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

A Rapid Assessment
“ In our Tamang ethnic group ghewa 1 is not for
the dead man but for the live one. Society hates the
family who is not able to conduct the ghewa appropriately.
So they even have to sell their house and land
for that. A lot of money has to be spent in ghewa and
when there is not enough money, there is a tendency
towards trafficking. So this is the relationship between
ghewa and trafficking,” says a VDC representative.
5.3.2 Gender and Social Discrimination
Gender discrimination starts in early childhood
and particularly affects girls. They are prevented from
achieving basic education and, after marriage, the
daughter-in-law has the least power and status in the
household.
Gender discrimination is widely cited as the
cause of trafficking in girl children. For example,
Bimala got married when she was fifteen, but three
years later she had still not borne a child. Her husband
kicked her out of the house and married another
girl, and Bimila’s own family harassed her for being
childless. Now she is engaged in prostitution.
In some countries the phenomenon of perceiving
marriage as a way to either increase the family
labour force or to send a girl off to work and send
back money, has been named commodification of girl
children. In cases of soft trafficking for sexual exploitation,
this seems to be an accurate term, as it is
the commercial market value of a girl, which makes
the family consent to the transaction.
In remote rural areas, the hierarchical caste system
is fundamentally exclusionary. Lower caste people
face economic exploitation, social discrimination and
high risk of sexual exploitation. One respondent, a
girl from the “untouchable” caste, reported that men
of higher castes forced her into prostitution. She was
told that it was her caste occupation. In other cases,
informants reported the effect on higher caste groups.
When local police arrest children engaged in prostitution
from Brahmin and Chhetri groups, they are
more likely to be physically tortured2 . One example
is the story told by Sita. Although Sita is from a
Chhetri family, she often identifies herself as an “untouchable”
to protect herself from physical police torture.
Once when a police officer in Nepalgunj learned
1 In the Tamang ethnic group, ghewa refers to a funeral ceremony
lasting to seven days.
2 Therefore, most sexually exploited children in our sample areas
would likely to report their caste as if they were from the ‘untouchable’
caste even if they were from another caste.
she was Chhetri, he scolded and bit her. She says, “ If
you say you are from a lower caste, they are not so
violent.”
5.4 Trafficking and Governance
The protection of criminals by political parties
is widely noted by our key informants in the sample
areas. It appears to be common knowledge that when
the criminals of trafficking are arrested, they are freed
through influential friends at the national level.
At the local level, few political parties have
programmes against girls trafficking. Social crimes
such as trafficking in girls are not often at the top of
the general assembly agenda of VDCs. Most of our
key informants complained that there is little political
commitment and that the political parties think
that raising such issues would reduce their vote bank.
“There is a network at village and country
level. The administrators who come to this
district, like the Chief District Officer and
DSP are transferred elsewhere within around
three months if they are against trafficking.
Political parties support this. People from all
parties are involved. If only two (trafficking)
brokers suffer, the vote will be ruined,” says
a social activist.
Within some localities, the interest and needs
differ from one community to another. This has also
led to minimal resource mobilization against social
crimes such as trafficking. It is often found that a VDC
chairman is from one community, largely from upper
Hindu castes, and that the trafficked survivor populations
are from another community, largely from downtrodden
communities. In such cases, the VDC chairperson
is less motivated to solve the problem of the
other community. Some key informants commented,
“As it is not his community, he does not understand
the problem well.”
Community Conflict
“It is not their people who are trafficked and
die due to HIV/AIDS. It is our own relatives,
daughters, daughters-in-law and sisters who
die. The VDC chairman is not cooperating
with us in controlling trafficking. We ask him
for money but he never hears us,” says a
social worker.
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