Nivedita Prasad Receives the Anne Klein Women's Award for Her Fight for Migrant Women's Rights

Nivedita Prasad is receiving the Anne Klein Women’s Award because—as the jury’s statement explains—“she has been a courageous and determined advocate for women’s and human rights for many years. She brings attention to human trafficking and violence against women and advocates for criminal prosecution and legislative action. She fights against racism and, above all, against violence against migrant women."

The fight for human rights is an important cause. It commands great respect from many. Some say that human rights are the Ten Commandments of a new civil religion in our globalized world. Most people think human rights are a good thing, and those who advocate for them are viewed favorably. It seems comforting to know that there are people who stand up for the marginalized and fight against injustice. They would then be—to stay with the image of a civil religion—the new saints. Some, however, prefer to discredit them as do-gooders. Both clichés have little to do with the actual commitment to human rights. In my view, the biography of Nivedita Prasad illustrates this impressively. 

She came to Germany from India with her family at the age of 13 and very quickly gained experience with German institutions and ways of life, because shortly after her arrival she had a falling-out with her family and was placed in a children’s home. She remained there until she turned 18. She still has fond memories of that time. The caregivers, she says, were warm-hearted, dedicated, and personally committed to the girls’ well-being. There she found protection and, above all, freedom. The caregivers made it very clear to the girls that every girl had a right to recognition and self-fulfillment. However, there were a few things that irritated her—both about the caregivers and the other girls: For example, she was frequently asked what it was like in India, since most children there were starving and women were being burned. Nivedita Prasad, try as she might, could not remember coming from such a country, and in her youthful imagination she seriously wondered if there might be another India after all—the one the Germans were always talking about—perhaps an India on the very edge of the world that she herself did not yet know. She was also puzzled that most people found it unusual that she wanted to take her high school graduation exams, that she spoke English fluently, and that she naturally wanted to go to college. Her self-confidence and her education didn’t seem to fit the image of the poor Indian girl. 

These experiences had such a profound impact on Nivedita Prasad that she was determined to become an educator at a girls’ home. She wanted to do it just like her caregivers—only better. So she studied social pedagogy at the Free University of Berlin (FU) with a focus on intercultural studies and wrote her thesis on sexual violence against migrant women—a topic that would remain close to her heart to this day.

While still a student in the early 1990s, she organized the first two conferences for Black women, Jewish women, women with migrant backgrounds, and women living in exile, together with other women. She played a key role in developing the concept and organizing the events, raised funds, and, together with May Ayim, ultimately documented both conferences. The impetus for the conferences was that the women who gathered there felt they were not represented in white feminism—not on the panels, not in the theory, and not in women’s groups, where white Germans held the reins. They determined what feminism was supposed to mean. This soon sparked conflicts, primarily centered on the question of whether feminism entailed exclusively the struggle for women’s equality in society or whether it also included the struggle against racism and anti-Semitism. For most white feminists, this was an entirely different issue, one for which they did not feel responsible. In this respect, the question was whether feminism could be limited to the concerns of white, middle-class German women, or whether it must also include the concerns of all women who are discriminated against by other power structures. And to this day, deep divides persist between different women and feminist movements on this issue. We can see this currently, for example, in the controversies surrounding the role of Muslim women in this society. Here, too, the central issue ultimately boils down to whether or not to include racism in the analysis alongside the category of sexism. 

But contradictions also emerged among women of color even during the organizing of the congresses at that time. For example, some women living in exile did not see why Jewish women should participate, since in their countries of origin they had perceived them more as representatives of expansionist policies than as discriminated-against minorities. Here, however, Nivedita Prasad was unequivocal from the start. Any group that did not reject discrimination against others—be it antisemitism, homophobia, or, for that matter, discrimination against East German women—was, in her view, unacceptable as an ally. Today, this position is encapsulated in the concept of intersectionality, which aims to include, as far as possible, all forms of discrimination relevant to a given context simultaneously and equally in the analysis, without giving any one form priority per se. 

This makes one thing clear: Viewed from a distance, human rights are a wonderful thing; however, when examined more closely, conflicts quickly come to light that require us to take a stand. Here, too, the issue revolves around power dynamics—for example, regarding the question of whose discrimination is more important, from whose perspective discrimination is judged, and who defines what constitutes discrimination. It also becomes clear that people are quick to demand human rights as long as their own rights are not the ones being violated. Thus, the question of whether and to what extent racism is possible or even common within feminism itself was highly contentious, and, as mentioned, it continues to shape many debates among women from different feminist currents to this day. 

In her first job, at an intercultural shelter for girls, Nivedita Prasad was then able to apply her political stance in a professional capacity. Above all, it was important to her to make it clear that sexist violence can never be viewed in isolation from other power dynamics, but is always embedded in a social and cultural context. For example, she observed that some of the girls from immigrant backgrounds had great difficulty opening up to German white staff members about their experiences of domestic violence; they were too afraid that doing so would devalue their own families and cultures and fuel racism. These girls were, in effect, forced to choose between protection from racism and protection from sexual and physical violence. Many were unable to cope with this situation. Nivedita Prasad then sought to raise her colleagues’ awareness of these internal conflicts. And to this day, she considers this one of her many responsibilities. For example, she has developed guidelines for the prevention of sexual violence against girls with immigrant backgrounds and is engaged in ongoing dialogue with relevant experts. 

This includes, for instance, an article she recently published on the topic of racism as trauma. If health, as defined by the WHO, is not simply the absence of disease but encompasses physical, mental, and social well-being, then racism makes people sick. Racism is experienced as a violent shock, one in which one often does not know how to react. One must simply endure it. One can repress or dissociate—and yet a constant sense of distrust remains: when will the next blow come? Or one is exposed to constant, barely perceptible subliminal devaluations that, cumulatively, can lead to tension, mental blocks, and even physical and mental disorders. This also makes one sick because, according to Prasad, all the resources that could otherwise be mobilized to cope with life’s problems are tied up by this constant fear. They can then no longer be used to protect one’s own health.

What do you do, for example, if as a teenager—as the saying goes, “in accordance with the rules”—you have to report to the immigration office every three months to renew your residence permit and hear the same thing every time: “I’ll extend it for another three months, but when you turn 18, you’ll have to leave!” Nivedita Prasad experienced this situation firsthand and refused to be discouraged. She hired a lawyer who was able to secure her residency until she graduated from high school, and since she was accepted into college immediately afterward and found a job right after graduation, she was able to avoid the deportation that had loomed over her for years. It seems as though she channeled the constant threat into the strength to fight back and later became a role model for those who—for whatever reasons—find it even harder to stand up for their rights. 

That is why her publications are not simply about portraying migrant women as victims of violence. No, it is also important to her to show that this is a cliché that refuses to see migrant women as the subjects of their own life stories—women who develop their own specific resources and can never be reduced solely to their status as victims or to their identity as migrant women. In this respect, it has always been a central concern of Nivedita Prasad to challenge the stereotype of the helpless migrant woman as a victim. 

Ban Ying, a counseling and coordination center against human trafficking in Berlin, where she has been employed as a research assistant since 1997, provided her with a good platform for this. In addition to her counseling work, she was primarily entrusted with public relations and lobbying efforts in the fight against human trafficking. She has been campaigning against this modern form of slavery for many years now. In doing so, she breaks new ground and utilizes every political and legal means she can find—at both the national and international levels. 

Her primary focus is on raising awareness, because even the professionals tasked with addressing this issue—such as police officers, lawyers, and border officials—often do not fully understand what human trafficking actually is. It is frequently equated with forced prostitution. In fact, any form of trafficking in persons for the purpose of exploitation—whether of labor or sexual services—constitutes human trafficking. The decisive factor is whether the affected individuals have the power to determine their working conditions or whether they are exposed to violence and arbitrary treatment without legal protection. An important example of this in Ban Ying’s work involves women from Southeast Asia—and, in recent years, increasingly from Eastern Europe—who are lured to Germany under false pretenses and, once here—deprived of all rights—are often forced into sexual services. 

Women in other situations, such as domestic workers employed by diplomats, can also be affected by this de facto lack of legal rights. They are often severely exploited, working continuously without a day off and being required to be at their employers’ disposal around the clock. They are often housed in substandard conditions and receive no wages or only a fraction of what was agreed upon. The core problem here is that these women have no access to their rights. The diplomats enjoy diplomatic immunity, and the countries of origin that could punish these legal violations are usually far away. This makes it virtually impossible for domestic workers to take legal action against their employers. 

In light of this situation, Nivedita Prasad and her colleagues developed strategies for graduated intervention: If it is certain that the woman herself wants to take action against the injustice and is in a safe situation, they submit her complaint to the Federal Foreign Office—as the next higher authority—or to the public. While these bodies cannot initiate legal action, they can at least significantly damage the diplomats’ reputation. In one case, under this pressure, the embassy reimbursed 23,250 euros in withheld wages. 

If this approach proves ineffective, legal action must be taken. For example, in a recent case, Ban Ying, together with the Institute for Human Rights, filed a lawsuit with the Federal Labor Court, with the intention of appealing to the Federal Constitutional Court if necessary. The goal is to obtain an answer to the question of how the rights of these domestic workers can be guaranteed, despite their employers’ immunity. 
If they do not receive a satisfactory response there, they will turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Finally, Nivedita Prasad has filed an individual complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to initiate proceedings against Germany, with the aim of compelling it to establish minimum standards for the working conditions of domestic workers employed by diplomats. 

Just how important it is for someone to advocate for these women specifically—even at the level of international courts—is demonstrated by the fact that most complaints against Germany filed with the UN Human Rights Committee are brought by fathers who feel they have been treated unfairly in custody disputes, by members of Scientology who seek to assert their right to religious freedom, as well as by former East German border police officers who believe they were wrongfully convicted of manslaughter by German courts. In other words, while human rights complaints are certainly being filed, they are not necessarily being brought by those to whom access to rights is otherwise virtually denied. 

In order to actually enforce the rights of individuals, their problem must first be recognized and acknowledged as such by the relevant authorities. To achieve this, intervention is needed at all levels; reports must be written and petitions submitted. Nivedita Prasad has done all of this in recent years. Through her work, she has succeeded in ensuring that the issue of domestic workers employed by diplomats was included in the General Comment of the UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers. As a result of these interventions, all domestic workers employed by diplomats in Germany must now be paid a minimum wage of 750 euros. 

All of this requires extensive knowledge of the applicable conventions, complaint procedures, and jurisdictions, as well as an instinct for the best strategic approach. Nivedita Prasad has acquired all of this knowledge herself through her work. But she did not stop there; she is now striving to pass on this knowledge and experience to others. For instance, she has authored a handbook on the enforcement of human rights at the national and international levels, published last year, in which she outlines step by step how to enforce these rights: “Using the Law to Combat Violence” is the title of this book. In it, she lists the key UN conventions, provides information on avenues for filing complaints, and follows this with strategic considerations on how to proceed. Such a handbook was long overdue, as there is no comparable project—or even any hints of one—in the relevant professional literature. In this regard, I fear that German social work remains rather provincial. And to my knowledge, there are hardly any experts who know how to use the international stage as consistently as Nivedita Prasad does to advocate for the rights of the disenfranchised. 

It is all the more gratifying that she has shared her knowledge and experience with others not only through her publications but also in countless lectures and workshops. In addition to her political and professional work, she has also consistently been involved in teaching, starting with teaching positions at Berlin’s universities and universities of applied sciences—in particular the TU, FU, and ASH—as well as in international degree programs in the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. 

Nivedita Prasad is a gifted educator. She has a wonderful ability to bring together experience and knowledge in a vivid yet systematic way, inspiring her students in the process. I can say this frankly and freely because I myself have worked with her on study projects and seminars over several years. I’d like to give just one example here of her engaging teaching style: In a joint study project at ASH on “Refugees and Migration,” Nivedita began by asking the students what they thought life was like for refugees when they arrived here in Germany—regardless of which country they came from. What do they know about this country, who do they turn to, and what do they need to do to find their way here? The students had to admit—as I think most of us would—that they had no idea. She then suggested, “Why don’t you find out for yourselves—online, at counseling centers, or by talking to refugees themselves?” In doing so, they discovered that there is, in fact, no brochure or even a comprehensive source of information for people who arrive here in Germany as refugees. 

Nivedita then said, “Well, then think about what they actually need to know.” As a result of this challenge, the students conducted research in refugee projects, government agencies, in specialized literature, and on the internet—and then wrote and published online a so-called “Handbook for Refugees,” which contains all the essential initial information refugees need—including an appendix with useful addresses and links for further information. The crowning achievement of this project was that a continuing education institute for interpreters agreed to incorporate the handbook into its curriculum and, as a result, translated the text into eight different languages free of charge. It’s easy to imagine that, through this project, these students likely learned more about how Germany deals with its refugees than they would have in many hours of lectures. This is just one example of their creative approach, through which they impart to students not only knowledge but, above all, an independent engagement with and empathy for the issue. In this regard, I believe that their own commitment serves as a solid foundation for awakening, further developing, and deepening that commitment in others. 

In recent years, Nivedita Prasad has found a forum in her role as director of the master’s program “Social Work as a Human Rights Profession,” where she can convey her mission in a very special way and provide psychosocial professionals with scientifically grounded training on the topic of human rights in social work. This program, supported primarily by the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, the Protestant University of Applied Sciences, and the Catholic University of Applied Sciences for Social Work, has been running very successfully for several years now. It has become a center that provides impetus for human rights work in the psychosocial field throughout the German-speaking world—a center unlike any that has existed before. At this point, however, I must also mention Prof. Silvia Staub Bernasconi, who—with her firm conviction regarding the central relevance of human rights to social work, her solid theoreticalbackground, and her broad international perspective and experience—as well as with incredible perseverance—has succeeded in establishing this degree program with this focus here in Berlin. She chose Nivedita Prasad as her successor, knowing that her mission is in good hands with her. 

But Nivedita Prasad does not limit the sharing of her experience and the imparting of knowledge to the field of social work. For example, during her work combating human trafficking, she quickly realized that not only psychosocial professionals but also police officers, judges, and attorneys were not truly familiar with the subject matter. Acting on the spur of the moment, she developed a training program for these professional groups and offered it to the relevant agencies and vocational academies. After encountering some resistance, she was able, for example, to convince the Berlin Police Department that such training was essential. However, she was unable to convince them that it would also come at a cost. So she also secured the funding, and as a result, she is now able to conduct several workshops a year on the topics of human trafficking and racism within the police force. 

It goes without saying that she encountered significant resistance from the police officers themselves. In this regard, the fact that she personally put herself in this situation deserves great credit. But she also received a great deal of recognition, albeit sometimes in a somewhat peculiar way—such as when a participant patted her on the shoulder at the end of a workshop and said, “You’re the first foreign woman I’ve ever met who isn’t a criminal.” This training program is now offered regularly, and the police department itself has been funding it since 2010. The same applies to the continuing education program for judges and attorneys, which is now also offered regularly by the Judges’ Academy in Trier. 

Finally, I’d like to address a topic that is also very close to Nivedita Prasad’s heart. Human rights, as we all know, are a precious commodity. But what if they are used precisely to undermine them? In her doctoral dissertation (“Violence Against Migrant Women and the Danger of Their Instrumentalization in the Context of Migration Restrictions”), Nivedita Prasad highlights the problem that the age of entry for prospective immigrants was set high and, among other things, German language proficiency was required with the argument that that the goal was to curb forced marriages and empower women joining their families. But why, Prasad asks, are German language skills expected of immigrants from Turkey, Africa, and most Asian countries, but not of people from the U.S., Canada, Japan, New Zealand, etc.; What are the consequences, she goes on to ask, of the fact that women seeking to immigrate from structurally disadvantaged regions often have to travel hundreds of kilometers to reach a city offering language courses, the costs of which are, moreover, nearly prohibitive for them? The result, according to Prasad, is that these political regulations primarily deter particularly poor people, illiterate individuals, and people from “undesirable” countries from entering the country. 

Thus, under the guise of combating forced marriage, a highly selective immigration policy is being pursued. Furthermore, the increased costs—for language courses, for example—must generally be advanced by the husbands residing in Germany, which further raises the cost of family reunification and, not least, can lead to the men feeling all the more entitled to expect something in return from their wives and, in the worst case, to resort to violence. These regulations can thus effectively lead to a greater risk for women rather than improved protection. This suspicion is also plausible because, for example, women are not informed about their rights, support services, or helpful resources as part of the language program. At the very least, this should have been included in the catalog of measures to at least maintain the appearance that the goal is to empower women. In her summary, she concludes that the current legal situation has not necessarily led to the prevention of forced marriage but may have prevented many marriages, thereby restricting the fundamental human right to enter into marriage. 

If I now return to the question posed at the beginning—what does it mean to advocate for human rights?—then Nivedita Prasad’s biography and her political and professional commitment show that it can be an extremely challenging, multifaceted, and also very exciting endeavor. This involves taking a stand in conflicts as well as utilizing all possible political and professional strategies; it requires being pragmatic and empathetic, as well as politically and professionally competent. 

Anne Klein, a feminist who has worked tirelessly to combat discrimination and violence against women, deliberately established this award for people who are still in the midst of their professional careers. Her aim was not to recognize a lifetime of achievement, but rather to acknowledge the work done so far, combined with the encouragement to continue on the path they have chosen. But that is precisely what we hope for—and so I would like to conclude by saying that Nivedita Prasad will continue to advocate with such dedication, creativity, fearlessness, and persistence for the rights of those who are all too often overlooked or deliberately ignored in our society and who are denied the right to have rights. 
She is a political activist, scholar, and educator all at once. She is a worthy recipient of the award.
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