Prostitution

In February 2021, Myanmar's military seized power in a coup, and the country's economy, already hammered by the pandemic, started to buckle

The Mamata Banerjee-led party accused the BJP of 'protecting pimps' and not women

An NGO which supports various activities for marginalised communities, including transgenders, distributed Mahila Samman Savings certificates to sex workers in the Kamathipura red light area recently. The Mahila Samman Savings Certificate was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the 2023-24 Union Budget to commemorate the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. The two-year tenure scheme for women offers an attractive and fixed interest of 7.5 per cent interest compounded quarterly with flexible investment and partial withdrawal options with a maximum ceiling of Rs. 2 lakh. The scheme is valid for two years up to March 31, 2025. The certificates were presented to the sex workers by Nidarshana Gowani of the Kamala Ankibai Ghamandiram Gowani Trust as a part of her philanthropic endeavours. The certificates of Rs 15,000 investment each were distributed among 100 sex workers. "We are happy to felicitate 100 sex workers from the Kamathipura area with the Mahila Samman Savings certifica

As scattered groups across the country come together under one forum, bringing the trafficker into the dock will be the most critical challenge

At first, in her desperate calls home to her mother in Pakistan, Natasha Masih couldn't bring herself to say what they were doing to her. All the 19-year-old would say was that her new husband a Chinese man her family sold her off to in marriage was torturing her. Eventually she broke down and told her mother the full story, pleading with her to bring her home. The husband had hidden her away in a hotel in a remote corner of China and for the past weeks had been forcing her to have sex with other men. "I bought you in Pakistan," she said her husband told her. "You belong to me. You are my property." Her mother turned to the only people she knew who could help, her small evangelical church in a run-down slum of the Pakistani city of Faisalabad. There, a group of parishioners began putting together an elaborate plan to rescue the girl from the hotel more than 1,100 miles away. Natasha was one of hundreds of Pakistani girls who have been married off to Chinese men in return for cash