The Kaur Movement and The Restitution Project: Naming Abuse, Dismantling Silence

Gurpreet Kaur, Founder, The Kaur Movement

The Kaur Movement is a grassroots initiative founded by Gurpreet Kaur, a survivor and advocate based in British Columbia, Canada. Created in 2019, the movement began as a digital platform to support Punjabi and South Asian women facing sexual violence, domestic abuse, and coercive control. Since then, it has grown into an internationally recognized campaign challenging silence, shame, and cultural stigmas surrounding abuse—especially within South Asian communities.

At its core, the Kaur Movement exists to do what institutions, families, and systems often fail to do: name the harm and stand beside survivors. It is survivor-led, community-rooted, and intentionally disruptive of the cultural norms that prioritize reputation, obedience, and secrecy over safety, justice, and healing.

While its focus is primarily on South Asian survivors, particularly Sikh and Punjabi women, its broader message resonates across cultures. It speaks to the pressure many survivors feel to stay silent—to protect their families, their communities, or their abusers. Through personal storytelling, survivor testimony, and community organizing, the Kaur Movement pushes back against that pressure and offers survivors a platform to speak openly, without shame.

So what does this have to do with The Restitution Project?

Everything.

The Restitution Project is fighting to end the legal tools that perpetuate the same silence the Kaur Movement confronts—especially the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in cases of sexual abuse. Where the Kaur Movement challenges cultural silence, The Restitution Project confronts institutional silence. Both understand that secrecy is not safety, and that healing requires the freedom to speak.

The use of NDAs to cover up sexual abuse in schools, workplaces, religious institutions, and sports organizations doesn’t just shield perpetrators—it retraumatizes survivors. It sends a message that the story of abuse is a liability, not a truth worth hearing. The Kaur Movement, in contrast, asserts that survivors’ stories are not only valid, but necessary for justice and change.

Together, these two movements—one rooted in cultural disruption, the other in legal reform—reinforce a shared truth: silence is not neutral. Whether it’s enforced by family expectations or by legal contracts, forced silence protects power and erases pain.

For survivors, the choice to speak must be theirs. The systems around them—legal, cultural, institutional—must be rebuilt to support that choice, not suppress it.

The Kaur Movement reminds us that breaking silence is an act of resistance. The Restitution Project fights to make sure it’s also an act that is protected in law. Justice, dignity, and healing demand nothing less.