ABUSE OF GIRL CHILD
By Avishkar Chandra Pradhan

December 30, 2002 – (The Rising Nepal - Feature) NEPAL is a land of villages, where many people are poor and illiterate. They are deprived of education and modern scientific amenities. Very few people are privileged to live in urban areas. Leaving aside the original inhabitants of the city, most of the dwellers in urban areas are migrated people from villages. They are seeking good education, good jobs and better future. They are struggling for their prosperity.

In the urban areas almost all the couples work either in offices, educational institutions factories or private concerns. So they need a domestic helper to support them in their domestic affairs and also for babysitting. For this reason, they bring specially village girls to support their domestic affairs. Promising them or their parents good education, money, clothing, shelter etc. Poor and innocent girls are tempted by the charm of the metro life, because they come to the city with a dream of their bright future. Since they fail to fulfill their dream, they realise the facts of the city life which compels them to look for better opportunities. They don't want to go back to their villages without fulfilling their dreams. So they choose the wrong path because of their lack of education, poverty and ignorance. Somethings, they are trapped by wrong people and forced to survive in prostitution.
Trafficking in persons-the illegal and highly profitable recruitment, transport, or sale of human beings for the purpose of exploiting their labour - is a slavery-like practice that must be eliminated. The trafficking of girls or female children into bonded sweatshop labour, forced marriage, forced prostitution, domestic servitude, and other kinds of works is a global phenomenon. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force or debt bondage to control their victims. Girls are typically recruited with promises of good jobs in other countries and lacking better options at home, they agree to migrate. Through agents and brokers who arrange the travel and job placements, girls are escorted to their destinations and delivered to the employers. Upon reaching their destinations, girls learn that they have been deceived about the nature of the work they were promised. They find themselves in coercive and abusive situations from which a escape is both difficult and dangerous.

Sometimes as young as six-years old, girls are forced to work under extremely difficult conditions, often as bonded labourers or in forced prostitution. They are imprisoned in inhumane conditions. Refugee female children, often separated from their families, are vulnerable to exploitation, sexual abuse, or domestic violence. Ironically, within the care of the state, female children are often subject to abuse and mistreatment. Orphaned and abandoned children are housed in appalling institutions where they suffer from cruelty and neglect; many die. For many female children, life in and outside of the house is intolerable at the hands of masters mistress. Many of them suffer under acts of discrimination, abuse, sexual violence, and harassment.

The government has banged child exploitation, but that's limited only in paper not in reality and practice. The higher class people and government officials themselves are exploiting village children and keeping them at home as domestic helpers. The problem cannot be solved easily unless the government itself takes drastic action or people become aware of it. It is also a myth that child labour can never be eliminated until poverty alleviated.

From: http://www.mahilaweb.org/footer/news/dec_02/rising_nepal.htm