Meet, Shafiq Khan, Working Towards Uprooting Bride Trafficking In India¡¯s Northern Belt

Women¡¯s right are human rights.

This ideology the driving force for 33-year-old Shafiq Ur Rahman Khan, a young activist with a singular attention on bride trafficking. His organisation ¡®Empower People¡¯ started with a 300-kilometre long march against female foeticide and gender inequality in Haryana 14 years ago.

As political activist back in the years in the tribal belt, Khan witnessed that the political parties and civil society were mostly apathetic, with little attention towards hunger and diseases among villagers. This instigated him to tackle the cause himself.

When he initiated an institution by the name of Career Development Centre (CDC), the primary focus was to impart education consciousness among the youth. Providing education and food to the marginalised children bore fruitful results.

Khan¡¯s efforts have come a long way now.

The organisation¡¯s work was recognised by the international community through conferring of the prestigious Grinnell Prize by the Grinnell College. Khan was awarded the 2019 Grinnell College Innovator for Social Justice Prize for his work fighting bride trafficking in India through his organisation.

¡°2019 was a momentous year,¡± Khan tells.

¡°This served as a great boost for the entire team and survivor leaders. On ground, we have started enabling survivor leaders with technology to document their work. We had also planned for our survivor leaders to contest elections in Haryana, but it was not successful because of limitation of resources and polarisation of communities.¡±

As an activist who actively works on women empowerment, particularly in the field of bride trafficking, Khan feels that such issues are deep-rooted and widespread in the society. He thinks an activist or an organisation cannot make significant change in single life.

When asked how he defines violence against women, Khan says restricting the liberty of women in whichever sense is violence against them.

Bride trafficking or bride buying is a widespread social issue in certain belts of India. Women and girls, as young as 10, are sold by poor parents to richer families who pay a certain sum for the girls.

Some women manage to escape, some are not as lucky. Across north-west India, thousands of women are lost to their families and trapped in lives of sexual and domestic slavery as paros ¨C meaning those who have been purchased or sold.

In the states of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, this has been a flourishing business for centuries. There is no official government data on the numbers who have fallen victim to trafficking rings, but it is believed that hundreds of thousands of women and girls, mainly from Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand or Bihar, have been sold into marriage.

According to the 2016 National Crime Records Bureau, 33,855 people were kidnapped or abducted for the purpose of marriage. Half were under the age of 18.

Many activists believe the scale of bride trafficking is still not understood.

A door-to-door survey by Empower People found 1,352 trafficked wives living with their buyers in 85 villages in north India in 2014.

¡°Things will gradually improve. When we compare with the past, I am happy that people are at least realising their bondage. We had chosen two particular districts to create a module and we successfully developed it in the last 13 years. It is great to see women who were living in bondage, now leading their respective communities. Now it is time for the government to go beyond its protectionist mechanism and law, and adopt some liberal ideas to give us enough opportunities to work with survivors of social crimes as well as slavery,¡± he says while adding that efforts are needed at grass-root level to eradicate such societal evils.

Vision 2020

2020 will be a crucial year for Khan¡¯s organisation.

¡°Firstly, we are working on a plan to launch a company of survivors of bride trafficking. The company will market products made by survivors and it will be led by survivor leaders themselves,¡± says khan, while explaining the future course of action.

Secondly, this year, the organisation will put special emphasis on advocacy for bride trafficking survivors who have been trafficked as minors and have no connection or even memory of their native home.

Khan, whose organisation started with a 300-kilometre long march, plans to get back to the basics when it comes to raising awareness.

The last but not the least, ¡®Empower People¡¯ is planning a March Against Bride Trafficking in 2020, from Haryana to Kerala which will be called MABT2020.

Shafiq¡¯s work is crucial. He believes that a problem created by the society can only be resolved by the society. ¡°As an activist, we have a duty to bring all the information and some perspective in front of the society. We can only suggest how this problem can be resolved. People can not only donate but also participate in our programs. They can buy our products, they can suggest some other ways and they can also join MABT2020,¡± he suggests.