Ajeet Singh Profile

“Ajeet carries out tremendous work on behalf of other people. He displays exceptional courage in the face of threats and intimidation and great personal danger. Every day he puts his life on the line in defence of the rights that we take for granted”. Mary Lawlor, Director, Front Line Defenders.

Summary Guria is a grassroots charity based in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, which has made a huge impact over the last 25 years in fighting the horrific and growing problem of human trafficking and child prostitution. Guria is one of very few organisations which undertakes dangerous legal work, rescuing children from brothels and prosecuting human traffickers along with providing holistic support to victims those at risk. Guria is led by founder and director, Ajeet Singh, who has pioneered Guria’s successful and innovative model.

Awards

The Week Magazine named Ajeet Singh ‘Man of the Year’ in 2011 Click here.

The Freedom Fund selected Guria as a partner and invited Ajeet Singh as their Keynote speaker at the Freedom Fund launch event in New York in 2014 Click here.

CNN and IBN awarded Ajeet Singh the ‘Real Heroes Award’ in 2011 Click here

Front Line Defender selected Ajeet Singh as 1 of 5 finalists in the world for the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders At Risk in 2010 Click here

News Asia Channel in Singapore named Ajeet Singh ‘Asian of the Year’ in 2010

Legal workRescue work & criminal cases• Rescued 442 minor girls from brothels.• Pursued 375 criminal cases against 1000+ human traffickers and 196 paralegal cases.• Secured 329 bail rejections of human traffickers.• 24 convictions of human traffickers secured.

Changes affected in the law• Affected a change in the law through the Supreme Court which denies giving bail to human

traffickers.

Public Interest Litigation• Prepared a report of 100 cases of human trafficking and police negligence/corruption and sent

to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh with a demand for improvement – used to support Public Interest Litigation.

• New Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Honorable High Court and the Honorable Supreme Court; the Honorable High Court accepted the PIL and called for a complete report from the Union of India, State of Uttar Pradesh and Director General of Police Uttar Pradesh State.

“One of the biggest challenges in the fight against slavery is the impunity that traffickers enjoy – or at least, that they used to enjoy… In Varanasi, I visited Ajeet Singh and the brave team he leads at Guria, an organisation that is using the Freedom Fund’s investment to pay for a team of lawyers to file legal cases against traffickers. Just a few years ago not a single trafficker had been convicted. Now there have been 23 such convictions”. Dan Vexler, Director of Programs, Freedom Fund

Awareness and CommunityEducation • Guria is currently supporting the education of over 300 children, of which 70 have been

admitted to formal schools.Alternative livelihoods• Through Guria, approximately 50 women in prostitution have formed an innovative

independent cultural team performing traditional music and dance. They have performed at the World Social Forum (Mumbai) and the Sri Ram Centre and have been discussed in Cambridge and Oxford University Press articles.

Community events• Guria organised a landmark event attended by circa. 12,000 women from Eastern Uttar

Pradesh united against the rising crime of rape and sex trafficking; 200 victims and their families attended and presented their cases.

• Guria held a foot march of 800 km from Varanasi to Nithari Padyatra against sex trafficking with victims families.

Film & Media• Guria gained support from film personalities including Shabana Azmi, Anand Patwardhan, Late

Kaifi Azmi, Shaukat Azmi, Mahesh Bhatt, Tanuja Chandra and Sayeed Mirza. • Guria featured in a number of documentaries; Guria, Gossip and Globalization by

ethnomusicologist Amelia Maciszewski; War and Peace by Anand Patwardhan; and Unheard Voices of India by Sayeed Akhtar Mirza.

PolicyAdvisory roles• Guria are a member of the Indian Government Central Advisory Committee and State Advisory

Committee on Combating Trafficking of Women and Children. • Guria was invited for suggestions by the parliament standing committee on the Immoral

Traffick (Prevention) Amendment Bill in 2006. • Guria was a member of two inquiry committees set up by the National Commission for

Women. Sensitising• Guria sensitises the judiciary and police on human trafficking through the National Legal

Services Authority of India and National Institute of Public Cooperation & Child Development.

“Guria manages a Non-Formal Education (NFE) center at the heart of the red light district in Varanasi. This center has become extremely successful and has changed the lives of hundreds. The children in this center study more than just arithmetic and English; they study meditation as well as coping mechanisms to deal with the trauma of their childhood… The safe and enriching environment that Guria provides has allowed people to move past their misfortunate backgrounds and assimilate into the rest of the world.” Asha for Education

“It is because of Singh’s efforts that Shivdaspur* has become the country’s first child prostitution-free area”. The Week Magazine

*Shivdaspur is the red light area of Varanasi and one of the largest in Uttar Pradesh.

Media Highlights• Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Freedom Fund cited Guria’s work as an example of a

successful anti-trafficking strategy in their recent report “Putting Justrice First: Legal Strategies to Combat Human Trafficking in Northern India” in 2014.

• National magazine The Week published a cover story entitled “The Republic’s Lost Children” about sex trafficking in India which featured Guria and the story of a rescued victim in 2014.

• The Times of India published an article about Guria’s 2,000 pages of evidence documenting police misconduct in 100 cases of Sex Trafficking, Child Prostitution and Rape in 2014.

• The Times of India and The Pioneer featured an article on Guria’s successful passing of Public Interest Litigation about rape and trafficking in the Indian Supreme Court in 2014: Times of India article and the Daily Pioneer article.

• Radio Australia broadcast a show about Varanasi, which features Guria and an interview with Ajeet Singh in 2013.

• National Magazine, The Week, published a feature on the work of Ajeet Singh and Guria in 2011.

• Ajeet Singh was interviewed by Pat Kenny on RTE Radio in Dublin Ireland in 2010.• An article about Ajeet was featured in The Weekend Leader in 2010. • Guria and Ajeet Singh were featured in a documentary by Paradigm Shift Project titled

“Breaking Chains, Building Community” in 2012.• Guria were featured in Philanthropy Age in 2015.• Guria’s huge awareness rally of 12,000 women united against sex trafficking and rape was

reported widely including in The Times of India in 2014.

“The day you realise you are just a speck of dust is the day you will begin living your life the way it should be.” Ajeet Singh, Director, Guria

For more information on Guria or Ajeet Singh please contact Sarah Wraight at:[email protected] or 07702 819 844. Sarah will be able to put you in direct contact with Ajeet and/or support with any requests.

Partnerships & Endorsements

Guria has garnered support from the UN Economic and Social Council, Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, Front Line in Ireland, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Lawyer’s Rights Watch in Canada, UN Rapporteurs on Trafficking and State of Children, and the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in Geneva.

Guria acted as a resource consultant for the Liberal International Conference and the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking (UN GIFT) in 2007 in New Delhi.

11 US Congress and State Department members visited Guria in August 2010 to discuss their work and findings on human trafficking.