After a 20 minute flight in a 1960’s propeller plane, I arrive in the small, bustling, industrial town of Birgunj a mile and a half from the Indian border. This is prime trafficking territory.
Maiti Nepal have brought me here to visit their transit home, a temporary shelter for women and children who are trafficked and intercepted on the border. On average, three girls are brought to the shelter each day.
As I arrive, two girls are brought in. They are emotional and scared. Beyond that, they are upset to have been “caught” by Maiti Nepal.
The older girl, who claims to be 17, has been intercepted before. The implication, though it is not explicitly stated, is that the girls parents have encouraged them to seek illegal employment in India.
Both girls are illiterate. Neither has attended school. With few prospects at home, their intention in crossing the border was to find work and ultimately, to send money home to their families. Their situation is typical. Neither is aware of the vulnerable position they placed themselves in. Nor that it is illegal. It is girls like these who are typically preyed upon and exploited by traffickers.
Maiti Nepal spend the afternoon with the girls discussing alternative livelihood paths. Throughout the afternoon, Maiti Nepal emphasise to the girls, the dangerous position they have placed themselves in. By the end of the day, the girls are heartened by the options before them. They will be collected tomorrow morning by their parents.
The border
While this is going on, Maiti Nepal’s interception teams are busy on the border. Each of officer is a survivor of trafficking. Each day they wait on the border, working in shifts between 6am and 6pm. Here they stop cars, rickshaws, buses and carts carrying young girls or those resembling women and children reported missing.
Drivers and their passengers are questioned. Where stories are suspicious, do not correlate, or where a suspected victim seems fearful, Maiti Nepal will take them to the transit home to investigate further.
Back at the home, the programme co-ordinator receives a phone call from a man whose sister disappeared last night. His sister rang him minutes earlier to say she woke up this morning in a locked room. She believes she was drugged last night at the market. She thinks she is near the India border. She is not certain. She is scared and disorientated. The interception teams will look out for her and others who, like her, have been reported missing.
From the transit centre, I am taken to Hetauda to visit a prevention home. The centre is home to 21 girls. They are educated here about the risks of trafficking. Of the girls I meet, one is a rape victim. Another has been trafficked. A third is an orphan. The others are from local villages where it is common for them to be taken out of school and traded into local labour markets.
A non formal literacy class at the centre
Maiti Nepal invites these girls to engage in non-formal education and vocational training programmes at the centre. The four month programme also educates girls about human trafficking as well as forced and illegal labour. When they leave the programme, girls are encouraged to share what they have learned with their peers. The aim of the programme is to equip girls with the skills and education to enable them to return to their villages and begin their own businesses.
I am struck by the strength and power of these young women. By their determination to carve a brighter future for themselves. Within the context of their life experience, it is very inspiring to witness the commitment each of them has to independent living. Maiti Nepal’s work suddenly zooms into perspective: at its core, I understand it now as a women’s empowerment movement.
I leave the airport and head straight to my first meeting. My senses are overwhelmed. People, cars, taxis, buses, trucks, dogs, goats and cyclists busy the streets. Pollution swarms in the air. Fruit-walas spill onto pavements. A man in front of me spits dust he has collected in his throat as I pick my way through the battered roads to Maiti Nepal’s head office in Gaushala. With the helpful directions of locals, I find my way there without getting lost. Everyone, it seems, knows the organisation.
The hospice serves HIV positive women and children as well as those with drug resistant tuberculosis, hepatitis and other incurable diseases. Many of the women and children here have been trafficked and prostituted. Others are orphaned, or have been expelled from their villages because of their illness. For the 70,000 people who are HIV positive in Nepal, life is marked by stigma. They are typically, neither accepted nor cared for. Where their families accept the condition, the disease is frequently hidden to avoid embarrassment or being ostracised.
The plight of young girls sold into prostitution – often deliberately- by a family member has been written up in harrowing detail by Cambodian author Somaly Mam in her award-winning book, ‘The Road of Lost Innocence.’ Prostitution and the giant and menacing rackets that grow around it are well documented. Paedophilia is far more sinister – although the young age at which many of the young girls are sold, and the level of abuse they experience, mean that in reality the two terms are often interchangeable.
I ask what the scale of the problem really is and how one can be sure that it is accurately documented. He replies that according to EU research, 4.5% of all tourists are sex perpetrators, of which 10% are paedophiles. That means that out of 2.2 million tourists travelling to Cambodia, 80,000 are sex perpetrators and 8000 of those are paedophiles. To make it tangible, it means that in a plane carrying 200 people, 1 at least would be a child abuser.
In the last year APLE performed 254 investigations leading to 37 arrests. They work with hundreds of children every year.
Auray takes me to see the recently built school for deaf and blind children. It is made up of several large buildings and is painted bright yellow. It cost around a million dollars to construct. There is the sound of plinking and plonking which comes from a faraway music room.
I land in Phnom Pehn at 9:30 and zoom to the guesthouse to drop my luggage before bouncing back into a tuktuk and speeding off to the North West of Phnom Pehn to meet with Krousar Yoeung. Sandra spent the day visiting their project work on 2nd December, but we have arranged another short meeting with their Executive Director, Ky Samphy.
It is a simple, fascinating and noble mission enforced by a dedicated, talented team. I leave the centre to visit the “Building” where a workshop is being held in preparation for a performance tomorrow night. “Building” is also the subject of Alnoor’s film and