Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
| Abbreviation | DMSC |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1995 |
| Type | CBO |
| Location | |
|
Region served
|
West Bengal |
|
Membership
|
sex workers |
|
President
|
Putul Sarkar |
|
Secretary
|
Kajol Bose |
|
Mentor
|
Bharati Dey |
|
Chief Advisor
|
Dr. Smarajit Jana |
| Website | www |
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (Bengali: দুর্বার মহিলা সমন্বয় সমিতি Durbar Mohila Shômonbôe Shomiti "Unstoppable Women's Synthesis Committee") or Durbar, is a collective of 65,000 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. 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.
The group is overtly political in its aims of fighting for the recognition of prostitution as legal work and, of sex workers as workers 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
On 15 February 1992, a public health scientist Dr. Smarajit Jana of All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Kolkata, visited the red-light area of Sonagachi for a HIV intervention research study. A peer education team was formed from amongst the sex workers and provided training. Shortly after, studies revealed larger issues amongst sex workers, such as sex workers rights, education of their children, access to financial services and handling of harassment by police and local thugs, along with promoting the use of condoms. Thus in 1995 he formed 'Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee' (DMSC) with 12 sex workers as stakeholders, by 2012 DMSC had a membership of 65,000 from 48 branches across the state of West Bengal, and continues to be managed by sex workers, their children and government officials as its board members, and has not just female sex workers as its members but also male and transgender sex workers.
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