Human Trafficking in [Nepal Street Children in [Nepal] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Nepal] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st Century -
2000 to 2009
Nepal is a source country for men, women,
and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation
and involuntary servitude. Children are trafficked within the country and to
India and the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation or forced
marriage, as well as to India and within the country for involuntary
servitude as domestic servants, circus entertainers, factory workers, or
beggars. NGOs working on trafficking issues report an increase in both
transnational and domestic trafficking during the reporting period, although
a lack of reliable statistics makes the problem difficult to quantify. NGOs
estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Nepali women and girls are trafficked to India
annually, while 7,500 children are trafficked domestically for commercial
sexual exploitation. In many cases, relatives or acquaintances facilitated
the trafficking of women and young girls into sexual exploitation. - |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** NEPAL:CHILD LABOR Hard Reality www.iccle.org/050807.php www.mediaforfreedom.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=3055 An orphan from an early age, Madan Karki (name changed),14,
used to work at his uncle's small farm in Jeevanpur
of Dhading District, 50 kilometer west of capital. Madan's job was to take the cattle for grazing the whole
day. One day, a family friend approached him with offer for work at his home
in Kathmandu with a promise that he will be
admitted in a school. However, the man instead engaged
him at a carpet factory in Kathmandu. Working like
a bonded labor, Madan was forced to learn knotting
wool rugs on heavy wooden looms. His workdays started at 4 am in the morning
till 11 at night. The earthen floor of the factory was his bed. When the
owner obtained a rush order, he and the other boys would have to work
throughout the entire night. Despite his hard work, the owner always scolded
and physically abused him. After working in harsh conditions
for about eight months in the factory, Madan –who
was not paid - fled the factory to work as a helper in a gas tempo. Now, he
earns about Rs 1000 (approximately $15) a month. Madan's case is not a unique one as this is the reality
of many child workers in Nepal. Because Nepal's dependency on
child labor is so deeply entrenched, only half of the children are allowed to
complete the fifth grade of school. The ILO reports showed that. Children are
employed in eighteen different sectors like in brick kiln, coal mines, child
prostitution, mug house, leather processing industry, coal mine, stone
quarrying, match factory, house-hold helper, bonded labor, street children,
mine and carpet factory, drug trafficking, transport sector etc. About 1.4
million children are not provided the salary for their work and 1.27 million
children are working in worst forms of labor. Call
for Global Action to halt Nepalese women and girls trafficking The other alarming fact of course
is that Nepal has a unique cultural system known as "Deukis,"
whereby by rich zamindars (feudalistic agricultural
families) having no children through a legally married wife, procure these
young girls from poor rural Nepalese families and after initiating them into
the household through the temple rites are taken as mistresses cum slave
bonded laborers to produce offspring. Later on, as the girl gets to be over
30 years and grows older, she is forced into prostitution. There is no
respite to what the poor Nepalese girl has to suffer on in life once
initiated into this system. In 2007 according to a UN report, there werel nearly 30,000 deukis in
Nepal compared to 1992, when there were 17,000 deuki
girls according to Radhika Coomaraswamy
in the UN Special Report on Violence against Women. Why Nepal's freed labourers want to return to slavery "Between 15 and 20 percent of
the families declared free have returned to the same old practice of
slavery," says Dilli Chaudhary,
president of an NGO called Backward Society Education. Bonded labourers
in Nepal are called "kamaiyas" and belong
to the country's backward Tharu community. It is
sheer poverty that forces the poor to borrow rice and food from their
employers - generally big landlords - and get trapped in slavery. Under the practice, once indebted,
the labourer and his heirs are 'bonded' to the
landlord. They had to actually reside on the landlord's property until the
debt was completely repaid, which seldom happened. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - The government has reported a range of estimates for the number of
child trafficking victims. Some 5,000 to 12,000 girls may be trafficked
for commercial sexual exploitation annually, and as many as 200,000
trafficked Nepalese girls are estimated to reside in Indian brothels. Girls as young as 9 years old have been trafficked.
In 2001, a local NGO recorded 265 cases of girl trafficking victims, of which
34 percent were below 16 years of age.
While trafficking of children often leads to their sexual
exploitation, there is also demand for trafficked boys and girls to work in
the informal labor sector Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - Maoists abducted teenagers and some
younger children to serve as porters, runners, cooks, and armed cadre. Most
children abducted from their schools for political education sessions were
returned home within a few days, but some remained with the Maoists, either
voluntarily or under compulsion. The Maoists denied recruiting children. In
September the RNA estimated that 30 percent of Maoist guerillas were under
the age of 18, and some were as young as 10. TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
– Local NGOs combating
trafficking estimated that 25 thousand to 200 thousand women and girls were
lured or abducted annually into Hundreds of women and girls
returned voluntarily or were rescued and repatriated to the country annually
after having worked as commercial sex workers in Traffickers were usually from the
country or Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2005 [53] Given the significant number
of Nepalese children who are adopted by foreigners and in the context of the
current armed conflict in the State party, the Committee is concerned at the
lack of a clear policy and appropriate legislation on inter-country adoption,
which result in various practices, such as trafficking and smuggling of
babies. The Committee is particularly concerned about the absence of due
judicial process, including technical assessment of capacity of the parents
or guardians, in cases involving termination of the parental responsibility.
The Committee also expresses concern regarding the practice of the so-called
informal adoption, which may entail exploitation of children as domestic
servants. [95] The Committee takes note of
the various efforts undertaken by the State party to combat child trafficking
and welcomes the information that police officers are Nepalese
man sues KBR on human trafficking charges news.smh.com.au/world/nepalese-man-sues-kbr-on-human-trafficking-charges-20080828-44j7.html
A Nepalese man and relatives of 12
of his slain comrades filed a lawsuit in federal court against the
construction and services giant KBR on charges of human trafficking, for
allegedly tricking the men into working in Seven
Nepalese held for human trafficking to India The women, who had been sold to a
brothel in Kolkota last year, managed to escape
from Dharamtala area where they were locked up for
three days, the police said. Stop
AIDS, halt trafficking in Nepalese women The first known case of AIDS in
Nepal was in 1986 and in the period 1996-2006, the 10 year period of the
Nepalese civil conflict, a total of 200,000 to 250,000 Nepalese young girls
aged 12-29 were either sold or illegally exchanged for cash in various Indian
cities by women traffickers. Call
for Global Action to halt Nepalese women and girls trafficking The other alarming fact of course
is that Nepal has a unique cultural system known as "Deukis,"
whereby by rich zamindars (feudalistic agricultural
families) having no children through a legally married wife, procure these
young girls from poor rural Nepalese families and after initiating them into
the household through the temple rites are taken as mistresses cum slave
bonded laborers to produce offspring. Later on, as the girl gets to be over
30 years and grows older, she is forced into prostitution. There is no
respite to what the poor Nepalese girl has to suffer on in life once initiated
into this system. In 2007 according to a UN report, there werel
nearly 30,000 deukis in Nepal compared to 1992,
when there were 17,000 deuki girls according to Radhika Coomaraswamy in the UN
Special Report on Violence against Women. Govt to set up 3 rehabs for
trafficking victims www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=129247 "We have cases in which
children are trafficked to Human
trafficking helps spread HIV/AIDS in Asia: UN "Trafficking ... contributes
to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of
trafficked persons to infection," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin,
HIV/AIDS regional coordinator, Asia and Pacific, for the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP). "Both human trafficking and HIV
greatly threaten human development and security." Major human trafficking routes run
between Nepal and India and
between Thailand and neighbors like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the
victims are young teenage girls who end up in prostitution. "The link between human trafficking
and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently," Wiesen-Antin told the International Congress on AIDS in
Asia and the Pacific. NEPAL:CHILD LABOR Hard Reality www.iccle.org/050807.php www.mediaforfreedom.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=3055 An orphan from an early age, Madan Karki (name changed),14,
used to work at his uncle's small farm in Jeevanpur
of Dhading District, 50 kilometer west of capital. Madan's job was to take the cattle for grazing the whole
day. One day, a family friend approached him with offer for work at his home
in Kathmandu with a promise that he will be
admitted in a school. However, the man instead engaged
him at a carpet factory in Kathmandu. Working like
a bonded labor, Madan was forced to learn knotting
wool rugs on heavy wooden looms. His workdays started at 4 am in the morning
till 11 at night. The earthen floor of the factory was his bed. When the
owner obtained a rush order, he and the other boys would have to work
throughout the entire night. Despite his hard work, the owner always scolded
and physically abused him. After working in harsh conditions
for about eight months in the factory, Madan –who
was not paid - fled the factory to work as a helper in a gas tempo. Now, he
earns about Rs 1000 (approximately $15) a month. Madan's case is not a unique one as this is the reality
of many child workers in Nepal. Because Nepal's dependency on
child labor is so deeply entrenched, only half of the children are allowed to
complete the fifth grade of school. The ILO reports showed that. Children are
employed in eighteen different sectors like in brick kiln, coal mines, child
prostitution, mug house, leather processing industry, coal mine, stone
quarrying, match factory, house-hold helper, bonded labor, street children,
mine and carpet factory, drug trafficking, transport sector etc. About 1.4
million children are not provided the salary for their work and 1.27 million
children are working in worst forms of labor. NGOs Work
To Eradicate Human Trafficking, Help Victims U.S.-funded nongovernmental
organizations around the world are working to prevent human trafficking,
provide resources to victims and arrest and prosecute child-sex offenders.
From Africa to Europe to Asia, initiatives are raising worldwide awareness of
the illegal practice of human trafficking. PREVENTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING - Shakti
Samuaha in Nepal is the first NGO in the world
formed by trafficking survivors, and more than 120 survivors attended its
conference in March to commemorate International Women’s Day. Conference
participants focused on preventing human trafficking of vulnerable
populations, particularly adolescent girls, and providing rehabilitative
services for other trafficking survivors. Of Serious Concern www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=10333 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Incidents of human trafficking are
on the rise in the country despite the presence of a number of organisations, both in the private and government
sectors, and the powerful media that makes each incident of human trafficking
public. The latest case of human trafficking was revealed in Nepalgunj the other day when a suspected trafficker was
arrested while trying to traffic four boys and five girls across the border.
Thanks to Maiti Nepal, an NGO working for the
well-being of helpless girls, the police arrested the suspected trafficker.
Though there is no official record regarding the number of Nepalese girls
trafficked to Indian brothels, thousands of Nepalese girls are said to live
lives of untold misery in the Indian brothels. Action Plan Against Trafficking www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=9149 Although the government, law
enforcement agencies and social orgnisations have
been active in checking human trafficking, the unscrupulous brokers continue
to do the business taking advantage of legal and other loopholes. It is also
believed that there is a strong nexus between the brothel owners, brokers,
politicians and criminal gangs who aid in human trafficking. As a result,
checking and eliminating human trafficking have become a challenge. Update mechanism to check human trafficking www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=9055 Timely changes need to be made in
the existing national plan of action to combat human trafficking and trade of
human kind, participants at a national policy consultation workshop said
Sunday. Speaking at the workshop
jointly organised by the Ministry for Women,
Children and Social Welfare, Ministry for Local Development, WOREC Nepal and
Alliance working against the trafficking of women and children, participants
underscored the need to sign a extradition treaty to rescue the victims of
trafficking from the next country. Peace
Won't Stop Human Trafficking Men also are trafficked -- lured
to a centre by the prospect of a certain job and then kept in exploitative
work situations. The report estimates that 60
percent of trafficking from and within this South Asian nation is for sexual
purposes and 40 percent is to supply workers for labour,
such as toiling in garment factories. "Trafficking for various
purposes other than sexual ones still needs to be addressed
strategically...the lack of a definition has created confusion in formulating
acts, plans and policies" Human trafficking from www.madhuchandra.org/Women%20atroticities/Human%20trafficking%20from%20Nepal%20on%20rise.htm Trafficking of Nepalese women and
children into A large number of women and
children are being trafficked into India from checkpoints west of Butwal, representatives of several Indian and Nepalese
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and security officials stated during an
interaction on 'controlling cross-border human trafficking'. Prostitution
of Nepalese girls rampant in Indian brothel ''Young girls are trafficked from Women
Trafficking And Conflict "I got acquainted with a boy
who was 30 who said he loved me and promised to marry me. He convinced me to
go to Around
30 Percent Child Recruits In Maoist Army newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=65638 Around 30 percent of the "people's army" of Nepal's Maoist insurgents comprise child recruits, a US-based rights organization has said. This "pupils' army" militia, comprising boys and girls under 18, does not fight directly - it is used to carry weapons, supplies, gather information and even help lay booby traps, the New York-based Watchlist said in a report here. 17,000
Nepal Women Forced Into Prostitution In India According to the study, the investigators talked
personally to the Nepali women in the brothels of The Saving of Innocents - The Satya
Interview with Ruchira Gupta www.satyamag.com/jan05/gupta.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
An uncle or a family friend pays
the parent something like $30. There is the middleman in a packed city, the
border guard who takes a payoff, and the agent who takes the girls across the
border to the people who then transport them to Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 4 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Nepal's
children devastated by raging armed conflict Watchlist calls for immediate action to
stop the spectrum of violations against children in the context of armed
conflict, including killing, maiming, torture, rape and other forms of sexual
violence, attacks on schools, abduction, trafficking, forced labor, underage
recruitment into fighting forces, forced displacement, death and injury from
landmines, and others. Human Rights Overview - Nepal hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/nepal9821.htm VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION BASED
ON GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION - Gender-based violence—including domestic violence,
sexual assault, and trafficking into forced labor and forced
prostitution—remains pervasive and deeply entrenched in Nepal. Fighting
to stop trade in sex slaves Girls as young as 13 are taken
from villages and slum areas by traffickers - men, and sometimes women - who
lure them away with the promise of well-paid jobs in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, or in the big cities of India and the Gulf
states. But what actually awaits the girls
is a life of forced prostitution in these cities’ brothels. The girls don’t
know how to escape - they are mainly uneducated and extremely poor and too
ashamed to tell their families what they are doing. Even if they manage to escape or get
rescued from the brothels, their families and communities often refuse to
take them back because of the social stigma the girls now carry. Why Nepal's freed labourers want to return to slavery "Between 15 and 20 percent of
the families declared free have returned to the same old practice of
slavery," says Dilli Chaudhary,
president of an NGO called Backward Society Education. Bonded labourers
in Nepal are called "kamaiyas" and belong
to the country's backward Tharu community. It is
sheer poverty that forces the poor to borrow rice and food from their
employers - generally big landlords - and get trapped in slavery. Under the practice, once indebted,
the labourer and his heirs are 'bonded' to the
landlord. They had to actually reside on the landlord's property until the
debt was completely repaid, which seldom happened. Nepal
rebels plan to train 50,000 Child Soldiers This week, Nepal's Maoist rebels
announced plans to raise a militia of 50,000 children by April, amid reports
of mass abduction, even sexual abuse of kids, who they allegedly use as
cannon fodder. In the past six months, CWIN
recorded 2,866 cases of child labour exploitation,
child deaths and murder, missing children, violence, sexual abuse,
trafficking, forced prostitution, children affected by armed conflict and
children in conflict with the law. OXFAM in action - Nepal www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/where_we_work/nepal.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
STRENGTHENING WOMEN'S RIGHTS - Life is hard for most women in Between 5,000 and 12,000 Nepalese
girls are trafficked by organised gangs to work in
brothels each year. Only 27 per cent
of women are literate compared with 67 per cent of men. A Nepalese woman cannot apply for
a job, passport, or bank account without permission from her father or
husband. And with low female literacy rates, it is difficult for Nepali women
to use public courts to challenge abuse and discrimination. The alleged trafficking of three girls from Nepal www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/IRC/newsdesk_articles.asp?SCID=1562 The contents of this article had
appeared under a different title and may possibly still be accessible [here] The survey found that apart from Combating
Trafficking In Nepal Fourteen-year-old Urmila Tamang (name changed to
protect her privacy) is from a small village in Chitwan,
Nepal. A woman from a neighboring district approached Urmila’s
unsuspecting parents in 2002 with promises of a lucrative circus job for
their daughter in Varanasi, a city in northern
India. Ignorant about human trafficking, they sent Urmila
without enquiring further about the nature of the job. There, Urmila endured a year of labor exploitation and sexual
harassment as an acrobat and tight rope walker. Nepal's victims of human trafficking shy away from justice www.kurakani.tk/Article84.phtml At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Even though Take the example of Tirtha Rai (name changed), a
girl in her mid-20s from the district of Sindhupalchowk,
east of Kathmandu valley. She had been sold to a
brothel in India by her aunt. Similarly, Bhawana
Sharma (name changed), a teen-aged girl from Nuwakot,
a district west of Kathmandu, was lured by a
promise of marriage and taken to Pune in India,
where she was sold to a brothel. Labour migration and human trafficking
in Nepal us.oneworld.net/article/archive/6859 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] US blames turmoil for prostitution in Nepal in.news.yahoo.com/040616/43/2dnqb.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] The report holds the
eight-year-old Maoist insurgency responsible in many ways. The rebels
themselves are perpetrators, it says, abducting and forcibly conscripting
children. Since September 2003, the
insurgents have abducted about 950 children, the report says. In rural areas, insurgency
activities have led to the withdrawal of police, resulting in a remarkable
decrease in trafficking related investigations. The government, grappling with the rebels
on one hand and political parties on the other, has been unable to combat
trafficking. Since the dissolution of
parliament in 2002, no elections have been held. As a result, legislation that
would have cracked down on trafficking-related offences remains in limbo, the
report says. Nepal
police free child labourers Police in Nepal have rescued 14
children, forced to work as bonded labourers at a
weaving factory in the capital, Kathmandu. Police
said the children were working as wool spinners within the dark, cold rooms
of the secretly run factory. They said
the children, aged between 14 and 17, were treated inhumanely and were not
paid. Combating
Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia [PDF] [page 110]
With regard to trafficking for sexual exploitation, the Government of
Nepal has become increasingly concerned, particularly about the trafficking
of adolescent and young girls to India, where many of them end up in
brothels. In 1998 the Government therefore began work on a National Policy,
Action Plan and Institutional Mechanism to Combat Against Trafficking in
Women and Children for Commercial Sexual Exploitation. The National Action
Plan is broad-based, and includes proposed activities in the areas of (i) policy, research, and institutional development; (ii)
legislation and enforcement; (iii) awareness raising, advocacy, networking,
and social mobilization; (iv) health and education; (v) income and employment
generation; and (vi) rescue and reintegration. The UN Special Rapporteur
on Violence Against Women commended the Action Plan as both comprehensive and
well thought out, although she noted that more attention could be paid to the
prosecution and punishment of traffickers. The Enslavement of Dalit and Indigenous Communities [PDF] www.antislavery.org/homepage/resources/goonesekere.pdf At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
SUMMARY: - This paper describes the gross
and continuing violation of the rights of millions of people in Slaves To Lust www.freeachild.org/article2.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
She confides that, in reality, she
was sold by her friends, who tricked her into going to Mumbai. The madam paid
35,000 rupees ($750) for her, a sum that took her four and a half years to
repay. In India, prostitution is not illegal, so long as it is voluntary and
the girls are not underage. None the less, the police have been cracking down
on Nepalese underage girls. So the girls lie about everything – their age,
their nationality, their names. By the time Kanchi
had repaid her debt she had forgotten the traffickers. Falkland Road had
become her life and her home. She began to make money. She charges, she says,
35 to 50 rupees (75c-$1.10) a customer, out of which she pays rent for the
bed and the regular requisite bribes to the police. Not long ago, she went
back to Kathmandu in Nepal. She told her sisters
she was working in a hotel, washing dishes. “I’m the only one in my family
who’s gone to the bad,” she says. “I don’t like this life, but what can I do?
If I don’t do this, I die. What else is there to do?” Because she is
beautiful, many men have offered to marry her. But she is too canny for that.
“So many men try to seduce me. But I know they’ll just sell me back to the
brothel.” RAPE
FOR PROFIT - Trafficking of Nepali Girls and Women to India's Brothels INTRODUCTION - Trafficking victims in India
are subjected to conditions tantamount to slavery and to serious physical
abuse. Held in debt bondage for years at a time, they are raped and subjected
to other forms of torture, to severe beatings, exposure to AIDS, and
arbitrary imprisonment. Many are young women from remote hill villages and
poor border communities of Nepal who are lured from their villages by local
recruiters, relatives or neighbors promising jobs or marriage, and sold for
amounts as small as Nepali Rs.200 [$4.00] to brokers who deliver them to
brothel owners in India for anywhere from Rs.15,000 to Rs.40,000
[$500-$1,333]. This purchase price, plus interest (reported to be ten percent
of the total), becomes the "debt" that the women must work to pay
off -- a process that can stretch on indefinitely. Only the brothel owner
knows the terms of the debt, and most women have no idea how much they owe or
the terms for repayment. Brothels are tightly controlled, and the girls are
under constant surveillance. Escape is virtually impossible. Owners use
threats and severe beatings to keep inmates in line. In addition, women fear
capture by other brothel agents and arrest by the police if they are found on
the streets; some of these police are the brothel owner's best clients. Many
of the girls and women are brought to India as virgins; many return to Nepal
with the HIV virus. Tulasa and the Horrors of Child Prostitution - Sold And
Resold Body And Soul Tulasa was abducted from Thankut village in Bagmati
district near Kathmandu and then smuggled to Bombay
via Birganj 11 years ago. She was sold thrice, to
different brothel keepers in the city, for prices ranging from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 7,500.
Brutalized and ravaged, it was only when her tiny body simultaneously playing
host to three venereal diseases and three types of tuberculosis collapsed,
that her ordeal came to an end. Doctors salvaged whatever remained of her and
contacted her father who took her back to Nepal. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin,
"Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
Human Trafficking in [Nepal Street Children in [Nepal] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Nepal] [other countries]