogue Foundation (IDF) address this exploitation, and what are some ofthe challenges you face?
Impact and Dialogue Foundation (IDF) uses a multi-sectoral approach to prevent exploitation and abuse. Three projects - Suraksha, Uddhaar, and Sahay - implement and execute changes at the ground level. IDF believes in a bottom-up approach where we reach communities and every stakeholder, making them part of our outreach and ensuring the crime is tracked in the nip. Anti-trafficking clubs and village response committees are created across different source area villages so individuals can report probable crimes. Additionally, various training and workshops are done at the primary level, sharing a helpline number where people can call and inform about a crime they witnessed. We conduct a mapping exercise, where we match the possible livelihood opportunities with the demographics and the prevailing socio-economic conditions to reduce poverty. Also, survivors of different kinds of violence and trafficking are enrolled in programs so they are trained and upskilled to earn a living, thus ending the cycle of abuse.
3. How can organizations and corporations support you in creating a safe and healthy world for girls?
We are starting conversations around the issue, ensuring employment to survivors, addressing stigma and taboos, including them in policy-level discussions, making them a part of meetings, and giving them opportunities by supporting IDF in creating skilling centers in remote areas rather than cities. Not just providing a machine once but ensuring a sustainable mechanism that will be beneficial in the long run. For example, helping survivors set up a marketplace to sell products they made at reasonable prices and easily earn profits. Helping IDF to teach the girls budgeting and accounting. Wages to be increased, and not treating them lower but treating them as equals.
4. Social change happens only when multiple forces unite: Governments, policymakers, NGOs, Non-Profits, Social Enterprises, corporations, and the people. Have you seen this happen in your work, and what can be done to bring these forces together to drive long-term change?
It's always a collective call to action. If everyone comes together, a solution can be possible. The issue is almost everyone works in isolation. There should be a collective network, with every stakeholder participating, to create a movement that ensures crimes are tackled, for example. We recently rescued a girl in just 30 minutes from a red light area in eastern India due to the coordination between local police, the source police station, and the person who informed us. Events happened quickly as we had kept the higher-ups at the source and destination police stations in the loop right from the beginning.
5. How is Pallabi Ghosh? Day in and day out, you hear and address just challenges. How do you deal with this from a mental health perspective?
My days start with calls of distress across India, so I wake up and spend a lot of time with nature, come up with a structured plan on how to deal with the cases, take calls one by one, write in a notebook about the urgent case, I do a lot of homework once I get information, spent a lot of time walking, playing with kids and providing food to dogs, I do take mental health counseling on and off. There are survivors in my team who regularly interact with me. We go on study tours, exchange programs, and picnics, where we just think of the brighter side of life.
6. #InspireInclusion is the IWD theme for 2024. How can we inspire inclusion in our society?
The most important thing is not just to talk about inclusion but also to ensure it gets implemented. For example, survivors work with us in the team at IDF, make decisions, and raise concerns like regular staff members. They are a part of us. Without them, the IDF is incomplete as an organization. IDF aspires to create a society where all women, regardless of their background, identity, or experiences, feel valued, respected, and empowered to participate fully in all aspects of life. That is why we have the initiative project Sahay to rehabilitate and empower survivors: look at their holistic development, accept them wholeheartedly, and understand that it can happen to anyone.
