Enakshi Ganguly

About Enakshi Ganguly

Enakshi Ganguly is a development researcher and a human rights activist. She has been working on issues women, children and other marginalized groups for over three decades. Since co-founding HAQ: Centre for Child Rights in 1999, she has worked of children’s rights till she stepped out to make way for a younger leadership team.  Her expertise includes research, training and advocacy on issues related to different marginalized groups including children, women, tribals, displaced persons and sexual minorities. She led HAQ to be a part of the Voices Against 377 which intervened in the petition for de-criminalising adult consensual sex among the LGBT &Q community.

She has been active in campaigns on rights of displaced persons of Narmada valley and elsewhere, right to education, and the fight against child sexual abuse and child trafficking. She has conducted training of activists, teachers, police and children themselves, nationally and internationally on human rights, gender justice and child rights. She is engaged in advocacy for reform of laws and policies and has been invited as an expert for drafting policies, laws and plans etc. nationally as well internationally. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the Planning Commission for the Eleventh and Twelfth Five Year Plan and National Committee for the Promotion of Economic and Social Empowerment; drafting Committee for the National Policy for Children etc. She has been part of development curriculum in academic institutions. She has presented papers in several national and international seminars, conferences and workshops and has several published works.

She is on the board of several organizations as well as on gender and child protection committees. These include the National Gender Centre of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) and Child Rights International Network (CRIN). In 2003, she was  awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in recognition of her and HAQ’s work on children. She is an Honorary Professor at the National Law University, Odisha (India), focussing on child rights and juvenile justice. In 2019 she was awarded the REX Karmaveer Global Fellowship and Karmaveer Chakra award instituted by iCONGO in Partnership with the United Nations and has been profiled in a book entitled WOMANKIND: Faces of Change Around the World by Donna Nebenzahl (text) and Nance Ackerman (photographs) (Raincoast Books, Vancouver).