Combating Women & Girls Trafficking
Bilateral Talk Essential

By Khilendra Basnyat

TRAFFICKING of the Nepalese women and girls for prostitution has become a thriving business for some people in spite of the legal provision of imprisonment. In fact, news on trafficking arrests, release and rearrests have become everyday phenomenon in Nepal.

Today, corruption pervades everywhere in our country. The criminal justice system, which relates to police and local administration, is also not an exception in this regard. For this reason, the problem of trafficking in women and girls countinues.

According to a study carried out by UNICEF, everyday thirteen to fifteen Nepali girls are sold in India. The majority of girls have been found to be seven to fourteen years of age. Girls thus sold are forced to entertain a minimum of five to fifteen customers a day or else endure severe torture.

Likewise, another survey conducted by UNICEF reports that there may be two thousand and five hundred women engaged in flesh trade. However, they have been escaping from punishment.

In general, Nepali girls are sold in the prime Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Poona and are trafficked from Nepal through various transit points such as Kakarvitta, Sunauli, Jogbani, Chapakaiya (Birgunj), Bhadrapur, Koshi barrage, Pashupatinagar, Gaur, Mahendranagar, Krishnanagar, Banbasa, Kolabas and Jayanagar.

A few decades ago, Sindhupalchowk, Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Makwanpur were famous for women and girls trafficking. However, nowadays none of the districts in our country have been able to keep itself away from this malady.

Makwanpur is next to Nuwakot in human trade. In this district, girls are sold to Indian brothels in the pretext of love marriage and providing high salary jobs in Indian cities. The names and addresses of girls arrested by the police from the different border areas testify to this fact.

In general, women and girl trafficking is prevalent in the southern part of our country. Open border, use of illegal routes to cross the transit points, non-enforcement of visa on any identity card to pass through the transit points, complication in the identification of to-be sold girls and brokers and displacement of women workers and labourers in bordering towns in quest of employment are some of the contributing factors for women and girl trafficking in our country.

It has been found out that traffickers in women and girls boldly operate across international borders, using local means of communications trade, low risk of communication and enormous population potential. Rampant official corruption and the open international border are the major factors responsible for making Nepal a haven for traffickers. It has also been discovered that most of these enterprises are led by donors having their offices on the other side of the international border and are directed towards Nepal.

Those who get arrested only happen to be intermediaries working in the actual context. They lure victims with personal counseling and false promise of jobs. They are made to believe that they will be allowed to return if they dislike the job or want to change one job to the other.

Some families, in order to make their living, are forced to sell their daughters to girl traffickers. Secondly, it may be due to old social and cultural practices of some communities. Generally, in some communities of the tarai region the birth of a daughter is considered a liability in that the parents have to give a lot of dowry to the bridegroom in order to marry off their daughters. Therefore, the parents are thrown to sell them on one or the other pretext.

Thirdly, it could be due to the glaring absence of employment especially for women and girls who have less access to any opportunities in order to upgrade their low social and economic status. In such a bleak scenario, it is not uncommon for girls to succumb to girl traffickers’ false promises of easy get high paying jobs in Indian cities.

Fourthly, policy lapses have also contributed to trafficking in women and girls in Nepal.

Last but not the least, it could be due to widespread illiteracy among the communities living in the rural areas.

The Civil Code 1964 is the first significant law to provide more rights to women. Since it came into force, the Code has gone through some amendments and has made some improvements in trafficking. However, there has been no control in trafficking.

There is a need to review existing criminal laws and their present use to determine if they are adequate and prevent trafficking in women and girls.

The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (MOWCASW) spends huge amount of money to control trafficking in women and girls. However, MOWCASW has not taken any step towards rescuing women from brothels in India and only organise seminars in twenty-six trafficking prone districts under the chairmanship of respective district development committees’ chairmen. These committees are working to stop girl trafficking.

MOWCASW has been conducting specific programmes in Banke, Bhairahawa, Jhapa and Rupandehi with the assistance of ILO and IPEC. Although there are some non-governmental organisations engaged in controlling the trafficking in girls and women, their endeavours are far from satisfactory. Organisations such as ABC Nepal, CWIN, Maiti Nepal, Naya Jyoti, Shanti Punarsthapan a, Stri Shakti and WOREC are working against the trafficking in women and girls.

According to a report, ABC Nepal has been providing shelter to twenty-eight, CWIN to twenty-six, Maiti Nepal to twenty-eight, Naya Jyoti to fourteen, Shanti Punarsthapana to twelve, Stri Shakti to ten and WOREC to ten women who were rescued from various Indian brothels. It was reported that those who were rescued from Indian brothels do not want to return home due to rejection by their families. Actually, the above-mentioned organisations alone can not house all the rescued women because of the increase in their number.

In the present context, there is a need to establish training and counselling centres in order to provide moral assistance and sympathy to women and girls suffering from prostitution and those physically and mentally tortured. Pubic awareness programmes such as street plays, sign boards and publication of posters as well as other educational materials are also essential.

In reality, trafficking in women and girls has become one of the fastest growing enterprises in Nepal. The extent of the criminality of the people in this trade has become stronger than the social capacity of public institutions to confront it.

Women and girl trafficking is a heinous crime against humankind in general and women in particular. If this crime is to be uprooted from our country the government should not only penalise the women and girl traffickers but also come up with women and girls specific schemes in order to improve their low social and economic status.

In the eleventh SAARC summit, a convention on women and girl trafficking was signed by the representatives of SAARC nations. Actually, it is the commitment necessary to translate this convention into reality.

Since the majority of the women and girls trafficked from Nepal are sold in India, the Indian side should also be responsible for solving this problem. What is more, women and girl trafficking should be one of the main agendas of Nepal-India bilateral talks.

Biotechnology: Neglected Discipline In Nepal

By Bikram Datta Panta & Mukti Ram Aryal

Biotechnology, a new discipline due to revolutionary discoveries made in the biological sciences is an integrated effort. It involves the development and utilisation of biological processes, forms and systems for obtaining maximum benefits for human welfare in this new era. The term biotechnology is used in a much broader sense to include the recent dramatic development in the area of molecular biology, genetics technique in recombinant DNA, cell fusion implants, animals and microbes, animals and plantprotoplast, cell and tissue culture or micropropagation, molecular and cellular immunology, enzymes, organelles and whole cell immobilation, protein and carbohydrate engineering, fermentation technology and process engineering. It is a set of novel tools and techniques which enable to manipulate the core of all living matter, the DNA resulting in the expression of enhanced or even totally new properties that may have never existed before in plants, animals and micro-organism.

The biotechnology can play very vital role in many areas such as agriculture, forestry environment and medicine. One of the most challenging problem in Nepal is rapid rate of population increase that is leading to the alarming shortage of food as the average agricultural productivity is much less than the rate of population growth. By the application of biotechnology in agriculture much has been achieved in the world like production of diseases resistant plants, pest tolerant plant, high yielding plant, stress tolerant plants, plant with better quality of proteins, carbohydrates etc. The hybridization and cybridition have produced new and amazing variety of crop produced, for example the hybrid of potato and tomato is pomato. Attempt of transferring nif (nitrogen fixing )genes in the non-leguminous plants has also been a success. Application of biofertiliser to minimise the hazardous effects of chemical fertilizers and to provide economical and affordable source of fertilizers instead of expensive chemical fertilizer to the farmers of this poor country Nepal is the present demand. For poverty alleviation and to feed the burgeoning population, traditional agricultural system has obviously failed .To meet the needs of increasing population, the limited resources for agriculture cannot be increased. Thus the one and the only method to feed such burgeoning population is increase in productivity which is possible only by application of biotechnology in agriculture .

Many forests of Nepal have been destroyed , remaining are being destroyed by human activities or by natural processes like soil erosion. The hill belt of Nepal is of high potential for horticulture. But the shortage of saplings has made afforestation and plantation in the destroyed forests an uphill task. The small number of saplings/ seedling available in the nurseries through the traditional system get destroyed because of disease if cultivated as they are not disease free and disease resistant. For the plantation of apples in Humla and Jumla districts , Ministry of Agriculture has implemented the programme but it could not make the saplings/seedlings available even from India. By the micropropagation (biotechnology ) large amount of disease free seedlings /saplings can be produced in any season to meet the needs of horticulture and afforestation programmes.

Environmental degradation is rampant in the urban areas of Nepal like Kathmandu, Biratnagar etc. The environmental quality viz. air quality ,water quality etc is deteriorating day by day. There is serious problem of waste disposal. By application of biotechnological tools (microbial biotechnology) not only the waste can be disposed properly but waste products can be converted into useful ones like compost manure. The pure water of Bagmati (religious river of Hindus) has been highly contaminated and the holy river is now in the form of sewage. With the help of microbes, treatment of the polluted water of Bagmati can be done. In the field of medicine, Nepal is lagging far behind. The production of insulin, vaccines for hepatitis, tuberculosis rabies, Polio and Foot and Mouth diseases of cattle has been carried out in the developed world much earlier. But Nepal is depending on other countries for all these things. In Germany production of antibody in the plant has also been achieved. It is amazing that by this achievement, we can treat / prevent diseases like hepatitis, tuberculosis , Polio etc by eating apples containing such antibodies. Nepal is much rich in medicinal herbs like Dactylorhiza hatagirea, Cordyceps sinensis, Nardostachys grandiflora,Neopicorrhiza etc and Taxus bacatta, the source of taxol for treating cancer. Decreasing exploitation of wild species and producing their essential chemicals can preserve these medicinal plants and seedling/saplings by techniques of biotechnology. So for the proper development of the country, it should produce the qualified manpower in biotechnology under the human resource development. But in Nepal there aren’t any institutions running biotechnology programmes. The Tribhuvan University is the premier institute for teaching , training workshop and conducting research in the field of biotechnology. The HMG Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health , Ministry of Forestry and soil conservation should provide fund directly to the institute of science and technology for proper teaching under the central department of Botany (CDB) in T.U. from this academic year. CDB is planning for initiation of biotechnology special paper but due to unavailability of adequate fund the programme is in crisis. In this time of man’s conquest over cloning of various animals and successful cloning of human organs, the fund constraint of CDB T.U.(only one responsible national academic institute of Nepal ) is a misfortune for Nepal and the Nepalese people. Starting from this year the enthusiastic students must get the opportunity to study biotechnology as a special paper so that they can dedicate themselves for the development of country as well as welfare of humanity.

Can The Law Restrict Natural Childbirth?

By Lochana Sharma

THE patriarchal society of Nepal is trying to bind the natural phenomenon of pregnancy and childbirth through the law. Most may be surprised to hear that the law states that a woman must give childbirth within the designated date.

Nita Subba of Jhapa gave birth to a daughter one year or 43 weeks after her husband left for Hongkong. But, Nita did not get any love or affection during her pregnancy just because the society and the law blamed her for giving late birth. A question was raised on her purity and the pain of this hurt her more than the labour pain.

An article had come out in the papers last year that Jhuma Yadav of Saptari had been kicked out of her husband’s home after she gave birth to a son 10 months after her husband’s death.

The above problems are faced by women in our society because of giving childbirth later than the designated time. Similarly, women who give early childbirth also face the same kind of agony and pain.

Harka Limbu of Jhapa divorced his wife Rupa after she gave birth to a child 7 months and 13 days after marriage. The above incident was supported by the literate circle.

All the three victims are ready to go through any kind of tests to prove their purity. They themselves do not know how it happened.

Due to the negative thoughts of the society and the harsh legal arrangements, many such incidents can be found in our society and in the files of the court. These women are barely surviving and they live because of their love for the newborn.

A child who is born after seven months of pregnancy hardly survives and some societies believe that those who survive become very lucky in future.

The society believes that a woman gives childbirth after completing 9 months of pregnancy. Any birth before or after this designated time is looked upon suspiciously even by the literate circle. The legal system of Nepal also preserves this feeling. The new Country Code 2020 mentions that a child will be legally a husband’s only if the wife gives birth 272 days or 38 weeks and 2 days after the separation from her husband. If the wife gives birth on 273rd day of separation than the child is not believed to be her husband’s. Advocate Munakiran Koirala believes that the law totally supports the husband. The law also states that if the husband has lost his sexual prowess any time before the 272nd day than even if the wife gives birth on the 272nd day, than the child is considered not to be his. The law strongly states that only the child who is born on the 272nd day will be legally the husband’s.

Doctors feel that the whole legal system and the society’s belief acts againt the nature and human rights activists feel that the law must be amended. Dr. Aruna Upreti is totally against the clause stated in the law. According to her, safe childbirth can be given from 210 days or 7 months to 40 weeks or 290 days. Dr Shankar Prasad Hujdar also feels that the law discriminates against women by mentioning 272 days. According to him, childbirth can be early if there is lot of bleeding or if the mother is small. In the same manner, childbirth can be late due to various other reasons.

Also the mother may not know exactly when she conceived. Therefore, the number of days may not always be correct. In the previous year, in Italy a woman gave birth to 4 sons and 2 daughters after 31 months or 3 years which the doctors point out is an exceptional case. Advocate Dr. Shanta Thapaliya says that the above incident could be a good example in the context of Nepal. The government of Italy had said that the above incident was the fourth of its kind in Italy. Journalists had paid huge amounts of money to take photographs of the mother and children. Dr. Thapaliya adds that it is pitiful that the law discriminates even in such issues as health and pregnancy. She believes that the law needs to be amended. According to her, the victims of such discrimination have never sought legal aid.

The Nepali legal system challenges the natural happening of the world. Childbirth does not happen exactly within the days mentioned by the court. Many examples can be seen nationally and internationally. The law must be abolished as early as possible.

Sancharika Feature Service