Nepal: The selling of innocent children and women
Surya B. Prasai
February 10, 2008
Not many in the global audience might have watched the Selling of Innocents", an Emmy-award documentary film that depicts the sad story of Nepal´s young trafficked children. Ruchira Gupta not only manages to bring swelling tears to the eyes with the sad ordeals, she also focuses on why elimination of sexual exploitation is perhaps the only way to end this human rights violation on Nepal´s children. At a time when many legal voices are drawing on the ethical argument that children should be given all the time until age 16 to enjoy their childhood freedoms, Nepal, which had faced an internal civil conflict between 1986-2006, saw a big stream of its children, particularly in Western Nepal facing commercial exploitation through middle men, who took them not only to Indian circuses and households as bonded servants, but many ended up working in various Indian brothels in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore In the beginning of 2008, the number of Nepalese trafficked young girls( and young women included) to Indian cities was estimated to be anywhere between 180,000 to 250,000. According to Gupta, "It's a long haul, we've to change and challenge society. The trafficking and the trade are getting institutionalized; it's a modern form of sexual slavery".
According to some of Nepal´s top legal experts who have dealt with the issue extensively such as Dr. Shanta Thapaliya, Shambu Thapa (former Chairman of Nepal Bar Association), and Sapana Pradhan Malla a new generation representative among Nepalese women´s rights advocates, the Constitution of Nepal has guaranteed the right of equality to women including property and self-development rights; it has also accorded childhood freedoms since Nepal was one of the first countries to sign the Convention on the Rights of he Child, 1990. But in Nepal where women have long been discriminated upon but are known to contribute to nearly 60% of the country´s Gross Development Product, the issue of women trafficking is a relatively new phenomenon which has a short history starting only in the early eighties. First it started with a trickle of few hundred Nepalese women going to India for work as maid servants in upper rich class households, but soon the beauty, innocence, hard working nature, and total dedication to the women also brought in attraction of human smuggling profiteers. Soon Nepalese women were the center of focus in South Asia´s booming sex tourism and human trafficking business.
Sexual discrimination and problems against women are manifest in many ways in Nepal despite the constitutional guarantees. The age-old patriarchal value system social and cultural practice add to the discrimination affair. Nepalese men always have treated women as a commodity for a long-time. In fact, about half a decade back there was a Nepalese professional women´s club which went on an anti-Nepalese men bashing drive calling themselves Charitrahin Chelis (their motto was akin to ´we smoke, drink, squander our money on wine and don´t mind speaking against you snobbish Nepali male chauvinists´). The group too expressed its strong sentiments against the second-class citizen treatment given to women and the social, cultural, economic and political discrimination they had to face.
Before Nepal had its first taste of democracy under King Tribhuvan in 1951, the Rana Prime Ministers who ruled Nepal for nearly 104 years had a system where rural girl children were brought to cities for housework or midwife jobs. Even among those who were non-Ranas and pretty much enjoyed a feudal aristocratic life in Nepal, then a closed Kingdom full of mysteries, this pattern persisted until the early 1970s. Many rural peasant families considered it a great honor for their daughters to be serving there in higher class household, or other noble class families, even though they might just be mistresses or servants. This practice, in turn, lured the rural poor indigenous people to send their innocent girls far away from home to do the housework in return for higher wages and salaries instead of sticking around with their own families. Although the girls were treated quite fairly compared to the modern trafficking woes faced by Nepalese women, this process was also considered acute, chronically inhumane and barbarous by Westerners who visited Nepal and saw it unfold right in front of their eyes! Today nearly 10,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked to India every year, not for household purposes, that being the alibi, but to serve in India´s infamous flesh market. The Indian Government has already raised serious concerns about this trend, but then it involves closer monitoring of the traffickers.
In fact, the Nepal Government does have guarantees against the trafficking of women and young girls and even considers it a heinous crime. The government has signed most of the international statutes that deal with halting global trafficking of human beings particularly the UN, ILO and other abiding international treaties. The government recognizes too that this form of trafficking is slavery and serfdom, in short, another form of forced labor as during the Second World War. International donors have even put conditions on Nepal, since it is a party to various international legal instruments. Nepal does have an obligation to adopt necessary and effective measures to meet the objectives put forward in halting women and children´s trafficking. But the activity is being conducted by the middlemen who are not with government, but rather operate through cross-border private parties.
Trafficking of women and children to India and South Asia has fuelled in a very dangerous HIV/AIDS prevalence scenario in Nepal. Poverty is still the fundamental problem that underlies all trafficking in Nepal. Due to the prevailing poverty, most Nepalese girls are illiterate and easily lured by te tiny attractions of works, salaries, easy life, and promises of a foreign job.
According to various international non-governmental agencies working in the field of HIV/AIDS impact mitigation and halting Nepalese women´s trafficking, of those numbers who are already in India, only 7-11% involve themselves in domestic housework, 8% settle down through marriage and the remaining directly get placed in the commercial sex trade in greater Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. Despite the efforts of major INGOs and donor funded agencies to trace the actual numbers, it has been a beleaguering experience. Thus increasing HIV infection rates among young women is a matter of great concern both to India and Nepal, since it involves the sexually active 14 to 39 age group that gets infected. There are also other concerns such as women, particularly young Nepali women and girls, being made more vulnerable to infection by physiological and social factors resulting in the increased feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Asia. Thus, Nepali women and young girls are considered facing the number one threat from HIV/AIDS in the South Asian region at the moment. As the Nepali epidemic spreads, the link between trafficking and HIV will emerge with stronger links in future.
Many important meetings have been held throughout the Asia-Pacific region in the past decade to halt global human trafficking, where Nepal´s case is discussed with prime importance. Nepali legal experts, women activists, NGOs and organizations that have been in the forefront of the fight such as Maiti Nepal and Women´s Law Center however believe that the issue required more than just legal intervention. Since, it is a crime to traffic, the penalties should be similar to halting smuggling and other similar acts. Slowly the Nepalese government is realizing if it is to prevent cross-border crime against women and children, it will first have to adopt effective measures to halt it. These include witness and victim protection scheme, in-camera court trail and modern techniques of evidence collection of the crime. An effective extradition agreement between India and Nepal in dealing with women trafficking will also help curb the problem.
According to some of Nepal´s top legal experts who have dealt with the issue extensively such as Dr. Shanta Thapaliya, Shambu Thapa (former Chairman of Nepal Bar Association), and Sapana Pradhan Malla a new generation representative among Nepalese women´s rights advocates, the Constitution of Nepal has guaranteed the right of equality to women including property and self-development rights; it has also accorded childhood freedoms since Nepal was one of the first countries to sign the Convention on the Rights of he Child, 1990. But in Nepal where women have long been discriminated upon but are known to contribute to nearly 60% of the country´s Gross Development Product, the issue of women trafficking is a relatively new phenomenon which has a short history starting only in the early eighties. First it started with a trickle of few hundred Nepalese women going to India for work as maid servants in upper rich class households, but soon the beauty, innocence, hard working nature, and total dedication to the women also brought in attraction of human smuggling profiteers. Soon Nepalese women were the center of focus in South Asia´s booming sex tourism and human trafficking business.
Sexual discrimination and problems against women are manifest in many ways in Nepal despite the constitutional guarantees. The age-old patriarchal value system social and cultural practice add to the discrimination affair. Nepalese men always have treated women as a commodity for a long-time. In fact, about half a decade back there was a Nepalese professional women´s club which went on an anti-Nepalese men bashing drive calling themselves Charitrahin Chelis (their motto was akin to ´we smoke, drink, squander our money on wine and don´t mind speaking against you snobbish Nepali male chauvinists´). The group too expressed its strong sentiments against the second-class citizen treatment given to women and the social, cultural, economic and political discrimination they had to face.
Before Nepal had its first taste of democracy under King Tribhuvan in 1951, the Rana Prime Ministers who ruled Nepal for nearly 104 years had a system where rural girl children were brought to cities for housework or midwife jobs. Even among those who were non-Ranas and pretty much enjoyed a feudal aristocratic life in Nepal, then a closed Kingdom full of mysteries, this pattern persisted until the early 1970s. Many rural peasant families considered it a great honor for their daughters to be serving there in higher class household, or other noble class families, even though they might just be mistresses or servants. This practice, in turn, lured the rural poor indigenous people to send their innocent girls far away from home to do the housework in return for higher wages and salaries instead of sticking around with their own families. Although the girls were treated quite fairly compared to the modern trafficking woes faced by Nepalese women, this process was also considered acute, chronically inhumane and barbarous by Westerners who visited Nepal and saw it unfold right in front of their eyes! Today nearly 10,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked to India every year, not for household purposes, that being the alibi, but to serve in India´s infamous flesh market. The Indian Government has already raised serious concerns about this trend, but then it involves closer monitoring of the traffickers.
In fact, the Nepal Government does have guarantees against the trafficking of women and young girls and even considers it a heinous crime. The government has signed most of the international statutes that deal with halting global trafficking of human beings particularly the UN, ILO and other abiding international treaties. The government recognizes too that this form of trafficking is slavery and serfdom, in short, another form of forced labor as during the Second World War. International donors have even put conditions on Nepal, since it is a party to various international legal instruments. Nepal does have an obligation to adopt necessary and effective measures to meet the objectives put forward in halting women and children´s trafficking. But the activity is being conducted by the middlemen who are not with government, but rather operate through cross-border private parties.
Trafficking of women and children to India and South Asia has fuelled in a very dangerous HIV/AIDS prevalence scenario in Nepal. Poverty is still the fundamental problem that underlies all trafficking in Nepal. Due to the prevailing poverty, most Nepalese girls are illiterate and easily lured by te tiny attractions of works, salaries, easy life, and promises of a foreign job.
According to various international non-governmental agencies working in the field of HIV/AIDS impact mitigation and halting Nepalese women´s trafficking, of those numbers who are already in India, only 7-11% involve themselves in domestic housework, 8% settle down through marriage and the remaining directly get placed in the commercial sex trade in greater Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. Despite the efforts of major INGOs and donor funded agencies to trace the actual numbers, it has been a beleaguering experience. Thus increasing HIV infection rates among young women is a matter of great concern both to India and Nepal, since it involves the sexually active 14 to 39 age group that gets infected. There are also other concerns such as women, particularly young Nepali women and girls, being made more vulnerable to infection by physiological and social factors resulting in the increased feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Asia. Thus, Nepali women and young girls are considered facing the number one threat from HIV/AIDS in the South Asian region at the moment. As the Nepali epidemic spreads, the link between trafficking and HIV will emerge with stronger links in future.
Many important meetings have been held throughout the Asia-Pacific region in the past decade to halt global human trafficking, where Nepal´s case is discussed with prime importance. Nepali legal experts, women activists, NGOs and organizations that have been in the forefront of the fight such as Maiti Nepal and Women´s Law Center however believe that the issue required more than just legal intervention. Since, it is a crime to traffic, the penalties should be similar to halting smuggling and other similar acts. Slowly the Nepalese government is realizing if it is to prevent cross-border crime against women and children, it will first have to adopt effective measures to halt it. These include witness and victim protection scheme, in-camera court trail and modern techniques of evidence collection of the crime. An effective extradition agreement between India and Nepal in dealing with women trafficking will also help curb the problem.
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