Sunita Danuwar (born July 16, 1977), is a Nepalese human rights activist and the founder of Sunita Foundation and Shakti Samuha, a non-governmental organization based in Nepal formed by women rescued from brothels in India that works against the trafficking of women. Early life Childhood (1977-1992) Sunita Danuwar was born to parents Ganga Ban and Chandrakala Ban in Kasigadh VDC, Dailekh district, which is located in the remote western part of Nepal. Because girls' education is not a priority for most poor Nepalese families, Danuwar didn't have the opportunity to go to school during her childhood. Nevertheless, her father taught her the Nepali alphabet and numbers. At the age of five, after having lost six brothers and sisters from malnutrition, poverty and lack of access to health care, she and her family settled in Jammu and Kashmir, a state in northern India. When Danuwar reached the age of fourteen, the family decided to move again, this time to Nainital. Six months in a brothel (1996) On the way to Nainital, her family stopped in Almora, a town in the state of Uttarakhand, in order to make some money to continue their travels. There, they met two Nepali tractor drivers and befriended them. When Danuwar's family finally gathered enough funds to continue the journey toward Nainital, the two tractor drivers drugged Danuwar's food, causing her to lose consciousness. They sold her to a brothel in Mumbai for 40,000 Indian rupees. When she realized she was in a brothel, Danuwar categorically refused to have sexual intercourse despite mental and physical torture she was enduring and she thought about committing suicide. Approximatively one month later, she was sold by the brothel owner to another brothel for 100,000 Indian rupees. There too she was tortured and threatened with death until the brothel owner ordered five men to rape her, leaving her with no other option but to work as a forced sex-worker during six months. She finally escaped on February 5, 1996, thanks to the major raids of brothels in Mumbai during that year, launched upon the huge pressure coming from national- and international-level child rights organizations to save minor children from forced sex slavery. During those raids, 484 girls and women were rescued from brothels. Over 40% of them were from Nepal, like Danuwar. Seven months later, nearly 128 Nepali girls and women returned in Kathmandu, Nepal and fifteen of them, including Danuwar,