Nepal Trafficking in Girls With Special Reference to Prostitution: A ...

A Rapid Assessment
Child
Family
Figure 3.5: Profit from Soft Trafficking
• Local
Broker
• Recruiter
• Transporter
False Love
Ritu’s aunt, a brothel owner, took her to
India for “employment” when she was just
fourteen. Not knowing what the “employment”
would be, her parents paid her transport
expenses. Now Ritu, 29, is re-established
in her community
In cases of soft trafficking, a girl is treated as a
family commodity, that is, as property that can be
bought and sold. The trafficker sells the girl at a large
profit. One of the respondents, Ritu, told us that she
was sent to Bombay with her parents’ consent and
that the trafficker sold her for Indian Rs. 50,000.
In general, it was found that girls were sold at
prices ranging from Indian Rs. 50,000 to 70,000,
(based on 15 court edicts). Once sold, they are owned
by the brothel owner until they can “pay back” the
amount paid for them. One re-established girl told us
that there is a system of contract agreements between
the brothel owner and the agents. However, the reasons
for and workings of such a contract agreement
system remains unclear. One possibility may be that
contract agreements are made on the basis of a girl’s
physical appearance and her age.
Notation: Direction of
movement:
Trafficker
Flow of
Profit:
3.6.4 Awareness and Deception
Destination
• Brothel
• Circus
• Other
A majority of the respondents reported that they
had been lured or coerced into trafficking and sexual
exploitation. Most said that they had been told only
part of the truth and that they only realized that they
were trafficked when landed at the brothel. Coercion,
deception and selling were the most common among
respondents who had been trafficked for urban employment
or through fake husbands and/or persons the
trafficked girls had trusted.
Whereas most were not aware of the nature of
the work, some were, however, aware of the large
amount of money that some of the girls had brought
back from India.
3.7 Trafficking in Nepal and International
Definitions
In Nepal, both historical and contemporary processes
of trafficking for sexual exploitation appear
complex and involve multiple mechanisms and multiple
actors. Apart from the two kinds of trafficking,
soft and hard trafficking outlined previously, no single
process emerges through which girls are trafficked
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