A Desi Woman with Soniya Gokhale

Ruchira Gupta is the Founder President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, and Apne Aap International. Ruchira is a social justice activist, feminist campaigner, and award-winning journalist. She's also a professor at New York University and a distinguished scholar at the University of California Berkeley. Ruchira won an Emmy award for her critically acclaimed documentary, The Selling of Innocents, which places a brutal lens on the trafficking of girls from Nepal to India. For over three decades, Ruchira has been campaigning and working towards a world where no girl or woman is bought or sold. She pioneered gender sensitive interventions to end inter-generational constitution among de-notified tribes in India's Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and West Bengal regions, and she was instrumental in introducing anti-trafficking policies and laws around the globe, including the critical Indian anti-trafficking law. Ruchira has received numerous global awards for her advocacy, including the Clinton Global Citizen Award. She's participated in discussions that led to the passage of the UN protocol to end human trafficking, with a particular focus on the trafficking of women and children. She also testified before the U.S. Senate for the passage of the first U.S. trafficking victim protection act, taking survivors to speak with her at the UN general assembly and to the human rights council in Geneva, Switzerland. She successfully advocated for the creation of the trafficking fund for survivors at the UN Office for Drugs and Crime.