GGBK has set up public awareness campaigns to warn villagers and describe how trafficking gangs operate in the area. The organization also provides self-defence courses and trauma counselling for women and their families.
Their help was invaluable to Kashmira after she returned home. She depended on her social workers’ guidance as she tried to set up her own business, with her father’s help.
Today, the young woman sells snacks and toys from her small corner shop. She’s earning a living and the same neighbours who used to badmouth her now rely on her and her store, which Kashmira calls her lifeline.Â
“People who experience trafficking are rarely welcomed back, but even after what happened to me, my community now stands by me,” she said. “I am loved.”
Mijana also spent months beaten down by snide remarks from friends and neighbours — an ordeal she called “even more horrifying” than the abuse she endured.
Her parents, thinking it might help stop gossip from neighbours and reduce the family’s shame, rushed Mijana into an arranged marriage three months after she returned home, when she was still only 17.Â
When her husband found out about what had happened to Mijana, he began to beat her and demand large sums of money that her family couldn’t pay. The domestic abuse got so bad that Mijana left him when she was nine months pregnant with her daughter.
Her voice breaking, Mijana counted on her fingers all that had happened to her before the age of 20.
“I’ve been a victim of child trafficking, child marriage, domestic violence, even social media harassment,” she said, referring to her husband posting intimate photos of her online to shame her. “I fought against all four.”
