Anita Award Winner Trip 2010: Visit to STOP (ECPAT), India
As the trip continues, our worthy winners had a rather emotional project visit to The Body Shop India’s partners in the current campaign and other ECPAT partners, STOP.
STOP was founded in 1998, as a direct fallout of the Global March against Child Labour, where the Managing Trustee, Ms. Roma Debabrata was a core Marcher.
However, STOP’s activities can be traced back to Hamida’s case, a 10-year-old Bangladeshi girl, who was brought to India in 1992. She was brutally raped by the man who brought her to India and by some of his friends who were in the Delhi Police. She then spent four years in a children’s home in Delhi while her case was dragged out in various courts. Activists (who formed STOP) initially offered translation services to the child who only spoke Bengali, later they got actively involved in ensuring a safe return for Hamida and thus, followed the Hamida case from the lower courts to the Supreme Court.
STOP actually began as a movement to challenge the complex mechanisms related to trafficking and sexual exploitation that remain hidden from public view. However, through a strong and cohesive network of partners ranging from civil society, policy makers, law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and corporate sector STOP has succeeded in recovering and empowering innumerable survivors of trafficking.
STOP’s activities are overseen from its office in Delhi, but the organisation’s influence extends far beyond India’s capital city.
Being an Anita Award winner is all about going that extra bit further for the greater good. This is obviously something that they share with the members of STOP.
