Resistance Studies Fellow

Binalakshmi Nepram 

Binalakshmi "Bina" Nepram, born in Manipur Nation currently located in India's Northeast region near to Myanmar, is an indigenous scholar, peace and disarmament activist spearheading work on making women-led peace, security and disarmament meaningful to the lives of many. She is author of five books, her two most recent being "Where are our Women in Decision Making on UNSCR 1325" & "Deepening Democracy, Diversity and Women's Rights in India" (2019) published by The New York Universal Publishing House.

In 2004, Bina co-founded India's first civil society organization for conventional disarmament issues, Control Arms Foundation of India. In 2007, Binalakshmi launched the Manipur Women Gun Survivor Network. Along with many, Bina also set up 5 women support centres and 37 women's groups to ensure that women who survived armed violence have a place of safety and respite.

Bina has worked with many in the communities, and lead protests movements for movements for peace, justice and rights. Due to this she received numerous threats repeatedly. She continues to stay in exile due to these threats and is determined to return once threats subside in her home country.

She has also represented civil society in many meetings of the United Nations in both Geneva and New York. She was a part of treaty negotiations and participant in many of global treaties such as arms trade treaty, Convention to Ban Cluster Bombs and Nuclear weapons.

Bina is a recipient of Dalai Lama Foundation's WISCOMP Scholar of Peace Award (2008), the Sean MacBride Peace Prize (2010) given by International Peace Bureau in Oslo, the CNN IBN Real Heroes Award (2011) given to her and the organization she founded, Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network. London-based organisation, Action on Armed Violence also named Bina as one of “100 most influential people in world working on armed violence reduction” along with Malala Yusufsai, Kofi Annan and many others.

In 2015 Forbes (India) listed Bina in 24 "Young Minds of India that Matter" and Femina, India’s largest women’s magazine honoured her with their Women Social Empowerment Award 2015. She was also awarded with "Women Have Wings" Award in the USA in 2016 and in 2017, she received Telegraph Newspaper Excellence Awards 2017 for her work with women survivors in Manipur and Bina was named in October 2018 along with 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate from Belarus, Svetlana Alexievich as winner of Anna Politskovaya Award 2018 which is given in London in October 2019.

Bina is also a recipient of Ashoka Fellowship given by Washington DC based Ashoka: Innovators to the Public, Scholar Rescue Fund by International Institute of Education, and was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York in Indigenous Studies Program. Bina joined Connecticut College's Gender and Women Studies Department & Walter Commons Global Studies as a IIE-SRF Scholar-In-Residence in 2018, an appointment that ends in December 2019.  

You can follow her tweets at @BinaNepram and you can read more of her work, writings, speeches etc at www.binalakshminepram.com

Realities of India’s Oft-Forgotten Northeast: Conflict, Militarization, Indigneous Peoples, Racism and COVID 19
Podcast To enlighten and educate about the often overlooked Northeast corner of India, 
by Binalakshmi Nepram  June 2, 2020 on The Grand Tamasha Program 

150 years after Gandhi’s birth, authoritarianism in India must be met with resistance
As we celebrate Gandhi's legacy, we must also stand in solidarity against ongoing repression in Kashmir and Manipur.
by Matt Meyer and Binalakshmi Nepram  December 1, 2019 in Waging Nonviolence