Ruchira Gupta

Ruchira Gupta is the President of Apne Aap, and has worked for 25 years to end sex trafficking. Gupta won the Clinton Global Citizen Award for Commitment to Leadership in Civil Society at the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative's Annual Meeting. She was awarded the Abolitionist Award by the UK House of Lords in 2007, won an Emmy for "outstanding investigative journalism" for her documentary, "The Selling of Innocents," and has been honored at the White House for her work to combat sex trafficking. In 2002 she founded Apne Aap (http://www.apneaap.org/), a grassroots organization which has supported over 10,000 women and children trapped in or at risk of prostitution in India.

She sits on the Steering Committee for the Planning Commission of the Government of India for the 11th Five-year Plan for Women and Children, and on the Working group of the Ministry of Women and Children. She is on the Advisory board of Asia Society, New York, Coalition against Trafficking in Women, Asia-Pacific, Cents for Relief, US, Nomi Network, US, Ricky Martin Foundation, and Vital Voices, Washington DC. Her testimony to the United States Senate had a direct role in the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

She has worked in the United Nations for the last ten years and helped the governments of Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Kosovo, and the Philippines to develop National Action Plans and laws against human trafficking. She has written two manuals with UNODC and UNIFEM.

Her publications on trafficking include: a) Trafficking Responses in Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia: Needs, Capacity assessment and Recommendations b) Trafficking in the Asia and Near East region: Problem analysis and Proposed framework for response; Kosovo plan of action to counter trafficking in persons; c) Manual for law-enforcement officers to confront Demand for Human trafficking.; d) Manual for prosecutors to confront human trafficking

Her work has been cited in the following books: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu, Sale by Patricia McCormick, That Takes Ovaries by Rivka Solomon, Adventure Divas by Holly Morris, Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud by Sun Shun Yun, Breaking the Earthenware Jar by Ruth Hayward, Revisiting India by Ramin Jehanbegloo, Violence against Women by Kalyani Sen, In the Name of Ram By Abid Surti, and Human Trafficking by Prof. Louise Shelly of George Mason Univeristy.

Documentaries that she has worked on include:

a) Paul Merton in India, BBC, Channel 5, UK, 2008

b) Land of the Missing Children, Channel 4, UK, 2005, on teenage sex-slavery in India.

c) Saffron Warriors, Channel 4, UK, 2003 on Nazi style Hindu fundamentalism in India

d) Rape for Profit. (Life in the Mumbai Brothel): News Night, BBC-1999

e) Kali’s smile: Radio 4, BBC documentary on role of Gods and goddesses in Indian popular culture. 1998

f) Shiva's wedding: Radio 4, BBC documentary on role of Gods and goddesses in Indian popular culture. 1998

g) The Selling of Innocents. (On sex-trafficking from Nepal to Mumbai, India): Documentary screened on CBC and HBO. Awarded the EMMY for outstanding investigative journalism by the United States Academy for Television Arts and Sciences in 1997 and used by NGOs, activists, government agencies as educational material to combat trafficking. -1997

h) Zero Hour. A 13 episode Indian Quiz show with Parliamentarians. BITV 1994

i) The Brotherhood. The RSS, BBC, 1993.