Logout
Welcome
Edit News Article
Title
*
Select Subject
Working Conditions
Wages
Construction workers
Bonded labourers
Welfare schemes
Social security
Unorganised sector workers
Minority communities
Id cards for migrant workers
Trafficking
Slum dwellers
Seasonal workers
Contract system of labour
Employment
Child labour
Children of migrant workers
Trade union
Migrants Crisis
Demonetisation
None
Description
The border came and went before the realisation dawned. This wasn't Kathmandu, where Phulsani Tamang thought she was coming to earn a better life. This was India and life was looking far from rosy. The 12-year-old hadn't told her parents she was entrusting her future to a man she'd met at a village celebration. He'd promised her an office job. She just wanted to help support her family. With her sweet, soft tones and pink bow hair clip you'd swear Tamang - now 19 - was a shy tween. She picks at her French polish nails as she tells of the police raid, the eight months in a transit home and the long road to refashioning her life. For the past four years she's lived in the rehabilitation home of child protection organisation Maiti Nepal, a vast brick complex hiding behind a high wall in the Kathmandu suburbs. Shelter supervisor Rajni Gurung has seen 11-year-olds that pass for 19, pumped with growth hormones to speed their entry into the sex business. She's seen rescued girls who can barely walk. Many, once home, are shunned by their communities as objects of shame. Tamang was lucky - she got out before she was raped and now works as a hairdresser in an uptown salon. Child trafficking is not a new issue - Maiti Nepal just celebrated its 24th birthday. But the devastating 2015 earthquake has deepened the problem. Much of the worst impact was in already poor - and poorly educated - marginalised communities. Damaged rural schools were closed so parents wanted to send their children to Kathmandu for education. Families whose homes have been destroyed are desperate for cash and vulnerable children have been left alone or at risk. Part of the problem, says Unicef's Nepal head of child protection, Virginia Perez, is that trafficking takes so many shapes. The most common is taking girls - either forcefully or on promise of good jobs - to India to work in brothels. But increasingly there's also internal trafficking for child labour to work in brick kilns or carpet factories. Some go willingly, to avoid domestic violence at home. Others are sold out by family members. A Sun newspaper investigation found Nepalese children were being sent to Britain as domestic slaves. There's also unnecessary institutionalisation. The quake dust had barely settled before a Christian organisation sent out vans "rescuing" vulnerable children - persuading parents they would have better prospects in a dingy Kathmandu care home. When Unicef explained they could have home support instead, the parents hired a bus to reclaim them on masse. "We tend to think that trafficking happens because families are poor, and that's definitely a factor," Perez says. "But it's not only about poverty and ignorance and being affected by an earthquake. It's all these elements put together." Unicef has worked with the government to tighten paperwork and border controls, which have intercepted more than 1800 people - mostly women and children - since the earthquake. They're also identifying and intensively supporting vulnerable families, but that's a costly business. KEPT 'LIKE A PRISONER' Charimaya Tamang was neither poor nor ignorant when she was snatched from a forest 20 years ago, while collecting fodder for her cattle. For the founder of anti-trafficking organisation Shakti Samuha the experience is so raw she still sobs every time she tells it. She was 16. There were four men. They drugged her to get her across the border then put her in a cage. She resisted. Tried to commit suicide, but failed. She was gang raped, beaten and made to have sex with clients. "The brothel was like prisoner life. We just have to do these physical things even though our body is not prepared for it. Always we feel like a dead body." A 1996 mass raid on Mumbai netted 500 girls, more than half Nepalese. The doctors treated them like lepers, pulling on four pairs of gloves and refusing to look at them. Nepal didn't want them back. By the time they returned only 128 remained. Since then Tamang has made it her life's work to prevent trafficking and help victims become advocates. Shakti Samuha sent social workers to the worst-affected quake districts to raise awareness of trafficking risks. They spoke to girls like 14-year-old Sushmita Pulami Magar in Gorkha. Her father died eight years ago, her mother abandoned her to remarry and her 19-year-old brother is often away working for trekking companies. "This girl often stays alone at home," says Unicef child protection worker Shyam Raj Ghimire. "She is in the most vulnerable condition. She might be trafficked. She might be put into labour. She might be abused by someone." Sushmita would not go as she knows the risks. But plenty do. Kathmandu's shady entertainment industry has become a trafficking transit zone, says Bijar Lama, programme co-ordinator for female workers' rights organisation Biswas Nepal. Young women get sucked into the drink, the drugs, the lifestyle and become vulnerable to then being sent overseas. "Entertainment" encompasses dance and karaoke bars, massage parlours and cabin restaurants - rooms divided into roofless compartments where customers take their hostesses. The dance bars we visited in touristy Thamel were more tragic than explicitly sexual. But it's there for the asking - when Lama asked at a dance bar for two 16 or 17-year-old girls for an overnight stay, he was told it could be arranged. Biswas Nepal founder Tara Bhandari became a bartender to pay for her political science studies. She didn't do sexual favours but, at 2500 rupees ($34) a month, she did rely on tips. Customers were abusive, police beat them up in raids, but there was no comeback because the job was not recognised as respectable work. She worried her family would find out what she was doing. "There were lots of sexual abuse incidents," Bhandari says. "Too many to count. Verbally and also physically. Mental distress. You work in fear." There's always a demand for young blood, so more children always need to be recruited. The earthquake provided an opportunity to increase supply. But it also reduced demand. The border blockade with India, following ethnic protests about the new constitution, caused such a crippling shortage of fuel and cooking gas that many restaurants were unable to operate. Many women and children were suddenly out of work and looking for options, opening the door to international trafficking, Lama says. But raids are no use, he says. Their families will reject them and they'll only end up back where they started. During the earthquake aftermath, a 17-year-old entertainment worker they'd been working with slit her wrists in the street. He called her parents. They said let her die. There's general agreement that controls need to be strengthened on Nepal's 1850km of free border with India. And awareness still needs to be improved. But it's not enough to say don't be trafficked, Lama says. You have to give girls something else to do. "Every family has to think about this," says Maiti Nepal's Rajni Gurung. "Every family has to think every girl child is my daughter."
Keywords
Trafficking, girl child, child trafficking, marginalised communities, Kathmandu, child protection, earthquake
Upload Image
(only .gif or .jpeg files or .x-png files. Max upload size is 20MB)
Source
Display in both Policy and News
No
Yes
Enter Video url/Embed Code :
Url
Embedded Code
External Link URL
Status
Active
Inactive
Show On Home Page
Yes
No