|
Mukul Sharma, 48, is the Executive Director
of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific.
He has a long experience of journalism and writing, activism and campaigning, community involvement and partnership and working in national and international non-governmental organisations. After completing M. Phil in Political Science from University of Delhi, he began his professional journalism in 1984 in The Times of India Newspaper Group, based in Mumbai and Delhi, India. As a journalist and writer, he specialises on human rights, environment, discrimination and exclusion, labour and civil society initiatives in India, South Asia and South East Asia. He has received 12 prestigious national-international awards in journalism and writings, including the Appan Menon Memorial Award for Journalism; Award for Excellence in Asian Print Media Writing by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, Singapore and Singapore Press Holdings; The Statesman Award for Rural Writing, First Prize Twice; and the Best Asian Journalist for Environmental Reporting by the Asian Forum of Environmental Journalists and Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Germany. He has been the fellow at Green College and Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mukul has published several books and booklets. Some of his books are: Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia, Routledge, London and Delhi, 2008; Landscapes and Lives: Environmental Dispatches on Rural India’, Oxford University Press, Delhi and London, 2002 and Improving People’s Lives: Lessons in Empowerment from Asia, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003. His forthcoming book (April 2010) is Human Rights in a Globalised World: An Asian Diary, Sage.
Since the past more than 10 years, Mukul has worked at senior national and international positions in Amnesty International, ActionAid International-Asia, Heinrich Boell Foundation, and Centre for Education and Communication. He has also been actively associated with several regional and international civil society initiatives like the World Social Forum and the World Dignity Forum. His association with some prominent international developmental organisations and civil society initiatives gave him an opportunity to relate more closely with civil society organisations and to widen his horizon, regionally-internationally. He has focussed on policy, advocacy, campaign and communication issues related with peace and conflict, natural resources, food, HIV and AIDS, WTO, violence against women, civil and political rights, dalits, dignity and justice. Mukul has coordinated, researched and published Positive Voices: Emerging Governance Issues on HIV/AIDS in Asia.
Mukul belongs to a strong tradition of political and social activism, campaigning and alliance making, in India and Asia. Working as an activist and campaigner on peoples’ rights, he has been detained and jailed several times. He has been thrice elected Secretary of The Times of India Employees Union. Filled with immense creative energies, simplicity and political insight, Mukul tries to combine the roles of a visionary, academician, writer, organiser, campaigner, activist and manager, with a clear commitment towards peoples’ rights to life, dignity and justice.
|
|
