Enakshi Ganguly is a development researcher and a human rights activist. She has been working on issues women, children and other marginalised groups for over three and a half decades. She Co-Founded HAQ: Centre for Child Rights in 1998 and was its Co-Director till August 2018. Having stepped out to make way for a new leadership, she currently Advisor of HAQ.

Her expertise includes research, training and advocacy on issues related to different marginalized groups including children, women, tribals, displaced persons and sexual minorities. 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 been engaged in training of activists, teachers, police and children themselves, nationally and internationally on human rights, gender justice and child rights.She has been involved in advocacy on issues that include rights of the displaced, women and children and reproductive health, and been involved in initiatives for policy change and on drafting committees for alternative policies and laws. She has worked both nationally and internationally to promote accountability and reform, often in partnership with governments and multilateral agencies. She speaks regularly at international forums describing a rights based approach to child protection, and the need for states to invest in their future

Since Co-founding HAQ in 1998, she has been engaged work on child rights in India, particularly the creation of tools for monitoring state accountability, budget for children, child trafficking, juvenile justice, child sexual abuse, child marriage, children affected by conflict including their recruitment into combat, protection of children living with HIV/AIDs, access to justice and child labour. She has also been enageged with HAQ’s activities for providing legal support and counselling to children who are victims of abuse and exploitation or have come in conflict with law.She has undertaken training on child rights, child budgeting, child trafficking,child protection etc. both nationally as well as internationally. She has been training police, judicial officers and other government functionaries. She led HAQ, the only child rights group, 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.

Enakshi has been a guest faculty at academic and training institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (which is continuing), National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, Indian Law Institute among others. She has also been invited to be part of curriculum and designing training programmes on child rights and related issues for such institutions.

She has been part of drafting of government’s policies, laws and plans such as the National Plan of Action for Children, 2005 and the National Policy for Children etc. As a member of the Planning Commission’s Steering Committee on Women Empowerment and Child Development, she has contributed to the chapter on women and children for the XIth plan document, that for the first time in the history of planning has a section entitled, “Child Rights” and then for theXIIth Five Year Plan document.

She has engaged with the United Nations Child Committee on the Rights of the Child, having participated in the process of alternate reporting; attended the session in which India presented its report, made submissions on General Days of Discussion. She was the one of the experts invited for the drafing of the General Comment on on Public Spending to Realize Children’s Rights” in 2014 and subsequent discussions on the draft. (General Comment 19). She has participated in the UN General Assembly in 2002 and the Preparatory Meeting in New York in 2001, where she was part of the caucus involved in providing inputs to the Declaration- A World fit for Children adopted in May 2002; and been part of processes on the UN Study on Violence on behalf of India. She has also worked closely with the former UN Rapporteur on Right to Adequate Housing, especially on women and housing and was part of the team that developed a tool kit used by the Housing and Land Rights Network of the Habitat Iinternational Coalition, which is based on the use of international legal instruments.

She is a member of the Editorial Board of “Children, Youth and Environments”- A Journal of Research, Policy and Applications , University of Cincinnati. She has been invited to be on theboard of several organisations including the National Gender Centre or the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration (LBSNAA).

Her work on the rights of displaced persons, particularly those displaced by dams is well recognised. Beginning her work with the potential “oustees” or displaced persons of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River in 1986, she has worked on impact of displacement on those affected by infrastructure projects as well as natural disasters. Her expertise in this field has led to the publishing of edited volumes by her as well as contributions to international publications. Her work in the 1980s while at MARG, and the advocacy that followed, on the inpact of forced displacement on women, led to recognition of women as heads of families, and eligible for compensation in their own rights in projects displacing them. It also led to her being asked by the Asian Development Bank to write their Gender Check list for Involuntary Displacement.

She has several published works, which includes books, reports and articles. She has presented papers in several national and international seminars, conferences and workshops.

She was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in 2003. In 2019 she was awarded the REX Karmaveer Global Fellowship and Karmaveer Chakra award instituted by iCONGO in Partnership with the United Nations.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).