Juhu Thukral
Juhu Thukral, J.D., is the Director of the Sex Workers Project (SWP) at the Urban Justice Center (UJC) in New York City. She has been an advocate for the rights of immigrant women in the areas of economic justice, criminal justice, and sexual health and rights for over 15 years.
Ms. Thukral founded the SWP in 2001, after recognizing the strong need for an organization that protects the legal rights of sex workers, many of whom are low-income and immigrant women of color. She envisions and develops the SWP's programmatic initiatives around sex work and human rights, trafficking in persons, and economic justice. She also raises the funding for the SWP and manages its partnerships with a diverse array of collaborating organizations. Ms. Thukral has spoken extensively on these issues and authored articles that have appeared in American Sexuality Magazine, Feministing.com, Research for Sex Work, and SIECUS Report. She has served as an expert source for a wide range of media outlets, including the Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times, Women's eNews, NPR, Democracy Now, Good Morning America, NY1, Village Voice, AlterNet and numerous other venues.
Before founding the SWP, Ms. Thukral was a Staff Attorney in the UJC's Family Violence Project, where she engaged in legal advocacy for battered women who were dealing with the criminal justice and child welfare systems. Prior to her work at the UJC, Ms. Thukral was a Blackmun Fellowship Attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and a Ruth Chance Law Fellow at Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco. During these fellowships, she advocated on behalf of low-income and immigrant women on economic justice issues, including sexual harassment and other rights violations, as well as a spectrum of reproductive rights concerns.
Ms. Thukral is a co-author and co-investigator of the reports, Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Work in New York City (2005); Revolving Door: An Analysis of Street-Based Prostitution in New York City (2003); and The Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act of 1995: Examining the Effects of Mandatory Arrest in New York City (2001).
She obtained her J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she was awarded the Elaine Osborne Jacobson Award for Women in Health Care Law, and her B.A. from Rice University.