Horrors of Human Trafficking in South Asia - NYTimes.com:
Showing posts with label Kathmandu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kathmandu. Show all posts
Friday, May 29, 2015
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Nepal quake survivors face threat from human traffickers supplying sex trade | World news | The Guardian
Tens of thousands of young women from regions devastated by the earthquake inNepal are being targeted by human traffickers supplying a network of brothels across south Asia, campaigners in Kathmandu and affected areas say.
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Nepal quake survivors face threat from human traffickers supplying sex trade | World news | The Guardian:
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Nepal quake survivors face threat from human traffickers supplying sex trade | World news | The Guardian:
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Women and Girls, A Commodity: Human Trafficking in Nepal | The Diplomat
Source: The Diplomat
Sex trafficking is a growing problem in Nepal.The Diplomat’s Kiran Nazish reports from Kathmandu.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/women-and-girls-a-commodity-human-trafficking-in-nepal/
Sex trafficking is a growing problem in Nepal.The Diplomat’s Kiran Nazish reports from Kathmandu.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/women-and-girls-a-commodity-human-trafficking-in-nepal/
Monday, September 16, 2013
The Himalayan Times : CIB busts racket that trafficked girls to Gulf as bar dancers - Detail News : Nepal News Portal
The Himalayan Times : CIB busts racket that trafficked girls to Gulf as bar dancers - Detail News : Nepal News Porta
l
Courtesy: American Himalayan Foundation
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Courtesy: American Himalayan Foundation
A school girl carries Stop Girl Trafficking (SGT) bag, distributed by Rural Health and Education Service Trust (RHEST) in a village.
THT ONLINE
Cash-commission that the agents receive per one girl is Rs 40‚000
KATHMANDU: In a major police crackdown against human trafficking done under the pretext of employment overseas, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police has apprehended four notorious agents of a girls trafficking racket operating from Nepal.
Continue:
Monday, July 29, 2013
IPS – Nepal Moves to Curb Child Labour | Inter Press Service
Source: Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/nepal-moves-to-curb-child-labour/
By Mallika Aryal
The family, a young couple, promised Reema’s parents that the girl would live with them, go to a good school and be an “older sister” to their young son.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/nepal-moves-to-curb-child-labour/
By Mallika Aryal
There are an estimated 165,000 domestic child labourers in Nepal. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS
- Last December, Pradeep Dongol, child protection officer at the Kathmandu-based Children and Women in Social Service and Human Rights (CWISH), received an urgent call from one of the NGO’s many offices in Nepal’s sprawling capital city.
Dongol rushed over to find an 11-year-old girl in the care of a CWISH staff member: her eyes were sunken, her hands covered in wounds, and she had lost patches of hair from her head.
He later learned that she had escaped from the house where she was working because she could no longer “bear…all the abuse.”
Reema (not her real name) was studying in grade three in a village about 400 km away from the capital when her parents decided to send her to Kathmandu with perfect strangers.
However, Reema’s life in Kathmandu turned out to be very different. The couple never enrolled her in school; she ate nothing but leftovers, took care of the couple’s son, did all the housework and was never paid.
She had very little contact with her folks back home, was regularly beaten, and often pulled by her hair.
One day, on her way to drop the little boy off at his school, she met some of the local CWISH workers who teach at a school nearby. When she went home and expressed interest in going to that school, she was beaten.
The next day she ran away, and found her way to the CWISH office where she asked for protection.
Of the 7.7 million children between the ages of five and 17 in Nepal, an estimated 3.14 million are working. Two-thirds of these children are below the age of 14.
A recent rapid assessment conducted by Plan International, one of the oldest children’s development organisations in the world, and World Education estimates that over 165,000 working children are domestic labourers.
“Their plight…does not get importance because it happens within the four walls of someone’s home and not out in the open,” Bishnu Timilsina, a team leader for CWISH in Nepal, told IPS.
Rescue and Rehabilitation
Gurung believes the government has recognised its weakness, and taken a first step towards building its own capacity through the creation of a multi-sector committee comprising the CCWB, the ministry of women, children and social welfare, the health and education ministry, representatives of the ILO in Nepal and other child rights NGOs that will look specifically at cases of domestic child labour.
The government is also revising the 2002 Child Labour Act and has prepared a national master plan on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (2011-2020), which, if endorsed by the parliament, will deal directly with domestic child labour cases.
Even as these laws are drafted, child rights activists are urging policy-makers to pay careful attention to rehabilitation of rescued child workers.
“If we rescue a child from abuse and send him [or] her back home, the child should not end up in a worse situation than before…so services—rehabilitation, educational and vocational services—within Nepal’s 75 districts have to be put in place,” Luhar pointed out.
CCWB’s Gurung says that it is much easier to deal with ignorance than willful wrongdoing when it comes to employing minors.
“You can make those who don’t know aware, but our challenge is in dealing with those who know they are violating the law and have the power to fight the system and get away,” she stressed.
Luhar and Gurung both say that combating domestic child labour cannot be done in isolation.
“You are talking about the vicious circle of poverty—the child can’t get an education, grows up without skills, can’t earn a better livelihood and is again the victim of exploitation, abuse and poverty,” says Gurung.
Both experts advocate making child protecting a national priority, including the provision of psychological counseling, rescue and rehabilitation services, education and vocational training via a nationwide programme.
“We are talking about the most productive sector of our society,” Gurung said in reference to children, adding that ignoring the problem now will “cost the country dearly” in the future.
He highlighted the Nepali tradition of bringing children from remote villages to work in private homes in urban areas, adding that, historically, wealthy couples would engage in this practice by promising rural families a better life and education and employment opportunities for one of their children.Gurung believes the government has recognised its weakness, and taken a first step towards building its own capacity through the creation of a multi-sector committee comprising the CCWB, the ministry of women, children and social welfare, the health and education ministry, representatives of the ILO in Nepal and other child rights NGOs that will look specifically at cases of domestic child labour.
The government is also revising the 2002 Child Labour Act and has prepared a national master plan on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (2011-2020), which, if endorsed by the parliament, will deal directly with domestic child labour cases.
Even as these laws are drafted, child rights activists are urging policy-makers to pay careful attention to rehabilitation of rescued child workers.
“If we rescue a child from abuse and send him [or] her back home, the child should not end up in a worse situation than before…so services—rehabilitation, educational and vocational services—within Nepal’s 75 districts have to be put in place,” Luhar pointed out.
CCWB’s Gurung says that it is much easier to deal with ignorance than willful wrongdoing when it comes to employing minors.
“You can make those who don’t know aware, but our challenge is in dealing with those who know they are violating the law and have the power to fight the system and get away,” she stressed.
Luhar and Gurung both say that combating domestic child labour cannot be done in isolation.
“You are talking about the vicious circle of poverty—the child can’t get an education, grows up without skills, can’t earn a better livelihood and is again the victim of exploitation, abuse and poverty,” says Gurung.
Both experts advocate making child protecting a national priority, including the provision of psychological counseling, rescue and rehabilitation services, education and vocational training via a nationwide programme.
“We are talking about the most productive sector of our society,” Gurung said in reference to children, adding that ignoring the problem now will “cost the country dearly” in the future.
Such offers are hard to resist: though Nepal has made progress in poverty reduction, the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report for 2013 placed it at 157th out of 187 countries listed.
According to the National Living Standard Survey 2010-2011 more than 30 percent of Nepalis live on less than 14 dollars per month.
About 80 percent of Nepalis, like Reema’s family, live in rural areas and depend on subsistence farming. Young children are expected to help their parents with farming and household chores.
Roughly half the children under five years of age in Nepal’s remote rural belt are malnourished, while their communities lack basic services like primary healthcare, education and safe drinking water.
The custom of plucking children from their villages gained traction with the rapid industrialisation of the 1990s, when the growth of the middle class coupled with internal migration during the People’s War years(1996-2006) fuelled demand for cheap labour.
Children quickly filled the gap left by women abandoning their traditional roles as homemakers in search of paid work, and took on all the domestic duties from cooking, scrubbing and washing clothes to caring for infants and the infirm.
Now, according to Plan International and World Education’s rapid assessment, there are as many child domestic workers in urban centres (62,579) as in rural areas (61,471).
Child rights activists say one of the biggest challenges is the widespread social perception that child labour is not necessarily a bad thing.
“There’s an understanding that children have to work so that they learn the ‘value’ of labour,” Nita Gurung, programme manager of the state-run Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB), told IPS.
As a result, enforcing laws that prohibit child domestic labour is not easy.
People see young children labouring in the homes of their “neighbours, relatives and friends” and accept this as a normal part of life, says Danee Luhar, a child protection officer with the Nepal country office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“There is a need to break through that perception so that society renders domestic child labour unacceptable,” he told IPS.
Nepal has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour and ILO Convention 138 on minimum age for admission to employment.
These international accords were translated into national laws via Nepal’s 2007 Interim Constitution and are enshrined in the 1992 Children’s Act, the 2000 Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, and the 2002 Bonded Labour Prohibition Act.
However, the creation of national and international legislation without an accompanying increase in the capacity to enforce them has led to confusion about which government agency is implementing which laws in cases of domestic child labour.
At present, 10 labour inspectors are charged with overseeing the entire country and its population of 30.49 million people.
These inspectors only cover formal sectors like mining, tourism and cigarette and carpet manufacturing; it is still unclear who is responsible for the rescue and rehabilitation of child labourers in informal settings, like private homes.
“It is extremely problematic because in cases of abuse and exploitation there’s first a confusion about who is in charge, and what law or act to interpret,” says UNICEF’s Luhar.
When Reema escaped her employers, for instance, she was taken to a safe house and a case was filed on her behalf at the government’s labour office.
Later, at the insistence of authorities, the perpetrators paid Reema cash compensation in the amount of 210 dollars, and signed a legal document agreeing to release her.
Reema is now safely back in her village but has yet to see the money, and her case at the labour office is pending.
“On paper there are regulations to make the perpetrators accountable but that is rarely done, and protection of victims is still not a priority,” child advocate Kamal Guragain told IPS.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Slavery Still Exists - Lisa Kristine - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/slavery-still-exists/262847/#.UGTI_aY_TP0.wordpress
Source: The Atlantic
SEP 26 2012, 1:10 PM ET
- Lisa Kristine is a California-based photographer. Her personal website is LisaKristine.com.
Lisa Kristine
Around the world human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence. Trapped by phony debt, these slaves are hunted by local police and private security guards if they try to escape.
Sometimes slaves don't even understand that they're enslaved, despite people working 16 or 17 hours a day with no pay. They're simply used to it as something they've been doing their whole lives. Their bodies grow weak and vulnerable to disease, but they have nothing to compare their experience to.
For the last 28 years I have documented people in more than 100 countries on six continents. In 2009, at the Vancouver Peace Summit, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery; weeks later, I flew down to Los Angeles and met with the director of Free the Slaves; thus began my journey into exploring modern-day slavery.
Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.
Accra, Ghana: These gold miners have just come out of the shaft, their pants soaked from their own sweat. Most had spent all their money coming from the north hoping to strike it rich in legal mines. But legal operations require certifications. When they can't get a job, the men take high-interest loans or join groups of slaves in mines abandoned by legitimate operations.
Accra, Ghana: 200 feet underground, a man labors in an illegal gold mine. He and others enslaved like him are underground for as long as 72 hours at a time.
Accra, Ghana: Many of those enslaved had children with them while panning for gold, wading in waters poisoned by mercury that is used in the extraction process.
Kathmandu, Nepal: For this photo, I was escorted by women who had previously been enslaved themselves. They brought me down a narrow set of stairs leading to a green fluorescent-lit basement. This wasn't a brothel as such; it was a "cabin restaurants," as they are known in the trade -- venues for forced prostitution. Each has a small private room where slaves, some as young as seven, entertain and serve the clients, encouraging them to buy alcohol and food. These cubicles are small, dark, and dingy, each identified with a number painted on the wall, and partitioned by plywood and a curtain. The workers here often endure sexual abuse at the hands of the customers. Standing in the near darkness, I realized there was only one way out -- the stairs where I came in: no back doors, no windows large enough to climb through, no escape at all.
Kathmandu, Nepal: A worker blends in with the bricks at a Nepalese kiln. Workers mechanically stack 18 bricks at a time, each weighing four pounds, and carry them to nearby trucks for 18 hours a day without any payment or compensation.
Lake Volta, Ghana: Fhanaian NGOs estimate that between 4,000 and 10,000 trafficked children are enslaved on Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world. At first glance this image appears to be a family fishing in the lake, two older brothers and some kids. I was alarmed to learn that they were actually enslaved, working in plain sight. These children have been lost to their parents and are forced to work endless hours in boats on the lake, though they're unable to swim.
Lake Volta, Ghana: Child workers usually work from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. on cold, windy nights to reel in nets weighing as much as 1,000 pounds when they are full of fish. Skeletal tree limbs submerged in Lake Volta frequently entangle the fishing nets, and and slave masters will throw weary, frightened children into the water to free the trapped lines, sometimes drowning them. I didn't meet one child who didn't know another who had drowned.
Lake Volta, Ghana: There are triumphs, too. Meet Kofi, a young boy who was rescued from slavery in a fishing village. I met Khofi at a shelter where Free the Slaves rehabilitate victims of slavery. He was bathing at the well, pouring big buckets of water over his head. Thanks to the efforts of organizations like Free the Slaves, today Kofi has been reunited with his parents, who were provided tools to make a living and to keep their children safe from human traffickers.
In the Himalayas I found children hauling stone for miles down steep mountain terrain to trucks waiting at the road below. These huge sheets of slate were heavier than the children themselves. The kids hoisted them with their heads using handmade harnesses made from sticks, rope, and torn cloth.
Uttar Pradesh, India: In India I visited a village where whole families were enslaved in the silk industry. This is a family portrait. The father (hands in black) and his sons (hands in red and blue) are held captive in a "silk dyeing house." The dye they work with is toxic. It's common for entire families to be enslaved for generations. My translator told me their story. "We have no freedom," they said. "But we hope, some day, we will be able to leave this house and make dyes in a place where we actually get paid for it."
Uttar Pradesh, India: Slaveholders burned down these people's villages after they declared their freedom. Many of the neighbors wanted to give up, they were so frightened -- but the woman in the center encouraged them to persevere. Abolitionists helped them get a quarry lease of their own. Now they do the same backbreaking work, but they at least get paid for it, and they do it in freedom.
Source: The Atlantic
SEP 26 2012, 1:10 PM ET
- Lisa Kristine is a California-based photographer. Her personal website is LisaKristine.com.
Photographs of human trafficking and enslavement around the world
Lisa Kristine
It was 130 degrees when I was first introduced to the brick kilns of Nepal. In these severe temperatures, men, women, and children -- whole families, in fact -- were surrounded by a dense cloud of dust while mechanically stacking bricks on their heads, carrying them, 18 at a time, from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.
These are slaves. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they worked without speaking, repeating the same task 16 hours a day. They took no rest for food or water, no bathroom breaks -- although their dehydration suppressed their need to urinate.
Around the world human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence. Trapped by phony debt, these slaves are hunted by local police and private security guards if they try to escape.
Sometimes slaves don't even understand that they're enslaved, despite people working 16 or 17 hours a day with no pay. They're simply used to it as something they've been doing their whole lives. Their bodies grow weak and vulnerable to disease, but they have nothing to compare their experience to.
For the last 28 years I have documented people in more than 100 countries on six continents. In 2009, at the Vancouver Peace Summit, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery; weeks later, I flew down to Los Angeles and met with the director of Free the Slaves; thus began my journey into exploring modern-day slavery.
Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.
These are not images of "problems." They're images of people. There are 27 million slaves in the world today: That's more than double the number of people taken from Africa during the entire transatlantic slave trade. A hundred and fifty years ago, an average agricultural slave cost over three times the average yearly wage of an American worker, about US$50,000 in today's money. Yet now, entire families can be enslaved for generations over a debt as small as $18. Slavery is illegal everywhere, but it exists all over the world.
Accra, Ghana: These gold miners have just come out of the shaft, their pants soaked from their own sweat. Most had spent all their money coming from the north hoping to strike it rich in legal mines. But legal operations require certifications. When they can't get a job, the men take high-interest loans or join groups of slaves in mines abandoned by legitimate operations.Accra, Ghana: 200 feet underground, a man labors in an illegal gold mine. He and others enslaved like him are underground for as long as 72 hours at a time.Accra, Ghana: Many of those enslaved had children with them while panning for gold, wading in waters poisoned by mercury that is used in the extraction process.Kathmandu, Nepal: For this photo, I was escorted by women who had previously been enslaved themselves. They brought me down a narrow set of stairs leading to a green fluorescent-lit basement. This wasn't a brothel as such; it was a "cabin restaurants," as they are known in the trade -- venues for forced prostitution. Each has a small private room where slaves, some as young as seven, entertain and serve the clients, encouraging them to buy alcohol and food. These cubicles are small, dark, and dingy, each identified with a number painted on the wall, and partitioned by plywood and a curtain. The workers here often endure sexual abuse at the hands of the customers. Standing in the near darkness, I realized there was only one way out -- the stairs where I came in: no back doors, no windows large enough to climb through, no escape at all.Kathmandu, Nepal: A worker blends in with the bricks at a Nepalese kiln. Workers mechanically stack 18 bricks at a time, each weighing four pounds, and carry them to nearby trucks for 18 hours a day without any payment or compensation.Lake Volta, Ghana: Fhanaian NGOs estimate that between 4,000 and 10,000 trafficked children are enslaved on Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world. At first glance this image appears to be a family fishing in the lake, two older brothers and some kids. I was alarmed to learn that they were actually enslaved, working in plain sight. These children have been lost to their parents and are forced to work endless hours in boats on the lake, though they're unable to swim.Lake Volta, Ghana: Child workers usually work from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. on cold, windy nights to reel in nets weighing as much as 1,000 pounds when they are full of fish. Skeletal tree limbs submerged in Lake Volta frequently entangle the fishing nets, and and slave masters will throw weary, frightened children into the water to free the trapped lines, sometimes drowning them. I didn't meet one child who didn't know another who had drowned.Lake Volta, Ghana: There are triumphs, too. Meet Kofi, a young boy who was rescued from slavery in a fishing village. I met Khofi at a shelter where Free the Slaves rehabilitate victims of slavery. He was bathing at the well, pouring big buckets of water over his head. Thanks to the efforts of organizations like Free the Slaves, today Kofi has been reunited with his parents, who were provided tools to make a living and to keep their children safe from human traffickers.In the Himalayas I found children hauling stone for miles down steep mountain terrain to trucks waiting at the road below. These huge sheets of slate were heavier than the children themselves. The kids hoisted them with their heads using handmade harnesses made from sticks, rope, and torn cloth.Uttar Pradesh, India: In India I visited a village where whole families were enslaved in the silk industry. This is a family portrait. The father (hands in black) and his sons (hands in red and blue) are held captive in a "silk dyeing house." The dye they work with is toxic. It's common for entire families to be enslaved for generations. My translator told me their story. "We have no freedom," they said. "But we hope, some day, we will be able to leave this house and make dyes in a place where we actually get paid for it."Uttar Pradesh, India: Slaveholders burned down these people's villages after they declared their freedom. Many of the neighbors wanted to give up, they were so frightened -- but the woman in the center encouraged them to persevere. Abolitionists helped them get a quarry lease of their own. Now they do the same backbreaking work, but they at least get paid for it, and they do it in freedom.Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Himalayan Times - Govt positive to declare year against human trafficking: PM - Detail News
http://thehimalayantimes.com/rssReference.php?headline=+Govt+positive+to+declare+year+against+human+trafficking%3A+PM&NewsID=349427
Source: The Himalayan Times
2012-10-02
Source: The Himalayan Times
2012-10-02
KATHMANDU: Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai has expressed the commitment to announce 2013 'the Year against Human Trafficking' to combat trafficking of women and children.
Addressing a workshop organised here on Tuesday by Sancharika Samuha and Forum of Women, Law and Development (FWLD) on 'Announcing a year against human trafficking', Prime Minister Dr Bhattarai assured that he would take special initiative to take action against those involved in human trafficking.
The announcement of the year is important; he said adding that the year would be announced by making necessary study to that end.
Recalling that the government took initiative to combat gender-based violence by declaring 2010 as the year against violence against women, Prime Minister Dr Bhattarai said trafficking in humans would not be resolved for long without the socio-economic development of the country.
Recalling that the government took initiative to combat gender-based violence by declaring 2010 as the year against violence against women, Prime Minister Dr Bhattarai said trafficking in humans would not be resolved for long without the socio-economic development of the country.
On the occasion, Charimaya Tamang from Shakti Samuha handed over signatures collected in an effort to pressurise the government to declare the year against human trafficking.
Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare Badri Neupane said human trafficking is a crime against humanity and shared that the government had made arrangement of accommodating women survivors in rehabilitation centres.
Maiti Nepal Chairperson Anuradha Koirala said that it was quite disappointing that Nepalis were involved in trafficking their fellow country men and women, voicing concern that the government has been apathetic towards the day-to-day victims of human trafficking.
Former lawmaker Sapana Pradhan said the Year against gender-based violence was successful and stressed the need to announce the Year against human trafficking.
Also speaking on the occasion were Sancharika Samuha Chairperson Nirmala Sharma, advocate Sabin Shrestha and others.
Also speaking on the occasion were Sancharika Samuha Chairperson Nirmala Sharma, advocate Sabin Shrestha and others.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Nepalese dying to work
Nepalese dying to work:
Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) – Twenty-one-year-old Ramila Syangden weeps uncontrollably as she clutches her 10-month-old baby. She sits and watches as the pyre where her husband’s body will be cremated is set alight in the open Nepalese air.
Syangden never considered one of the potential consequences of her husband’s decision to work abroad. Now she can’t ignore it.
Hours before the Buddhist cremation ceremony she watched the coffin, with her husband’s body inside, arrive on a flight from Saudi Arabia where he had worked.
The paperwork says the 36-year old committed suicide there. Not a single person gathered for the cremation ceremony believes it.
“I don’t think so. He said he would go abroad, see the place, earn as much as he could for the children and come back. I think somebody killed him,“ his wife said.
She may never know exactly what happened to him. But the family says he had every reason to live. He was a retired police officer collecting a pension. He was healthy and he’d been working in Saudi Arabia for less than a month without any complaints.
“When my son went I thought that he would earn money for the family but his dead body came back instead,” his father, Sonam Singh Bomjang, said.
He can’t believe his son died this way, especially considering he survived being shot by Maoists while serving as a Nepali police officer.
The family's story is not at all unusual. Nepal is one of the poorest countries on earth. With little work available, an estimated 1,300 Nepalese citizens go abroad for work every single day. But every day some return in coffins.
“On an average per day, two to three coffins are coming back to Nepal mostly from the Gulf countries,” said sociologist Ganesh Gurung, a member of Nepal’s government task force for foreign labor reform.
The official reason for the deaths vary, but once the bodies make it to Nepal the cause of death is rarely if ever investigated further.
Gurung says Nepalese workers attracted by good money abroad often face awful problems. The most common complaint: workers do not get what they were promised. But the complaints can be far worse, particularly for women who work as maids in homes.
“They have experienced physical exploitation, sexual exploitation, and we have received many girls coming back with children from their employers,” Gurung said.
We met one such maid. Not even her own family knows the pain she has suffered. Kumari is seven months pregnant and said the baby inside her is a product of rape. The father, she says, is her former employer in Kuwait.
For a year-and-a-half Kumari said she was paid the equivalent of $144 a month but then the pay stopped and the beatings started.
“My landlord would beat me, they (he and his wife) both would beat me. My body would ache. I bore that beating for a long time but stayed,” she said in tears.
Then one day, she said, the beating came with something else; rape.
She said the landlord came home when the rest of the family was out, and called her into the bathroom while she was folding clothes in another room. When she refused he came to her.
“He beat me up. First he covered my mouth so I could not scream. After he did that (raped me) I asked for my passport. He wouldn’t give it to me,” she said her voice breaking.
So she fled to the Nepalese Embassy in Kuwait with no passport. She says she spent weeks in Nepalese custody and found herself with dozens of other Nepali women.
Some were pregnant like her, others had babies, and still others were one their own - but they all wanted to escape employment there.
The 35-year-old divorced mother of two now lives in a shelter in Nepal with other maids recovering from abuse abroad. When we asked what she planned to do with the baby on the way she said: “I wanted to get rid of this baby, (abort it), but they told me that was not possible because my life would be endangered.”
She was several months pregnant when she finally made it back to Nepal. “Now the baby is going to be born. I am not going to keep it,” she said.
For more than 10 years, Nepal banned women from traveling to Gulf countries for work after the suicide of a Nepalese maid who complained of abuse in Kuwait.
But the need to survive surpassed fear and women did it illegally. The government lifted the ban in 2010.
Now the lines for foreign work visas are as long as ever, even as the stories of despair keep coming home.
Human labor is Nepal’s largest export. The workers usually sign two or three-year contracts to work for employers abroad. The money Nepalese workers send back to their families from outside the country accounts for nearly 25% of Nepal’s gross domestic product.
It is big business in Nepal, officially second only to agriculture. And some labor experts argue remittances from abroad are actually the biggest contributor to the country’s economy because it is nearly impossible to tally all the cash that makes its way back into the country.
At a training facility in the capital, Masino Tamang is going abroad for the second time to find work even after he says he endured backbreaking work the first time.
He was promised a job as a driver, but when he arrived in Malaysia the job was making and lifting heavy furniture.
Still Tamang plans to try again. This time he is getting training and going through a professional agency.
“I am not going because I want to. People have money problems. If I stay home I will not be able to earn anything,” he said.
Some do make a relatively decent living but all say they work very hard. The government has now mandated any citizen going to work abroad must attend an orientation course.
Private companies such as SOS Manpower offer skills training and safety training to villagers who will be working on buildings on a scale they have never seen before. Many of the workers come from mountain villages where the only skyscraper is the Himalayan mountains.
But nothing can prepare these men for the searing desert heat in the countries where they will work. The heat has often been suspected in worker deaths.
For those using illegal means to get work abroad, the living conditions can be so horrid and unsanitary it makes workers sick.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai told CNN he is well aware of the many problems Nepal’s workers are facing abroad. He told us the government has been making changes to try to protect its workers.
“We have instructed our missions in those countries to take the issue seriously, but the main problem still is as long as we can’t provide jobs within our own country they are forced to migrate. They use illegal channels and when they go there illegally then they don’t have legal protection,” he said.
Bhattarai has a plan to bring more jobs to his country but concedes it could take years to see the fruits of that plan.
Far too late for the men and women who returned emotionally scarred, or even in a box, for simply trying to create a better life for themselves.
Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) – Twenty-one-year-old Ramila Syangden weeps uncontrollably as she clutches her 10-month-old baby. She sits and watches as the pyre where her husband’s body will be cremated is set alight in the open Nepalese air.
Syangden never considered one of the potential consequences of her husband’s decision to work abroad. Now she can’t ignore it.
Hours before the Buddhist cremation ceremony she watched the coffin, with her husband’s body inside, arrive on a flight from Saudi Arabia where he had worked.
The paperwork says the 36-year old committed suicide there. Not a single person gathered for the cremation ceremony believes it.
“I don’t think so. He said he would go abroad, see the place, earn as much as he could for the children and come back. I think somebody killed him,“ his wife said.
She may never know exactly what happened to him. But the family says he had every reason to live. He was a retired police officer collecting a pension. He was healthy and he’d been working in Saudi Arabia for less than a month without any complaints.
“When my son went I thought that he would earn money for the family but his dead body came back instead,” his father, Sonam Singh Bomjang, said.
He can’t believe his son died this way, especially considering he survived being shot by Maoists while serving as a Nepali police officer.
The family's story is not at all unusual. Nepal is one of the poorest countries on earth. With little work available, an estimated 1,300 Nepalese citizens go abroad for work every single day. But every day some return in coffins.
“On an average per day, two to three coffins are coming back to Nepal mostly from the Gulf countries,” said sociologist Ganesh Gurung, a member of Nepal’s government task force for foreign labor reform.
The official reason for the deaths vary, but once the bodies make it to Nepal the cause of death is rarely if ever investigated further.
Gurung says Nepalese workers attracted by good money abroad often face awful problems. The most common complaint: workers do not get what they were promised. But the complaints can be far worse, particularly for women who work as maids in homes.
“They have experienced physical exploitation, sexual exploitation, and we have received many girls coming back with children from their employers,” Gurung said.
We met one such maid. Not even her own family knows the pain she has suffered. Kumari is seven months pregnant and said the baby inside her is a product of rape. The father, she says, is her former employer in Kuwait.
For a year-and-a-half Kumari said she was paid the equivalent of $144 a month but then the pay stopped and the beatings started.
“My landlord would beat me, they (he and his wife) both would beat me. My body would ache. I bore that beating for a long time but stayed,” she said in tears.
Then one day, she said, the beating came with something else; rape.
She said the landlord came home when the rest of the family was out, and called her into the bathroom while she was folding clothes in another room. When she refused he came to her.
“He beat me up. First he covered my mouth so I could not scream. After he did that (raped me) I asked for my passport. He wouldn’t give it to me,” she said her voice breaking.
So she fled to the Nepalese Embassy in Kuwait with no passport. She says she spent weeks in Nepalese custody and found herself with dozens of other Nepali women.
Some were pregnant like her, others had babies, and still others were one their own - but they all wanted to escape employment there.
The 35-year-old divorced mother of two now lives in a shelter in Nepal with other maids recovering from abuse abroad. When we asked what she planned to do with the baby on the way she said: “I wanted to get rid of this baby, (abort it), but they told me that was not possible because my life would be endangered.”
She was several months pregnant when she finally made it back to Nepal. “Now the baby is going to be born. I am not going to keep it,” she said.
For more than 10 years, Nepal banned women from traveling to Gulf countries for work after the suicide of a Nepalese maid who complained of abuse in Kuwait.
But the need to survive surpassed fear and women did it illegally. The government lifted the ban in 2010.
Now the lines for foreign work visas are as long as ever, even as the stories of despair keep coming home.
Human labor is Nepal’s largest export. The workers usually sign two or three-year contracts to work for employers abroad. The money Nepalese workers send back to their families from outside the country accounts for nearly 25% of Nepal’s gross domestic product.
It is big business in Nepal, officially second only to agriculture. And some labor experts argue remittances from abroad are actually the biggest contributor to the country’s economy because it is nearly impossible to tally all the cash that makes its way back into the country.
At a training facility in the capital, Masino Tamang is going abroad for the second time to find work even after he says he endured backbreaking work the first time.
He was promised a job as a driver, but when he arrived in Malaysia the job was making and lifting heavy furniture.
Still Tamang plans to try again. This time he is getting training and going through a professional agency.
“I am not going because I want to. People have money problems. If I stay home I will not be able to earn anything,” he said.
Some do make a relatively decent living but all say they work very hard. The government has now mandated any citizen going to work abroad must attend an orientation course.
Private companies such as SOS Manpower offer skills training and safety training to villagers who will be working on buildings on a scale they have never seen before. Many of the workers come from mountain villages where the only skyscraper is the Himalayan mountains.
But nothing can prepare these men for the searing desert heat in the countries where they will work. The heat has often been suspected in worker deaths.
For those using illegal means to get work abroad, the living conditions can be so horrid and unsanitary it makes workers sick.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai told CNN he is well aware of the many problems Nepal’s workers are facing abroad. He told us the government has been making changes to try to protect its workers.
“We have instructed our missions in those countries to take the issue seriously, but the main problem still is as long as we can’t provide jobs within our own country they are forced to migrate. They use illegal channels and when they go there illegally then they don’t have legal protection,” he said.
Bhattarai has a plan to bring more jobs to his country but concedes it could take years to see the fruits of that plan.
Far too late for the men and women who returned emotionally scarred, or even in a box, for simply trying to create a better life for themselves.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Cashing in on Nepal’s youth — RT
http://rt.com/news/orphanage-child-trafficking-nepal-761/
SOURCE:RT
3 March, 2012
[VIEW REPORT:]
http://on.rt.com/dvax6v
SOURCE:RT
3 March, 2012
[VIEW REPORT:]
http://on.rt.com/dvax6v
Child trafficking is rife in Nepal, with many unregistered orphanages in the capital, Kathmandu, housing thousands of trafficked children. The thriving market for illegal adoption has turned the practice into a highly lucrative business.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Nepal's lost circus children - People & Power - Al Jazeera English
| Source: Al Jazeera |
An investigation into the trafficking of Nepalese children to work in Indian circuses
People and Power Last Modified: 06 Sep 2011 14:27
In the border district of Hetauda, in southern Nepal, child trafficking is rife and the lack of border controls makes India an easy destination. For decades, Nepali children, mostly girls, have been sought by Indian circuses for their fair skin and beauty.
Often sold to traffickers by their parents, the children are enticed with stories of beautiful new clothes, a glamorous and exciting life, the chance of an education and a regular wage. Children, sometimes as young as five years old, have been taken and, in some cases, never seen again. Sold for as little as 1,000 rupees ($13), the families rarely receive the promised wage. Once in the circuses, these children often live in squalor and are never allowed to leave the circus compound. They are routinely beaten in order to teach them the difficult and dangerous tricks, and sexual abuse is commonplace. In effect, these children have been totally at the mercy of circus management who treat them as they please.*
In 2002, this scandal was exposed by a Nepalese children's charity, the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation (EBMF), which runs a children's refuge in Kathmandu. With police support, the EBMF started carrying out surprise raids on circuses to rescue these highly vulnerable and at risk children.
To date more than 300 Nepalese children have been rescued by the EBMF and, where possible, returned to their families. Those at risk of being re-trafficked or whose families are too poor to support them are given a place to live at the trusts' refuge in Kathmandu.
The refuge is run by Shailaja CM and is home to 122 children, half of whom are from circuses. Shailaja heads the rescue operations and also tracks down the Nepalese traffickers who sell the children to the circuses. Many of these traffickers are now serving long jail sentences.
Through this relentless work, conditions in circuses are improving. But there are thought to be more than 100 circuses operating in India and only 12 of these are registered with the Indian Circus Federation - a non-governmental body that ensure standards and good practice. This lack of regulation makes circuses extremely difficult to monitor, and it is thought that there could be between 1,000 and 2,000 children working inside circuses today.
Some of the bigger Indian circuses are suspected of having links with other businesses, such as gambling and gun running. As a result they can hold great power within the states where they operate, even on a political level, and have been known to collude with local government officials to organise their protection in the case of a rescue operation.
Their wealth and power have made it very difficult for Shailaja and the EBMF team to take any action against them. In the past, on attempted rescue operations in some of these larger circuses, they have been faced with guns and received death threats.
But in April 2011, an amendment was made to the Juvenile Justice Act, making it strictly illegal for anybody under the age of 18 to work or train within circuses. With this amendment in place, the EBMF is now planning a new phase of raids that will target these larger, more powerful circuses first.
This film follows Shailaja and the EBMF team on their first rescue operation since this amendment was passed. They set off from Nepal to raid a large circus operating in the state of Uttarakhand in northern India which is suspected of using child performers, but as filmmaker Sky Neal finds out there is still a very long way to go before child labour and trafficking into Indian circuses is brought to an end.
* This statement does not apply to all circuses in India.
People & Power can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Wednesday: 2230; Thursday: 0930; Friday: 0330; Saturday: 1630; Sunday: 2230; Monday: 0930. Click here for more on People & Power. |
Sunday, August 14, 2011
TPF: Lost Daughters – An ongoing tragedy in Nepal
Title: Lost Daughters – An ongoing tragedy in Nepal
Source: Women News Network - WNN
URL Source: http://womennewsnetwork.net/2008/12/05/lostdaughternepal808/
Published: Dec 5, 2008
Author: KAMALA SARUP & ANZIA
Post Date: 2008-12-17 22:55:41 by Robin
Keywords: None
Views: 4356
KAMALA SARUP, Nepal Correspondent with LYS ANZIA - Women News Network - WNN
This desperate mother traveled from her village in Nepal to Mumbai, India, hoping to find and rescue her teenage daughter who was trafficked into an Indian brothel. Nepalese girls are prized for their fair skin and are lured with promises of a “good” job and the chance to improve their lives. “I will stay in Mumbai,” said the mother, “Until I find my daughter or die. I am not leaving here without her.” Image: Kay Chernush US State Department
WNN Nepal - “In recent years, millions of women and girls have been trafficked across borders and within countries. The global trafficking industry generates an estimated five to seven billion U.S. dollars each year, more than the profits generated by the arms and narcotics trades,” quotes a Feb 2001, Asia Foundation and Horizons Project Population Council report.
In the late 17th century, the brothel area of Kamathipura was first established to service British troops in what was then called Bombay, India. In 2004, the cost to buy a sex-trafficked girl from Nepal in what is now called Mumbai, has risen to 100,000 - 120,000 Indian rupees (approx $2,004 - 2,405 USD). Girls trafficked from Nepal are known as a “tsukris.” They are those who have been indentured (forced) to work under a “never ending” contract commonly found with human trafficking.
The industry in the trafficking of Nepali girls is a very lucrative business. It can include forced labor, domestic and factory work. Young girls who are teenagers are often used in the sex-trafficking industries, though, because of the extreme profit for traffickers and the very low incidence of law enforcement arrests against sex-industry racketeers.
Arresting the traffickers can be very tricky. In rural Nepal this is a constant challenge as adequate police enforcement is often non-existent. Seen only as an investment to brothel owners, trafficked girls, in addition to cooperating in the daily sex-servicing of clients, are used by the brothel owners as “virgins,” as owners attempt to sell a girl’s virginity over and over again. This insidious crime can be found throughout the back alleys of Mumbai today.
So, why are most brothel owners interested much more in owning girls from Nepal versus girls from India?
The answer is obvious. Sex sells and girls from villages like Ichowk, Mahankal and Talmarang in the Sindhupalchowk district in northern central Nepal are full of girls who are more than anxious for a better life.
Besides this, Nepalese girls are cheaper to buy, much more cooperative and much easier to control and enslave. Girls from the rural regions are known to be much more obedient and considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them. Nepali girls coming from the rural farming areas, because of their naïveté, are much more easy to cheat and to force into debt bondage. This is because they have very little, if any, education and they usually do not speak any of the native languages of India.
“Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.
In an unending cycle of degradation, Nepali girls are forced each and every day into the sex-trades. And most often face vast cultural and gender discrimination if they return home.
In April 21, 2008, WNN correspondent, Kamala Sarup, organized a program on HIV/AIDS and Trafficking in the district of Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. Here she shares a first hand story about the sex-trafficking in Nepal:
Tamang used to come to Kathmandu at our house every year. He was a part-time tailor and full-time farmer who used to work in Kathmandu to make extra money to take home each year. He was a very poor man. When I saw him the first time he told me he wanted to send his daughter, Tara, to school. I felt very kind toward him, so I gave him a small room to stay at our big family home in Kathmandu. But my parents did not like my decision and our community criticized me because of his poverty and standing. This year, Tamang did not come to Kathmandu, so I went to see him and his family in his village.
According to The Asia Foundation, a human rights advocacy group for women, many Nepali communities “recognize the role of social and economic hardships in vulnerability to trafficking. They also blame the immoral character of the trafficked girl herself. Girls who seek independence, want exposure to the world outside.”
While girls are faced with desperate prospects in trying to “improve” their lives, they are many times “tempted by the prospect of gaining material benefits and are perceived as bad and more likely to be trafficked,” continued The Asia Foundation.
The daughter of Tamang was lost. But for Tamang, it’s not a new incident, because the loss of girls in Nepal is quite common in Sindhupalchowk. (Sindhupalchowk is a district of the Central Development Region of Nepal in the Bagmati Zone, 75 KM from Kathmandu).
80% of Nepal’s population lives in rural areas. It is a peopled by a majority of youth. The average age in Nepal is only 20. According to 2007 statistics from the UNDP - the United Nations Development Programme, Sindhupalchok district has a total population of 305,857. Literacy there is 46.5%. Infant mortality is 48 per 1,000 births. Child mortality is 61 per 1,000. It is an area wracked with very extreme poverty.
The forced prostitution of teenage girls in Sindhupalchok is a ongoing hideous crime of deceit, deception and broken promises. In many rural areas, some girls leave home due to domestic violence and other personal problems. But there also exists many cases of missing girls who have left home purely in an attempt to better their life or to provide for family obligations.
Many sex-traffickers take advantage of these conditions as they falsely encourage girls to leave home.
Often these daughters are persuaded to travel with people who offer marriage and a better life, jobs or money. Many times, they and their parents are also promised education in the large cities of neighboring India. While this is not often the case, some parents who are suffering under severe economic hardship are also known to deceive their daughters as they sell them to traffickers.
“Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by threat or use of violence, abduction, force, fraud, deception or coercion (including the abuse of authority), or debt bondage, for the purpose of placing or holding such person, whether for pay or not, in forced labor or slavery-like practices, in a community other than the one in which such person lived at the time of the original act described,” said Sri Lankan attorney and UN Special Rapporteur on Violence, Radhika Coomaraswamy, at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Watching Tamang enter his house after his day’s work he consoled his wife, Sunita, as their worry about Tara mounted. These are the moments when Tamang should be sharing his pleasures and pains with his wife. He loves Sunita very deeply. He remembered well how he had sung love songs while going to the market in his youth with Sunita. But now, how can he console his wife? Tara was missing and there was no one who knew where she had gone.Tamang tries to control his hesitating and worried mind. He lights a leaf-wrapped cigarette letting his mind burn along with the dark stick of cigarette. “This life just goes on burning just like a cigarette!” he sighed in dismay.
Because most sex-trafficking in rural Nepal is often made through personal contacts and arrangements, up-to-date detailed accurate documentation and data of girls who have been forced into the global sex-industry in this region is still greatly lacking. Tragically, many missing girls from Nepal disappear deep into the brothel system of India without a trace. As time passes, they are often sold again and again, to one owner after another, only to settle deep into the degradation of life trapped as a young prostitute.
In 2007, the Interim Government of Nepal upheld sanctions against all human trafficking in Nepal.
THE INTERIM CONSTITUTION OF NEPAL, 2063 (2007)29. Right Against Exploitation
(1) Every person shall have the right against exploitation.
(2) No person shall be exploited in the name of custom, tradition and practice,
or in any other way
(3) No person shall be subjected to human trafficking, slavery or bonded labour.
(4) No person shall be subject to forced labour.
The top destination for most Nepalese girls is to Mumbai brothels. Other common destinations for run-away girls leaving Nepal include the cities of Pune, Delhi and Kolkata, India. Calcutta, too, is an area where trafficking is a lucrative business. Areas outside of India include cities in numerous locations in the Middle East / Asia regions.
Tamang’s wife, Sunita, cast a quick glance towards Tamang. It was then he felt overwhelmed with love.“What can you do now by crying?” he said to his wife. “Instead, let’s leave this village and go far away, tomorrow right away! Could it be that our daughter went to Kathmandu?”
Girls who are victims of sex-trafficking in Nepal often come from the very poorest regions of Nepal. Without education or opportunity they often live with their families on the poorest outcast edge of society. Often food may be scarce or clean water unavailable. Missing girls can be as young as 8 or 9, but are most often 14 - 18 yrs of age. They often come from the very lowest caste in Nepali society, where hardship is the norm, although current trends in trafficking are showing higher-caste girls who are also being bought and sold by traffickers.
For the last decade it has been estimated that 6,000 - 7,000 girls are trafficked out of Nepal each year. But these numbers have recently risen substantially. Current numbers for girls trafficked out of the country are now 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. This is compounded as the US Central Intelligence Agency states that most trafficked girls are currently worth, in their span as a sex-worker, approx $250,000 (USD) on the sex-trades market.
2005 data from case records documented by six rehabilitation centers in Nepal of sex-trafficked women show that most (72.7%) rural girls who are trafficked are Hindu by religion. 59.9% are unmarried. 46.5% are 16-18 yrs of age and 77.2% have none to little education.
Tamang wanted to speak but he felt an unbearable pain in his heart. He thought it not at all proper to cry in front of his wife.“I had suggested that we should get Tara married in time,” said Sunita. “You heard my words in one ear and let it go through another ear. Now, who knows, someone could have taken her away and sold her!”Tamang’s heart was broken in two as his wife spoke. He felt as if someone had smeared his burning chest in salt and red chilies.
The odds for a girl to escape her life in the brothels, once she is there, is very slim. Only a dismal percentage (6.9%) of brothel owners will voluntarily release one of their girls. 73.7% of all girls trapped inside the brothel system must be rescued if they are ever to reach the outside world again.
Maiti Nepal, a 20 yr old rescue organization,based in Kathmandu, is one of the organizations that today manages ongoing rescue of Nepali girls from the brothels of Mumbai. Going up against organized crime in India is not an easy matter though. “The criminal elements that ‘deliver’ young girls are a ruthless enemy and have political connections at the highest levels in India and Nepal. Maiti Nepal’s main office in Kathmandu has been destroyed twice and Maiti workers must travel with a bodyguard when overseeing rescue missions in India,” said the sister organization of Maiti Nepal, called Friends of Nepal.
As Tamang got up abruptly he thought of the young man, Harka, who grew up in his village. In fact, he had heard rumors from time to time about the intimate relation of his daughter with Harka. Maybe his daughter was taken away by him. “Harka is not a good man. I don’t trust him,” thought Tamang. “He was under police custody for seven days when he was involved in a squabble in the village.”
Most sex-trafficking (59.4%) in Nepal is carried out through “Dalals” or brokers who falsely guarantee good work to girl-children who are willing to travel to other country locations. At times, the some Dalals even pretend to marry girls who come from families with little resources, as they sell them in the brothels. The real tragedy is that most, if not all, trafficking victims fall into forced prostitution because of false promises made by someone “familiar” to them.
“It is estimated that 50 percent of Nepalese sex workers in Mumbai brothels are HIV positive,” says a World Bank 2004 report. The youngest victims of sex-trafficking are those most likely to be directly exposed to HIV/AIDS. There is an “increased risk among those trafficked prior to age 15 years,” says a 2007 JAMA - American Medical Association report.
Coming home with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis causes most trafficked girls to suffer intense judgement. Often Nepal society blames the victims of sex-trafficking, not the traffickers, for choosing a “life of immorality.”
Tamang couldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night. On one hand, he was extremely worried at the thought of his missing daughter. On the other hand, his wife didn’t allow him to fall asleep because of her nightlong weeping. Seeing his own cold bed he was angry and disgusted. “What is the use of such a life which is full of so many wants?” he said. Even if Tamang worked hard through the year, he could not afford sufficient food for the family nor could he spend more than a few rupees in front of his friends and relatives. And now, on top of it all his daughter, Tara, is lost.
On top of the discrimination thrown at them for being “sex-workers” many trafficked girls also end up dealing with rejection by others because they have HIV/AIDS. In 2007, JAMA outlined statistics that prove a direct rise in HIV/AIDS cases in the youngest section of girls trafficked from Nepal. These girls are usually 9 to 14 yrs of age. “Within this high-risk group, risk for HIV was increased among girls trafficked at 14 years or younger (60.6% HIV-positive) to those trafficked to Mumbai (49.6% HIV positive) and to those reporting longer duration in brothels,” the JAMA report states.
These problems are wrapped deep inside the structure of Nepal and Indian society as a whole. Girls and women in Nepal are usually only given status according to the economic and social standing of their fathers and/or brothers. A majority of Nepali women are expected to live according to ”traditional” Nepali standards that leaves little opportunity to build any self-esteem.
According to JAMA, “Sexuality is a taboo in Nepal; discussing sex and sexuality is beyond the social morality,” states a FWLD - Forum for Women Law and Development (Kathmandu) report. “Sex work is considered ‘deviant’ behavior and is unacceptable (in Nepal). As a result, sex workers retain highly marginalized status in the society.”
- Young women used in prostitution wait for customer/exploiters in Mumbai’s red light district. They face routine violence from pimps and customers and a wide range of diseases and adverse health effects — from sexually-transmitted diseases and tuberculosis, to rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and murder. Image: Kay Chernush US Department of State
Drug use, too, among girls who have been in the brothels for extended periods of time causes many problems as these girls are returned home to families and home communities. Girls who have received no assistance with drug rehab often try to return to their life in the brothels because of their intense addiction.
“Injection drug use appears to be extensive in Nepal and to overlap with commercial sex. Another important factor is the high number of sex workers who migrate or are trafficked to Mumbai, India to work, thereby increasing HIV prevalence in the sex workers’ network in Nepal more rapidly,” says World Bank Asia (2008).
Predominant drugs abused by trafficked girls working in Mumbai brothels includes cough syrup, cannabis, heroin and propoxyphene (Darvon), along with alcohol and mild tranquilizers. Addiction in the brothels is common among the young prostitutes there.
The next morning as Tamang walked slowly on the street of his village, he went to talk to his good friend, Murali. Many years ago, there was a severe famine in the village and Tamang’s field had no yield. It was Murali who proved himself and gave Tamang 48 lbs of corn and 32 lbs of rice for the season. It was Murali who didn’t accept any repayment of the loan. Tamang had never forgotten such generosity.As Tamang walked the village street he saw a crowd had gathered as a rising noise came from a stream of people. Tamang was startled. He had seen this kind of crowd and uproar only once before at the time of the election in Nepal. What kind of unexpected calamity had fallen in the village? Tamang headed straight toward the house of Murali.
The average stay for most girls in a brothel is not short. Brothel stays for girls who have been rescued average 12 - 36 months inside the brothel system. Unfortunately, those who cannot be rescued are trapped for many more additional years. Even with current ongoing attempts to rescue girls by rescue agencies, countless girls fall desperately through the cracks.
At the border between Nepal and India rescue agencies attempt to inspect cars for young girls who appear to be trafficked. But even with this, girls and traffickers do make it through. These car searches and border interviews are usually done without the assistance of police or Nepal government agencies.
As Tamang walked closer to Murali’s home people began shouting. Then, through a break in the crowd Tamang saw his friend, Murali’s daughter laying on the ground. Her dead body was on the edge of the street. She was filled with death. Had died of HIV/AIDS and someone had thrown her body there.“The poor soul!” cried an old woman in desperation from the street. “Who was the one who killed this girl at such a young age?” she asked. “She never spoke a bad word to anybody. Such a good girl who has now become a victim of such an evil fate!”
“The high rates of HIV infection seen among these survivors of trafficking, indicates a need for greater attention from the public health community to this population and to prevention of this violent gender-based crime and human rights violation,” said the 2007 JAMA report.
“In Mumbai and Pune, for example, 54% and 49% of sex workers, respectively, were found to be HIV-positive (NACO, 2005). A large proportion of women with HIV appear to have acquired the virus from regular partners who were infected during paid sex. HIV prevention efforts targeted at sex workers are being implemented in India. However, the context of sex work is complex and enforcement of outdated laws often act as a barrier against effective HIV prevention and treatment efforts. Indeed, condom use is limited especially when commercial encounters take place in ‘risky’ locations with low police tolerance for this activity.”
“Controlling trafficking has been compounded by the conflict of the last ten years,” said Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, Executive Chairperson of Samanata Institute for Social and Gender Equality in Kathmandu in a September 2008 interview with photo-journalist Mikel Dunham. “The communities (in Nepal) became poorer and some of them had no recourse but to try to find a means for a livelihood. During and after the conflict, there was a lot of displacement, a lot of women came to the urban centers, and most were not equipped to get into jobs. They were not educated–no skills. So a lot of them became ‘dancers’, you know? So now, it’s like a phenomenon. Every town you go to, you have all these dance bars. It’s just a front for brothels,” Dr. Deuba added.
On the grisly sight of Marali’s daughter Tamang thought of his own his daughter and wife. He thought of the conditions of his family, of his life, his home. He was paralyzed with grief. He fell over the body of the young girl and started crying. Now we have to live a pathetic life here,” he said. “We are in Sindhupalchowk, as thousands of young girls who are living in the rural areas are the victims of trafficking!”
The 1999 “Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation” states that over 200,000 Nepali girls exist to supply the world as sex “products” for sale. Along with India, China, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other regions, many nations have also been areas that receive and use Nepali girls in the sex-trafficking and porn industries. In 1999, the city of Hong Kong was the second largest destination for trafficked girls from Nepal.
Along the 1,740 mile border between Nepal and India, smuggling a girl is still very easy today.
The district of Sindupalchow is not the only district guilty of smuggling girls. The rural districts of Makwanpur, Dhading and Khavre are also very involved in the ongoing trafficking of girls in sex-exploitation.
“The government has made stringent laws, but again, the problem is enforcement. Most of the traffickers are very rich. They buy the lawyers. They have money to hire top-class lawyers. They may be even paying bribes to come out of it. And the other thing we have noticed is that most of the women who are trafficked are poor. So even if they come back and they file a case, eventually, they’re pressured by their family, who are paid off by the traffickers to keep quiet. And the legal system in Nepal takes forever for a case to be resolved. That has been one problem… When the traffickers are caught, very few are brought to justice,” continued Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, as she outlined the ongoing problems of enforcement against trafficking in Nepal.
http://youtu.be/h1beOGLfqxA
In an emmy award winning film, Executive Director of Apneaap Women Worldwide, Ruchira Gupta, goes inside the brothels of Mubai to show the degradation of girls who have been trafficked from Nepal to serve in India’s sex-industry. This is a 8:57 min film excerpt.
For more information on sex-trafficking in Nepal link to:
Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation - College of Arts and Sciences, University of Rhode Island and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Norway
Fallen Angels - photo essay by Thomas L. Kelley
Trafficking and Human Rights in Nepal: Community Perceptions and Policy and Program Response, 2001 - Horizons, Population Council & The Asia Foundation
Litigation, Girl Trafficking in Nepal - INTS 4945 Human Rights Advocacy Clinic, Jennifer Aengst, 2001
Interim Constitution of Nepal 2063 (2007) - UNDP, United Nations Development Programme
HIV Prevalence and Prediction in Nepalese Sex-Trafficked Girls - JAMA, American Medical Association, 2007
Sources for this article include: Friends of UNDP - United Nations Development Programme, Maiti Nepal, CIPA - Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, FWLD - Forum for Women Law and Development (Kathmandu), UNDP - United Nations Development Programme, The Asia Foundation, US Department of State, JAMA - American Medical Association, University of Denver - Human Rights Advocacy Center, UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The World Bank - HIV/AIDS South Asia Report, Nepal Branch of Statistics Offices - Central Bureau of Statistics, photographer, Mikel Dunham, WILPF - Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Human Rights Watch, Opportunities and Choices Reproductive Health Research Program, Southhampton, UK, 1996-2001 and Terre des hommes Foundation - Kathmandu.
WNN correspondent, Kamala Sarup, specializes in reporting and writing stories on peace and anti-war issues, women, democracy and development. Some of her other publications include: Women’s Empowerment in South Asia, Nepal; Prevention of Trafficking in Women Through Media; Efforts to Prevent Trafficking for Media Activism.
2007 Pushcart Prize nominee, humanitarian journalist and award winning playwright, Lys Anzia, is founding director for Women News Network - WNN. Lys is strongly dedicated to bringing issues of global women’s equality and human rights to the public through the use of media.
©Women News Network - WNN 2008
Source: the-peoples-forum.com
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