My internship at Apne Aap has opened and continues to open my eyes to an issue underrepresented yet greatly important- sex trafficking. While I was always aware of this issue, living in my bubbled life, the true reality of the situation was never really in my purview. However, once I started my internship here, and have gone through the work of Apne Aap more closely, I was truly inspired by their outreach and impact on the lives of so many at risk women. While going through Apne Aap’s website, one movement of theirs stood out to me the most. ‘Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex’. While the clever crafting of the name was what stood out and captured my attention first, once I started reading about the movement, I was riveted and amazed by their work.
The ‘Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex’ campaign is a movement that works towards shifting the focus and criminalisation on the trafficking victims to the true perpetrators- the customers also known as the demand. These are the people who want to buy sex, resulting in traffickers preying on powerless women to sell for profit. Using this campaign Apne Aap was able to gain over 16,000 signatures for their petition to change the law to punish these customers. This campaign therefore served as a more efficient and effective way of creating impact, rather than creating cases against every single perpetrator. The success of this campaign was presented as the Indian Parliament and the ministry of women and children passed a law to criminalise the process of trafficking, creating the law known as Section 370 of the I.P.C due to this petition.
After reading about this campaign on the Apne Aap website I did more research to learn more about this movement. That is when I came across an interview with Ruchira Gupta (founder and president of Apne Aap) who spoke about the line a prostituted woman said that created this movement- “Didi, as long as there’s a customer, the prostitution system will never be dismantled.” After reading this I was hit with a wave of realisation, as I understood that the base of an issue is what is the most harmful when trying to solve a problem. I realised that even though the people and problems part of sex trafficking that occur as a result of this root can be prevented, the problem itself will never be solved if its cause will continue to survive.
I have therefore learned that to solve a problem it is vital to go back to the root of its issue. By going back to people who cause sex trafficking Apne Aap was able to move a much larger step towards eradicating sex trafficking. I was inspired by this movement as Apne Aap’s focus and clear targeting, by hitting the base of the problem, was able to achieve huge results. For example, in Rampur the red-light areas shrank from 72 brothels to 5, and Khawaspur from 17 to 1.
The ‘Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex’ campaign has therefore revolutionised the demand of sex trafficking creating a huge impact in eradicating sex trafficking in India.