—SPIRIT ME AWAY—
A human trafficking crisis is underway in Nepal, leaving a trail of trauma and lost youth
NEPAL, 2019
Summary: Lack of human rights protections, earthquakes, gender inequality, illiteracy, poverty, unsafe migration and corruption have come together to create a perfect storm, culminating in a human trafficking crisis underway in this Himalayan country.
[Reporting for this story was supported by the KIM WALL Memorial Fund with the International Women’s Media Fund (IWMF)]
INTERNATIONAL TRAFFICKING ~ Into the unknown
The 1,758 km border between Nepal and India, through which hundreds of thousands of nationals from both countries cross without needing passports or visas, was already one of the busiest human trafficking gateways in the world. But since the 2015 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people and severely disrupted social and economic structures in Nepal, it has been in overdrive with thousands of Nepalese men, women and children vanishing, all too often never to return.
Before the earthquake, 10,000–15,000 persons (mostly women and children) were trafficked every year from Nepal to India for forced commercial sex and labour. However last year (2019), Indian Border Forces found that since 2013 human trafficking from Nepal to India rose by 500%. The explanation is believed to be the deadly earthquake. The compounded effects of lack of human rights protections, natural disaster, poverty, gender inequality, illiteracy and corruption thus created a perfect storm, culminating in a human trafficking crisis underway in Nepal. It is estimated that at least 20,000 women and children are now being trafficked every year.
Hoping for a job as domestic workers in a Gulf country, many end up being raped in brothels in Mumbai, New Delhi and overseas. The methods of trafficking are many: drugged and sold by strangers, duped by neighbours, sold sometimes, knowingly or not, by desperate family members or abusive husbands, lured by someone online, a marriage promise, a job opportunity or a role in a Bollywood movie just across the border.
US Attorney General Xavier Becerra provides a comprehensive explanation of what trafficking in humans is: “Human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons or modern-day slavery, is a crime that involves compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services, or to engage in commercial sex acts. The coercion can be subtle or overt, physical or psychological, and may involve the use of violence, threats, lies, or debt bondage. Exploitation of a minor for commercial sex is human trafficking, regardless of whether any form of force, fraud, or coercion was used. Human trafficking does not require travel or transportation of the victim across local, state, or international borders”.
But Nepal’s civil society is also trying to fight back: every day border monitors, some of whom are trafficking survivors themselves, try to intercept and rescue potential victims in border posts from being trafficked from Nepal across the border to India. Others raise their voices against the deep social stigma that pursues its victims in their communities in Nepal.
DOMESTIC TRAFFICKING ~ The danger within
However, and alarmingly, danger is also present at home. Many victims never get to cross the border. Women and girls are trafficked from rural areas to urban centres within Nepal under the promise of work. Instead they end up forced into sex work in the hundreds of singing restaurants and dance bars or massage parlors functioning as fronts for brothels in Kathmandu. According to Unicef Nepal an estimated 11,000 to 13,000 girls and women are working in the ‘night entertainment industry‘ in Kathmandu Valley alone, the majority of whom are underage. However, it is believed that existing data does not accurately represent the magnitude of the phenomenon and actual numbers are likely to be much higher since women and girls are coached to lie about their age and their situation to social workers in fear of reprisal by business owners and managers.
Research and reporting on human trafficking in the Nepalese context has mostly revolved around external trafficking, or human trafficking from Nepal to other countries. However, the 2015 earthquake brought a high increase in the much lesser known phenomena of trafficking within Nepal, from rural areas and particularly into the capital, Kathmandu. Because of this, Nepal was re-classified from being “a source and transit country to also being a destination country for human trafficking.
According to the Terre des Hommes’ “Handbook for Decision Makers” on “Trafficking and Exploitation in the Entertainment and Sex Industries in Nepal”, one of the most comprehensive reports made on internal trafficking and the entertainment industry in Nepal, which includes significant crossover with commercial sexual activity, “the majority of girls and women are recruited by peers — persons from their own village who are working in the entertainment industry. Most feel that at the time they were recruited, they were deceived about the nature of the job. [...] if these persons were children or if the recruitment of an adult resulted in prostitution, the recruiting peer and the employer are guilty of trafficking under both Nepal and international law”. Precise numbers of those trafficked internally are notoriously hard to determine as women and girls are coached to lie about their age and their situation to social workers in fear of reprisal by business owners and managers.
However, the local sex industry plays a bigger role in international trafficking than would be assumed. Sixty percent of female workers reported being approached by middlemen to go to India or overseas for work, lured by yet more promises. The result abroad is yet another round of exploitation: women and girls sold for commercial sex, and generally, men, women and children sold for forced labour and illegal organ harvesting in underground organ clinics of India, many disappearing never to be seen again.
The following images shine a light on the origins and the toll in Nepal of the thriving human trafficking business, worth $150 billion a year worldwide, where women and girls comprise 71% of all modern slavery victims, Nepal being one of its most lucrative motherlodes. From Nepal alone, at least 54 girls and women are trafficked every day to India.
At a time when the UN’s International Labour Organization warns that there are more than 40 million enslaved people worldwide and more than at any time in history, this is just a small fraction of the toll that this underground market in human beings has exacted on Nepal.