Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
AbbreviationDMSC
Formation1995; 29 years ago (1995)[1]
TypeCBO
Location
Region served
West Bengal
Membership
sex workers
President
Putul Halder
Secretary
Kajol Bose
Mentor
Bharati Dey
Chief Advisor
Dr. Smarajit Jana
Websitewww.durbar.org

The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (Bengali: দুর্বার মহিলা সমন্বয় সমিতি Durbar Mohila Shômonbôe Shomiti "Unstoppable Women's Synthesis Committee"), or simply Durbar, is a collective of 60,000 sex workers in West Bengal. Established on 15 February 1992, in Sonagachi, the largest red-light district in Kolkata, West Bengal, India with estimated 11,000 sex workers, Durbar has been working on women's rights and sex workers' rights advocacy, anti-human trafficking and HIV/AIDS prevention.[1][2] The Durbar states that its aims are the challenging and altering of the barriers that form the everyday reality of sex workers' lives as they relate to their poverty or their ostracism. Durbar runs 51 free clinics for sex workers across West Bengal, with support from organisations such as the Ford Foundation and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), who also help Durbar in its initiatives like networking, rights protection and creating alternative livelihood for sex workers.[3]

The group is overtly political in its aims of fighting for the recognition of prostitution as legal work and, of sex workers as workers[4] and, for a secure social existence of sex workers and their children. They work for the legalisation of prostitution and seek to reform laws that restrict human rights of sex.[citation needed]

  1. ^ a b "The new rhythms of Sonagachi: As the city's sex workers collective turns 20..." Mint. 24 February 2012.
  2. ^ A missionary enterprise[usurped] Frontline, Volume 22 – Issue 08, 12–25 March 2005
  3. ^ "Sex workers' union gives them the power to say no". Mint. 30 November 2009.
  4. ^ Sex workers demand labour rights on May Day DNA India – Tuesday, 1 May 2007 17:52 IST