mikeldunham

Profile: Nepal elects its first woman President, Bidhya Devi Bhandari

 

October 28, 2015

 

 

Today, Bidhya Devi Bhandari became the first woman president in Nepal’s history.

 

Bidhya is Vice-president of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) – UML. She is 54.

 

Her childhood was spent in Bhojpur District in eastern Nepal, the daughter of Ram Bahadur Pande and Mithila Pande. In her early adulthood she became an active female cadre of the UML.

 

In August 1982. Bidhya married Madan Kumar Bhandari, the general secretary of the UML.

 

 

 

 

Life dramatically changed for her when, on 16 May 1993, her husband died (along with another UML leader, Jeev Raj Ashrit) in a still unexplained car accident. Many believed at the time that the two men were not victims of an accident, but rather were murdered –assassinated by political opponents. The government formed a probe committee and deemed the accident as non-suspicious. However, ten years later, the suspicion of a possible conspiracy again gained popularity, when the driver and only survivor of the crash was murdered in Kirtipur.

 

In the bi-election that followed Madan Kumar Bhandari’s death, his widow was fielded as a candidate by the UML and won. Bidhya’s detractors dismissed her victory as a result of the sympathy factor, but this was dispelled when she went on to win in the two following elections of 1994 and 1999.

 

In the following years, Bidhya became a major voice for women’s rights.

 

In 2006, she was pivotal in a proposal submitted to the House of Representatives that would end all forms of discrimination against women.

 

In 2012, Bidhya was elected the chairperson of the UML’s sister wing All Nepal Women Association (ANWA). Founded in 1950, ANWA is Nepal’s largest national women’s organization.

 

In July of 2015, Bidhya – as spokesperson for ANWA – praised the draft for paving the way for equal participation of women in all areas of the government. The charter was promulgated on 20 September. It demands that 1) one-third of the members in parliament have to be women and 2) either the president or the vice president must be a woman.

 

Bidhya replaces Nepal’s first president, Ram Baran Yadav, who was elected in 2008 after a decade-long Maoist insurgency that ultimately resulted in the abolishment of Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy.

 

It should be added that lawmakers from the four Madhesi parties, who are currently protesting the new constitution, abstained from participating in today’s election.

 

 

 

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Nepal ranks 20th in modern day slavery index

 

November 25, 2014

 

 

Nepal has been ranked 20th among 167 countries in terms of the prevalence of modern day slavery. The 2014 Global Slavery Index has estimated that 228,700 people in the country are subjected to modern day slavery.

 

The report released by Walk Free Foundation last week has also listed Nepal as the fifth most vulnerable country to modern day slavery in the Asia Pacific region. Neighbouring India ranks top most in the region followed by Pakistan, Cambodia and Mongolia.

 

In the world rankings, India and Pakistan are ranked fifth and sixth, respectively. Mauritania ranks first in the index with four percent of its almost 4 million people subjected to modern day slavery, followed by (2) Uzbekistan, (3) Haiti and (4) Qatar.

 

The report also highlights that men from Nepal along with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh working in the Middle East are in forced labor in the construction industry, while women from the same countries have been subjected to sexual exploitation and domestic violence.

 

The case study of Qatar carried out in the report also says that migrant workers from Nepal and other South Asian countries are subjected to a range of exploitative practices, including forced labor, domestic servitude, extortionate recruitment fees, illegal confiscation of passports, withholding of salaries, hazardous workplaces, unhygienic living conditions and physical, psychological and sexual abuse from employers.

 

The Australia-based organization, which works to end modern day slavery, prepares its report based on researches over a year. The report terms the modern day slavery as involvement of a person possessing or controlling another person to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty and with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal. The report states that India also remains susceptible destination for Nepali women and children. “Young Nepali women banned from traveling to the Gulf for domestic work also pass through India as an alternative route. Some of these migrants then experience abuse and exploitation. Other migrants are fraudulently sent by recruiters to India to be transported to jobs in the Gulf, only to remain in India in positions of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation,” the report has stated.

 

According to the report, around 38.5 million people around the world are the victims of modern day slavery.

 

To download the Report

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

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Vote for Wasfia Nazreen, National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year 2015

 

November 18, 2014

 

My friend, Bangladeshi activist, Everest climber and writer Wasfia Nazreen has been selected as one of National Geographic’s Ten Adventurers of the Year 2015. Now, it is the public’s opportunity to vote for Wasfia as the best of the best, THE Adventurer of the year, which will be announced in January 2015. Below, you will find National Geographic’s criteria for her selection—her ongoing dedication to empower her country’s women and girls – as well as National Geographic’s interview with her. But first, here’s the link to place your vote Wasfia:

 

VOTE FOR WASFIA NAZREEN 

 

 

National Geographic’s write-up on her:

The Activist: Wasfia Nazreen

A Bangladeshi aid worker hula-hoops on the Seven Summits to empower her country’s women and girls.

 

While exact numbers are difficult to pin down, approximately 350 people have climbed the Seven Summits. If activist Wasfia Nazreen summits Oceania's Carstensz Pyramid in late November, it won’t rank as a stunning mountaineering feat—ascending to the continents’ high points isn’t as revered as other more daunting mountaineering feats. Certainly, she may become the first to hula-hoop on all seven, but Nazreen’s goal reaches far beyond summits, routes, and firsts.

 

In 2010, Nazreen was working for international humanitarian aid group CARE in her native country of Bangladesh. One of CARE's projects pulled 3,000 women and children out of brothels and began educating and training them for careers outside the sex industry. Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country, with just under a third of its people living below the international poverty line. Then the funding for the project dried up. Unable to win a grant to continue the program, CARE left and Nazreen watched as the 3,000 women and children were left in social limbo, ostracized by Bangladeshi society and removed from what little social support the brothels had afforded them, according to Nazreen.

 

“Worse yet were the kids. They had almost escaped the cyclical nature of the brothel life,” says 32-year-old Nazreen, who has worked in the human rights field since her early 20s, after graduating from Agnes Scott College. “We were so dependent on these foreign organizations. If [an NGO] left, it was almost like a program just ended.”

 

Nazreen decided that while foreign support had its role in the developing nation, it was time for the Bangladeshi people to begin building aid organizations that were not headed by foreigners. She had begun mountaineering in 2006, while working in Tibet to stem human rights violations by the Chinese government. She decided to combine her two passions—activism and climbing.

 

Nazreen sold some family jewelry, took out tens of thousands of dollars in loans, and went to work. First, she created the Bangladesh on Seven Summits foundation to oversee the climbing portion of her mission and began ticking off the peaks with a Bangladeshi flag in hand. At that point no Bangladeshi had completed the Seven Summits. The 40th anniversary of Bangladeshi independence was in 2011, and the country was hungry to celebrate. Nazreen added her own unique flourish by packing a 2.5-pound, collapsible Hula-Hoop in the Bengali colors and breaking it out on top of each summit. Hula-hooping was something she had been forbidden to do as a child. When Nazreen summited Everest, international media began picking up her story, which she used to generate momentum into the second phase of her project.

 

“Eighty percent of the people haven’t seen a mountain,” says Nazreen of her country, which is known for its flat, fertile river deltas. “Going to every continent took the Bangladeshi people to every continent. It gave them a lot of pride.”

 

This fall, with six of the seven climbs behind her, Nazreen implemented the second stage of her project. She launched the Ösel Foundation, aimed at educating marginalized young women and getting them into the outdoors. Bangladesh is a deeply patriarchal society in which even educated girls are discouraged from participating in sports, and arranged marriages are commonplace. Women who have been born into the sex trade or victimized by rape enjoy a fraction of the rights that others do. This January, the Ösel Foundation begins its education and outdoor initiatives with a six-month pilot program for 50 teenage girls. The curriculum is influenced by Western outdoor education programs.

 

“We are trying to change our society,” says Nazreen. “This seemed like a good place to start.”

 

—Fitz Cahall

 

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S INTERVIEW:

 

National Geographic Adventure: So first off, what’s with the Hula-Hoop?

 

Wasfia Nazreen: When I was a little girl, one of my first memories was of this foreign couple visiting my town. I’d never seen white people. Their daughter had this Hula-Hoop. I wanted to play with it. I was trying it, and one of the neighborhood women said something along the lines of “Girls shouldn’t be shaking their hips.” The way she said it had this very derogatory meaning. I thought, Good girls can’t play with Hula-Hoops.

 

This was taken from my life—the right to play as a little girl. I was told I couldn’t bike because it would take my virginity and other nonsense. I’m doing this for myself and for the little girls back at home. It’s my little way of saying, “No more.”

 

NGA: You are a star in your country for your climbs. Has the response been entirely good?

 

WN: For the most part. There was a celebration at the prime minister’s. And this man, this colonel in the Bangladeshi navy or army, came in and screamed, “This thing got up and our army couldn’t get up.” He was screaming at his people, his men. He couldn’t even call me “she.” He just said "thing.” In the long run, it’s flattering. The men in our country—it hit some of their egos. Now we are starting to get fathers coming to ask if their daughters can be a part of our foundation. I don’t want the fame, but the fact that some men are starting to see that they can get their daughters involved in sports and the outdoors, that’s a matter of pride. Seeing that shift is huge for me. There aren’t many positive stories in Bangladesh. This is one of them.

 

NGA: Which of the peaks has been the most difficult?

 

WN: Well, Denali and Everest are the most difficult, but the hardest thing is honestly the logistics. I haven’t used a commercial outfit for these climbs, so the logistics of getting permits and organizing was harder than the climbing. Raising the funds has been the hardest. In Bangladesh, I had to prove myself over and over again. I’ve had a lot of help from friends.

 

NGA: Bangladesh is coastal and pretty flat. How and where did you start climbing?

 

WN: I worked in Tibet on a four-year campaign to protest the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The Chinese were using them as a way to validate their claim on Tibet. During that time we were traveling a lot in Tibet and Nepal. We were organizing these protests and events. We’d climb bridges or towers for these events, and so I got some [climbing] training. In 2006, I started doing small climbs. By 2007, I was starting to do six- and seven-thousand-meter peaks.

 

NGA: You’ve taken big financial risks to start your foundations and work constantly—what pushes you to do all that?

 

WN: I have a really deep calling. I have some big bank loans. I have no idea how I’m going to pay it off. If you think about it practically, I should be really worried about that, but my brain doesn’t function like that. In my adolescence and in my own life, this is like healing. Growing up, I was marginalized. I don’t want any other girl to go through that. That’s where the power comes from.

 

 

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NEPAL: More than 600,000 women suffer uterine prolapses

 

June 27, 2014

 

 

This article was originally published by IRIN.

 

Many women in Nepal return to work immediately after giving birth, thereby increasing the risk of a prolapse developing.

 

Nuche Maya Maharjan suffered a discomforting medical condition for 35 years before she built up the courage to seek medical assistance. For years she had no idea what the condition was and whether it could be treated.

 

“I had just given birth to my first child and was working in the fields near my village. Suddenly I felt as if my insides were dropping out of me,” the 66-year-old recalled.

 

Baffled by what had happened, she told no-one - not even her husband – hoping the problem would go away.

 

But over the years, her prolapsed uterus (see box) got worse, to the point that it protruded from her vagina completely, making it difficult for her to walk or even sit upright. She required surgery, a fact prompting this uneducated Nepalese mother-of-five to finally seek help.

 

Maharjan is one of many rural women who regularly come to the Kirtipur public hospital on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, seeking treatment for prolapses - the leading cause of ill-health among women of reproductive and post-menopausal age in Nepal today, doctors say.

 

“This is more of a rural problem than an urban one,” Dr Ganesh Dangal, an attending gynecologist at the NGO-funded health facility in Kirtipur, told IRIN. “In rural areas, there are no hospitals to treat this condition, forcing many of these women to travel to the cities for help.”

 

What is a uterine prolapse?

 

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a uterine prolapse is a maternal illness the uterus protrudes into the vagina from its normal anatomical position.

The uterus is normally supported by pelvic connective tissue and the pubococcygeus muscle, and held in position by special ligaments. Weakening of these tissues allows the uterus to descend into the vaginal canal.

Tissue trauma sustained during childbirth - especially with large babies, difficult labour and delivery and multiple births over short intervals of time - is typically the cause of muscle weakness.

In Nepal, the chance of a prolapse occurring are accentuated by fact that many rural women return to heavy manual work immediately after giving birth without adequate rest.

In the early stages of a prolapse, pelvic exercises can significantly improve a minor condition. In the next stages, before the uterus has fully dropped into the vaginal canal, ring pessaries can be used to support the uterus in place. After this, surgery is the only alternative - an option costing more than US $200 in Nepal and not affordable to most Nepalese women.

According to health experts, prolapse symptoms include back pain, painful abdominal cramps, burning urination, difficulty standing, walking, sitting or lifting, as well as foul smelling discharge, among others.

Yet despite the obvious physical discomfort suffered by these women, many prolapse sufferers do not seek help due to the social stigma the condition carries - a fact only exacerbating this otherwise preventable condition.

 

“Most rural women don’t even look at this as a disease and don’t seek help,” Dangal confirmed. “Instead they seek comfort in the company of other women in their villages suffering from the same thing - which, regrettably, there are many.”

 

Given the social stigma associated with a prolapse, coupled with the woman’s inability to satisfy her partner sexually, some husbands remarry and sufferers and their children often find themselves socially excluded, ridiculed or abandoned.

 

Specialists estimate that more than 600,000 women in the Himalayan kingdom of 27 million inhabitants suffer from uterine prolapse, making it one of the leading causes of morbidity among lower caste and rural women.

 

For more acute cases, surgery is the only treatment. At a cost of US $200, most Nepalese women cannot afford this. The World Bank estimates that about 30 percent of Nepalis live below the poverty line.

 

A United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) study undertaken in eight districts of the country in 2006 - including hill, mountain and southern Terrai regions - concluded that about 10 percent of all women of reproductive age suffer from the condition.

 

More than a health problem

 

But despite the numbers, many women suffer in silence.

 

“This is a multifaceted problem. It’s not just a health problem,” Dr Peden Pradhan, UNFPA assistant representative for Nepal, said. “When you are poor and not educated, you generally get married earlier in rural areas, which makes the prevalence of the problem more widespread there.”

 

The incidence of prolapse could be decreased by having more deliveries attended by trained paramedics, she said. More than 80 percent of Nepalese women give birth at home and inappropriate maneuvering by unskilled birth attendants during delivery increases the risk of prolapse.

 

Pradhan added that women in Nepal’s male-dominated society lack real empowerment over when they have children. In addition, they lack awareness of what a prolapse is and what to do about it.

 

Addressing the problem

 

UNFPA and the government of Nepal are working together to develop a three-fold national strategy to tackle prolapse. 

 

Improving access to appropriate health care for low-income women, low caste women and women living in conflict areas.

 

Improving the volume and quality of reproductive health care services, including mobile reproductive health camps.

 

Promoting awareness of the issue at community level.

 

“I didn’t know I could talk to people about this. I was embarrassed and ashamed,” said Maili Maharijan, another prolapse sufferer in Kirtipur who waited eight years to come forward.

 

Unaware that treatment was available, the 70-year-old would routinely push her uterus back in place herself, only to have it drop out again when she coughed or sneezed.

 

“It was very embarrassing and caused me a great deal of discomfort,” she said.

 

Such stories underscore the despair, rejection, isolation and stigmatisation felt by many prolapse sufferers in Nepal today.

 

 

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Al Jazeera’s latest report on abuse of Nepal's migrant women

 

June 2, 2014

 

Yesterday’s article written by Ramyata Limbu for Al Jazeera

 

 

Official efforts to protect the thousands of women who travel abroad in search of work may be backfiring. 

 

Kathmandu, Nepal – They trickle into the nondescript hotel room in Dhading Besi on a Saturday afternoon, articulate young college students, demure housewives in saris, unlettered farmers with weathered faces, and nursing mothers with toddlers in tow.

 

These women are prospective migrant workers who expect to find jobs as housemaids in secluded villas in the Gulf to escape extreme poverty, unemployment and debts.

 

But human rights groups believe government efforts to protect them – about 13 percent of the 1,700 Nepalese who migrate every day are women – may increase the risk they face of exploitation, physical and sexual abuse, forced labour and trafficking.

 

"Domestic workers account for an estimated 80 percent of the total number of women migrant workers," says Dr Ganesh Gurung, a migration specialist and former chair of the national network for safe migration.

 

"The majority are undocumented. It's unfortunate that government bans enforced to protect Nepali women migrant workers from exploitation and abuse have had the opposite impact."

 

Their journey often begins in the room in Dhading Besi, three hours' drive from the capital, Kathmandu, that has been transformed into a makeshift classroom.

 

They listen intently as Manju Gurung, a former migrant worker, lists the dos and don'ts of the economic migrant.

 

"Always go through formal government channels, know what's in your contract, pre-departure training and orientation are mandatory," she stresses.

 

Once a rural hamlet, Dhading Besi has been visibly transformed by the money earned by Nepalese migrants, and new buildings and shops flank the town centre.

 

Gurung, a founder member of the Pourakhi Nepal organisation established to empower women migrants, acknowledges the economic benefits of working abroad but is also aware of the stigma that attached to these women and the emotional toll migration takes on their families.

 

She told Al Jazeera, "We don't support or discourage female migrant labour. But we believe women are entitled to work and to make an informed choice."

 

Sexual services

 

Karma Lama (name changed) hails from a highland village in Nepal where three years ago, barely out of her teens, she dropped out of school to help her family scrape a meagre living on the rugged terraces.

 

She collected firewood and fodder, took animals to graze and carried out household chores while dreaming of working overseas in order to save enough to marry and settle down.

 

Encouraged by money orders sent home by her older siblings, both domestic workers in the Gulf, Karma sold wild berries to travellers to raise cash for a passport and new clothes.

 

She pestered her parents, impoverished farmers, to raise 50,000 Nepali rupees ($500) to pay an agent, a close relative, to procure a tourist visa to Dubai.

 

Despite her family’s misgivings about her age - Nepal's government prohibits women below the age of 30 from working as domestics - Karma was determined to leave.

 

A week before her departure she travelled to Kathmandu, a day's bus ride away, where basic lessons in housekeeping comprised learning to cook on a gas stove and cleaning a toilet.

 

Yet ill-prepared for household work in a foreign land and unfamiliar with the language, within weeks she had lost two successive jobs in Lebanon - before the local agent forced her to work providing sexual services to men.

 

Just a month after leaving Nepal and badly traumatised, Karma is back home, recovering in a shelter for female migrant workers in Kathmandu where she receives counselling and medication.

 

"Approximately 25 percent of women who come to us have undergone some kind of sexual abuse or trauma," says shelter supervisor Satra Kumari Gurung.

 

"They struggle to cope with what's happened. They're extremely withdrawn. Recovery is one day at a time."

 

Abuse and exploitation

 

In 2012, Nepal's government banned women under 30 from working as domestics in Gulf states amid concerns about abuse and exploitation, and in April this year stopped issuing work permits following the repatriation of three dozen women from Lebanon - which officials say is an interim measure as they look into solutions to ensure the safety of female migrant workers.

 

But rights body Amnesty International believes these policies have increased the risks women face by encouraging them to migrate through informal channels that expose them to greater exploitation.

 

"You can't stop them," says Dr Gurung. "The day of the decision women migrant workers flew for foreign destinations from the international airport. Who's keeping count of those travelling through other channels?"

 

One of those exploited women was Tula Subba, 32, who recalls how she was an easy target for unscrupulous brokers that scour Nepal's villages for unsuspecting women to lure into forced labour.

 

Displaced by the Maoist rebellion that afflicted the country from 1996–2006, Subba's family abandoned their fields and village shop in the east of the Himalayan nation for the southern plains bordering India, where work prospects were few and income limited.

 

Before long she had joined a group of girls who travelled overland to India accompanied by an agent then flew to Kuwait.

 

She spent a year with a family before returning home on the pretext of ill health - with no money and only her ticket paid for. Constant haranguing and violent outbursts by her employer took a heavy toll on her mental and physical health.

 

"I could no longer cope. I had to get out," she told Al Jazeera.

 

Faced with a similar situation, Sita Chettri (name changed), 32, slipped out of the house in Kuwait where she had been working for nine months and made her way to the Nepalese Embassy as she had been instructed in Kathmandu.

 

Within two months at a shelter supported by the Nepalese government - occupied by up to 300 women awaiting repatriation at a time - she had regained weight and recovered her spirits.

 

She abandoned any thought of finding another employer when she saw dead bodies of workers being brought to the embassy and heard the extent of abuse some women had endured.

 

"I don't want to die. I have young children," she told Al Jazeera.

 

But Chettri has mixed feelings about returning home."I’ve no money, no gifts, nothing for my young son. People are bound to talk."

 

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Mikel Dunham’s interview with Ambica Shrestha: hotelier supreme, Nepali tourism pioneer and entrepreneurial women activist

 

April 24, 2013

 

Architecturally, the Dwarika Hotel in Kathmandu is the most spectacular hotel in Nepal – a Rana-scale salute to traditional Newari building techniques including intricately carved windows, tapered glazed bricks and terra cotta relief. The history behind the construction of this jaw-dropping complex is invariably told from the point of view of Dwarika Das Shrestha, the man who built the Dwarika, a visionary who breathed new life into Newar’s rich heritage. What is not so well known is the role his wife, Ambica Shrestha, played in embracing his vision and, after his death in 1992, completing his dream by expanding the premises and making the Dwarika what it is today: a world-class five-star hotel but, in the final analysis, in a class by itself.

 

For the tourism industry, Ambica Shrestha represents a pioneer who was instrumental in providing services to an international clientele, thereby creating a market that previously didn’t exist in Nepal.

 

And finally, Ambica has extended her expertise to Nepali women by creating an organization that teaches them how to become independent, in part by starting businesses on their own.

 

I interviewed Ambica in the courtyard of the Dwarika, with two of her four dogs (a Beagle and a German Shepard) in attendance. Her Labrador and Spaniel were missing in action.

 

 

DUNHAM: You grew up in Sikkim. When did you move here to marry your husband?

 

SHRESTHA: 1955.

 

DUNHAM: What was Dwarika, your husband, doing at that time?

 

SHRESTHA: He was a government official in the Planning Ministry, appointed by King Mahendra.

 

DUNHAM: What was the family life like when you moved here?

 

SHRESTHA: We were in a joint family. His family was very well known in Kathmandu and they were very conservative – a Newar family. But my husband was a visionary. He had different ideas. He was the first man to start a youth movement in this country: the “Youth League”. He organized a group of young men, who would exercise every morning. And he was always having squabbles with his parents, because he believed that all the women in the family should be allowed to be educated, and that their health should be taken care of. His vision was this: If the mother was fine – if she had good health and a good education – then the children would be brought up very well. So he was always having arguments with his conservative parents.

 

DUNHAM: An uphill climb, in the 1950s.

 

SHRETHA: Oh yes. The situation was very bad for him. He had this high position in the government, which was stressful and he often had to bring his work home with him, but when he got home he also had to deal with this very difficult situation with his parents. He was very bothered. So one day he came to me and said, “I’m going to go away from this house. We are going to get away.” And I told him, “Listen, I am the daughter-in-law and this is what is going to happen: I am the one who is going to be blamed. They are going to say that I pulled you away – a very good son was taken away by a very, very bad daughter-in-law.”

 

So he dropped the subject for a while, even though the tension in the family increased. It was a very difficult time for me as well. I wasn’t used to such a conservative family, where the daughter-in-law is expected to do everything the husband’s parents’ wanted. I did everything they wanted, but it didn’t matter. I was still in their bad books.

 

But then one morning my husband said to me, “Listen, I’m going to go today. I’m going to leave the house. If you want to come, come. If you don’t want to come, you can stay here.”

 

I said, “What are you talking about? You are going and I am going to stay here? No, I’m coming.” And at that time, I had a one-year-old daughter. So the three of us left the house without anything. We literally walked out with me carrying my daughter and some of her clothes. That was it. We took a room elsewhere. And because we needed to make ends meet, I took a job also. I started teaching.

 

DUNHAM: What were you teaching?

 

SHRESTHA: English. [As a girl, Ambica had been sent to Loreto Convent, an English-medium high school, and to Senior Cambridge from St. Joseph's College. Both schools are in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India.]

 

This was in 1957. And when we left my husband’s parents’ house, I became the family outcaste. The family wouldn’t look at me. I was the bad person.

 

DUNHAM: They would interact with their son, but not with you?

 

SHRESTHA: Well…the men would interact with my husband a little. But neither the men nor the women would interact with me at all. And this standoff went on for some time…until my husband’s maternal uncle befriended me. Mr. Gunjaman Singh: He was the royal advisor to the king. He and my husband were very close. And one day he came to visit us. We lived in a rented house and he came to visit us and that was really something because, at the time, he was the man in Kathmandu society. He took care of a lot of our problems.

 

But going back to when I was still living with the joint family, I was very outspoken and I was the only daughter-in-law who could answer back to Gunjaman Singh.

 

DUNHAM: Was that because you were educated?

 

SHRESTHA: I was educated and couldn’t just accept something that, in my mind, was not right. With my mother-in-law and father-in-law, I kept quiet, although I was boiling inside. I never contradicted them. However, whenever anyone else outside the immediate family said anything, I wouldn’t take it. At first, my husband’s uncle – he was flabbergasted when I answered back. But gradually, he warmed up to me and he took me under his wing. And he started explaining things to me. I had asked him, “How do I know what’s going on? You have to teach me. How would I know otherwise what should have been done in any given situation?”

 

Here’s what happened: My husband bought a motorbike. He was a body builder. He had a very beautiful body. He bought this very powerful British motorbike. He was so proud of it. And he said to me, “Come, let’s go for a ride.” I got on the back and we zoomed around Kathmandu. And when we got back, all hell broke loose! My father-in-law and my mother-in-law gave me hell, but I kept quite. But when my uncle-in-law came in and started complaining to me, I couldn’t take it. I talked back at him.

 

DUNHAM: My god, in the mid-fifties, there were very few vehicles in the entire Kathmandu Valley. Everybody in town must have seen the two of you buzzing down the streets.

 

SHRESTHA: Yes, that’s right! And his bike was huge.

 

DUNHAM: Not exactly a low-profile thing to do.

 

SHRESTHA: That is true. In retrospect, it’s funny. But at the time, it was a serious thing.

My uncle-in-law was very up in the hierarchy of the family. If we went to his house, we had to pay respect to him as if he were holding court. When people came into his room, they would first go to him and bow their heads. But when I came in and bowed my head, he would tell me to sit with him. Imagine, all the men would be sitting around him and he would ask me to sit next to him. I was young. I would blush. I had to sit among all these men and he would then talk to me and tell me things. He would explain to me about politics and he was a very good teacher.

 

DUNHAM: As a woman, you were placed in a very unique situation.

 

SHRESTHA: Yes, and it caused more trouble for me. The other women, including my mother-in-law, became even angrier with me. People don’t like it when someone gets special attention. Another example: When we were eating at the dinner table, the seating arrangement was very strict. The elder would sit at the head of the table and the hierarchal system would continue all the way down to the other end of the table. But when my uncle-in-law would come, instead of going to the head of table, he would come over to where I was sitting and order the servers: “Bring her this! Bring her that! She won’t eat this!” I had to put down my head and blush because the rest of the family was just glaring at me.

 

DUNHAM: So every time he was there, the spotlight turned on you.

 

SHRESTHA: Yes. I think he liked me because I was bold and I would say what I thought and felt. And I also listened very carefully to him and took his advice.

 

DUNHAM: Did they also hate it that you were teaching?

 

SHRESTHA: Absolutely. That their daughter-in-law was working was an absolute scandal. It was a blemish on the family name. No one had ever done that before.

 

But I worked hard. And eventually I got a good post at the American Embassy in the American Library. I was given the title of Public Affairs Officer. This was in 1958-59. It was a very challenging and interesting job. I put up window displays, organized lectures, brought in various people to talk, ran film shows – documentaries as well as full-length American feature films. And people flocked to come see the films. Because at that time there was no cinema in the Valley.

 

DUNHAM: What was the political situation at that time?

 

SHRESTHA: Politically, there was a great deal going on at that time. And my husband was very much involved. B.P. Koirala was a very close friend of my husbands.

 

[In 1947, B.P. Koirala founded, while in India, the socialist Nepali National Congress, which in 1950 became the Nepali Congress Party. He was imprisoned in Nepal in 1947–1948 after returning to his home city in Biratnagar to lead a labor demonstration. A year later he was arrested again, but was soon released after a 27-day hunger strike, popular protests, and the intervention of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

 

Koirala led the armed revolution of 1951, which overthrew Nepal's 104-year old Rana regime. The last Rana prime minister was dismissed in October 1951 when the Rana-Congress coalition cabinet (in which Koirala served for nine months as the Home minister) broke apart. Koirala then concentrated on developing Nepal’s political structure. King Mahendra responded with a new constitution enabling free parliamentary elections to take place in 1959. Only a fragmented parliament was expected, but Koirala's Nepali Congress scored a landslide, taking more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house. After several weeks of significant hesitation, Mahendra asked Koirala to form a government, which took office in May 1959. Koirala then became the first democratically elected Prime Minister in Nepal's history. He held the office just 18 months before being deposed and imprisoned by order of King Mahendra. The rest of his life was spent largely in prison or exile and in steadily deteriorating health.]

 

Actually, the Nepali Congress party was born in my husband’s hostel in Varanasi [India] – this was when he was going to university there.

 

And I have to tell you that he was the first one to open a hotel in Nepal for tourists or outsiders. That was called the Paras Hotel, right in the middle of the city.

 

DUNHAM: What year was that?

 

SHRESTHA: He opened it even before we were married: 1953 or 54, something like that. This was where Indians pilgrims [visiting Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu site in Nepal] who had money would come and stay. The Indians who had less money would stay at guesthouses. Also the first airplane pilots flying into Nepal stayed at the Paras.

 

DUNHAM: Where was the hotel exactly?

 

SHRESTHA: It was located on what is now New Road, right where the Nepal Bank is now – in that corner. Today, it has been turned into a shopping mall.

 

And my husband had the courage to do many different innovative things that shocked the rest of society. When he opened the hotel, his grandfather asked him, “What is the difference between you and a butcher? You have soiled our name because you sell meat in that hotel.” And my husband defended himself by saying, “No, no, it’s not that. I’m doing it for pilgrims who need somewhere to rest when they come here.”

 

DUNHAM: When did you require this property, on which the Dwarika Hotel now stands?

 

SHRESTHA: It was after we left my husband’s home, and we were working on our own. We bought this plot of land. There was a house here, but it was demolished. Actually, the person who owned this property had to sell everything and lost it because he was a drunkard. He was a Rana. And after he could no longer afford to keep it, we bought the land. We used the same foundation where the house had stood and we built a new one. [Today, it serves as the bar for the Dwarika Hotel.] This was in 1957-58.

 

DUNHAM: Originally, then, this was just your residence?

 

SHRESTHA: Yes.

 

DUNHAM: Did you work the land surrounding the house? Did you have a garden?

 

SHRESTHA: Oh yes, I grew everything. I had fruit trees. I had a cow. I had other animals.

 

DUNHAM: How did the idea of turning this into a hotel develop?

 

SHRESTHA: You remember that I told you that my husband created the “Youth League”? and he led them out every morning for exercise? Well, he was coming back here one morning after working out – it was a cold winter – he saw, in front of the plaza of Hanuman Dhoka  two carpenters with a huge clay bowl of fire. And they had a pillar like the one right behind us and they were sawing off the beautiful Newari carvings and putting the carvings into the fire. My husband asked them, “What are you doing?” And they said, “Oh, we are removing the bad wood so that we can use the good wood for a door frame.” For the carpenters, the carvings of their forefathers’ had absolutely no value.

 

So my husband said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You give me this old pillar and I’ll bring you new wood instead.” The carpenters thought he was mad. He went with them and bought new wood, and he brought the pillar home. That’s when it all started. After that, he started piling up all the old carvings he could find, here on the property. Whenever he saw an old ornate broken-down window, he would buy it. All sorts of old pieces, he would buy. In fact, he was buying so many old pieces and bringing them home that we finally realized that we would have to do something with them –beginning with restoring them: Some were broken, some were rotting, some had pieces missing.

 

So then we looked for carvers. We had a very difficult time finding master carvers. The art of carving was dying out here in the Valley. The locals were no longer looking for carvings. There was no market for them. To them, it was not important. But, eventually, we found a carving master and brought him here to start a workshop. Then we employed young men to apprentice with the master.

 

In the meantime, I was working and my husband was working and still the money was not enough to support our carving workshop. A lot of money was going out. We had to buy wood and pay all of the carpenters. We had to find a way to make it work.

 

And how that happened was that we had an good friend, a lady, who was working on her Master’s thesis and she wanted a place where she could sit quietly and write. And she asked us, “Why don’t you build a room for me above the cowshed?” And we built it and she liked it very much. She brought people over to look at it and the people agreed, “Yes, this is beautiful. Why don’t you build more rooms, let out the rooms, and use the money made to pay for your workshop?” That was how it all started. That was in 1959-60.

 

And that first building is still here on the premises. We are using it still – two rooms. Next, we built three rooms on top of our garage. So we had five rooms to rent and slowly, slowly, business picked up. It took many years.

 

We also started a travel agency and used it to bring in groups. That was around the time when King Birendra was being crowned. 1973. At that time, there weren’t that many hotels in Kathmandu, but all of them were temporarily taken over by the government for the coronation ceremony. And at the last minute, we had to throw out our guests because Mrs. Imelda Marcos [at that time, the wife of kleptocrat and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos] came in with a planeload of people. We had to accommodate this group and we only had one week before the group arrived.  In one week we rented a house just nearby – there were very few houses in this area at that time – it was a new building and walking distance from here, and we rented and furnished it in one week. You can imagine how we worked. Day and night. And when the group arrived, we put them there and in our own house, plus the five rooms.

 

It was a big success and the agent who had brought them here insisted, afterwards, that his future groups stay here because the Marcos group raved about the stay. They felt at home.

 

So we left this place, rented a house, gave up our home and turned it into a hotel. We formally registered this as a hotel of ten rooms in 1977. We found a Swiss lady to manage it. Then, in 1981, my husband built the house you see, here, in the center of the courtyard.

 

And then in 1991, we built more over in that direction.

 

And then my husband passed away in 1992. And so it fell upon me and my daughter to take over the business and build the rest of the hotel you see today.

 

DUNHAM: That would be a huge undertaking for anyone, let alone a women in Nepal.

 

SHRESTHA: Well, yes. Our first obstacle was that we needed to be financed. I approached IFC (International Finance Corporation) and ADB (Asian Development Bank), and they all turned me down because they said my hotel was too small a project. Then I approached the local banks and do you know what they told me? They asked me, “What is your collateral? These rotten pieces of wood?”

 

Eventually, we managed to get a consortium – about four or five banks – and they agreed to give us a loan. Yes, it was difficult: Who did I think was – a woman doing all this?

 

DUNHAM: Did the gender discrimination ever come to the surface or was it just the underlying problem?

 

SHRESTHA: The underlying problem. They wouldn’t say as much to my face, but that’s what was really going on. Two women – me and my daughter – that was the problem: I had no son, there was no boy here. In any case, the hotel, as you see it now, was completed in 1998.

 

Meanwhile, I was also managing our travel agency. I was traveling all over the world doing marketing, sales and everything.

 

DUNHAM: What is the name of your travel agency?

 

SHRESTHA: Kathmandu Travel and Tour. It’s the second oldest travel agency in Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: As a woman, what were the challenges you faced operating a travel agency?

 

SHRESTHA: That was very difficult too. 75% of the Japanese who were traveling to Nepal were coming to us. But when my husband passed away the dynamics with the Japanese changed dramatically. The Japanese culture is very much male-oriented. I would visit and my staff would go with me. The Japanese Managing Director would talk to my staff but ignore me.

 

DUNHAM: You were invisible?

 

SHRESTHA: Yes, and it was that way for some time. I have to say, though, that gradually the Japanese came around. And I always had to remember not to be aggressive around them.

 

DUNHAM: What about other countries?

 

SHRESTHA: Other countries were OK, I think because they were used to seeing women in business. I didn’t feel any discrimination. I don’t know, it might have been there, but I didn’t feel it.

 

DUNHAM: You are widely known as a preeminent entrepreneur in this country. What advice would you give a young Nepali woman, who is at the beginning of her career and wants to start her own business?

 

SHRESTHA: I would say that she should start small and that she shouldn’t be copying someone else. Don’t follow the businesses that others are already doing. Be innovative. Think of something new. Start it on your own and start small. Build it up gradually. If you are innovative, the sky is the limit.

 

DUNHAM: What happens if they get blocked my male bias?

 

SHRESTHA: You go on. You push. But also, nowadays, young women have support available to them that didn’t used to exist here in Nepal. In my day, you couldn’t turn to women support groups or anything like that. They didn’t exist. I had to fight on my own. But now, other women are all around you.

 

DUNHAM: What about a young woman going into a bank for a loan these days?

 

SHRESTHA: There are ways today that didn’t exist in my time. Also it has been proven that 90% of loans given to women will be returned.

 

DUNHAM: What about the return rate for men?

 

SHRESTHA: I’m not going to say anything. (laughing)

 

 

DUNHAM: How active are you in the hotel business these days?

 

SHRESTHA: I don’t run the Dwarika any more. I have my daughter, my grandson and they, the young people, it’s their turn to run the business. What I am doing now is working with women development.

 

We have an international organization called Business and Professional Women International (BPW). I think you must have heard about it. It is in 87 countries around the world. We are very well known in the UN. We have permanent representatives in different groups of the UN bodies. Every year there is a meeting of what is called the Commission on the Status of Women; and all the INGOs are handled by BPW.

 

And here in Nepal, in 1975 – when no other NGO had yet been allowed to register – we managed to register BPW. And we’ve been working here since then. We have done landmark projects here for women. We opened the first daycare centers. Also, we didn’t have any secretaries in Nepal, so we started secretarial training. We started marketing training here and in the beginning we were so ridiculed: “How can a parent allow a girl to go into marketing?” We created the Family Health Clinic. We started the first employment center for women. We’ve been fighting for women’s rights. It used to be that the income tax for a husband and wife was jointly assessed; now we have been able to separate the assessments and, for a mother, there are additional deductions. We’ve done literacy programs because the majority of women in Nepal were illiterate. We have helped women create groups, which later turned into micro-credit organizations or cooperatives.

 

DUNHAM: Have these last initiatives been successful?

 

SHRESTRA: Yes, some of the women, who once lived in huts, now own buildings. Their children are going to school. And we have created bases outside the Kathmandu Valley in many districts. And we have focused on Dalit areas and Muslim areas.

 

We have also gotten into non-traditional skill training for young women, starting at the age of fifteen or sixteen.

 

DUNHAM: Like what, for instance?

 

SHRESTRA: Mobile phone repairing, bicycle repairing, machine repairing. And we’re going to slowly move into electronic devices skill-related training.

 

And also, we are taking successful micro businesses and pushing them to the next step, which is entrepreneurial. We help them get the loans from the banks, the government offices; we train them how to navigate through the bureaucracy. We monitor the quality of their products.

 

DUNHAM: You’re concentrating on the follow-up.

 

SHRESTRA: Exactly. And the results have been very fine.

 

....................... 

 

 

...For more information about the Federation of Business and Professional Women-Nepal,

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

...For information about Kathmandu Travels & Tours

 

CLICK HERE 

 

...For information about the Dwarika Hotel

 

 

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

 

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

 

 

 

Mikel Dunham's interview with Anuradha Koirala, Nepal's iconic leader against sex trafficking

 

April 19, 2013 

 

It is no exaggeration to say that Anuradha Koirala is the most famous woman in Nepal. Likewise, she and her organization, Maiti Nepal, have garnered respect from all over the world. Among dozens of other awards, she is the recipient of CNN’s 2010 Hero of the Year Award, CLICK HERE

the German UNIFEM Prize, the Queen Sofia Silver Medal Award, the Peace Abbey, and the Courage of Conscience award.

 

Born in 1949 to Colonel Pratap Singh Gurung and Laxmi Gurung, Anuradha Koirala was brought up in a family that regarded providing services for humankind as the best form of work. In 1993, Anuradha founded Maiti Nepal with the goal of providing services for children and women who had been trafficked within and from Nepal for commercial sexual exploitation. Today, Maiti Nepal has three prevention homes, nine transit homes, two hospices and a high school – all devoted to the victims of trafficking. In addition, Maiti Nepal conducts awareness campaigns, community sensitization meetings, rescue operations and apprehension of traffickers, among other regular activities.

 

Two days ago, I interviewed Anuradha in Maiti Nepal’s Kathmandu office. This was my second interview with her, the first being in 2006.

 

 

DUNHAM: Was there a moment or event in your life that made you pursue a career in fighting sex trafficking, or did your interest evolve gradually over a longer period of  time?

 

KOIRALA: It was gradual. Of course, sex trafficking has existed for many, many years. But before the democracy era, because of the political situation, no one in Nepal spoke about the trafficking of girls. No one wanted to raise this question. But after democracy was re-established in Nepal, in 1990, people started talking about the issue. I was not involved in any of the work I am now doing. I was just a teacher. After 1990, many NGOs began to emerge in Nepal. Before that, the political parties ran the only organizations. Also some INGOs and United Nations agencies arrived. And they were speaking about these issues.

 

I used to hear about it, but I was not that satisfied with what I was hearing.

 

DUNHAM: Why not?

 

KOIRALA: Because, actually, the problem of sex trafficking did not lie in the cities. The problem started in the villages. In those days, sex trafficking was in certain villages and certain ethnic groups. Now it is everywhere. Now it is all over the country and involves all groups, castes and creeds, no matter what.

 

I really wanted to do something for the people who were in need, who were suffering from trafficking. That was number one.

 

DUNHAM: Which districts were involved in trafficking when you first became involved?

 

KOIRALA: Sindhupalchok, Nuwakot, Dhading, Makawanpur, Nawalparasi, Udayapur. There were the six districts from where most of the girls were trafficked. But now sex trafficking exists in all 75 districts. And in different forms.

 

Before it was only in one form and one destination: India.

 

This was the situation that deeply affected me and this was the time when I decided that I must work for the benefit of these girls.

 

The second reason that I became interested in this was that I used to go to Pashupati and I saw women begging with three or four children. I was always an inquisitive person. And I would ask these women, “Why are you begging?” Every woman had the same answer: They were all victims of domestic violence. Their husbands had deserted them and married other women. Or the husbands died and the mother-in-laws chased them out of the family.

 

Yes, all the new NGOs, which had mushroomed in Nepal, were talking about domestic violence. But the problem was quite evident to me, right under my nose; I was getting my information from the women who I was talking to on the street.

 

And so the women were on the street. And I asked them, “Why don’t you work instead of beg?” And they all answered, “Who will give us jobs?”

 

And that was very true. Even if I go to apply for a job, the employer will ask me for references. Without a reference, no one will hire you. Hiring an unknown person from the street and bringing her into your household to do housework – it’s a very difficult thing to ask of someone. Tomorrow, what if that woman steals from your house and disappears? That’s the kind of thinking that people had in their heads.

 

DUNHAM: Plus these women had no skills.

 

KOIRALA: Yes, no skills except cooking, washing and all that – domestic work, they knew.

 

Since I was a teacher, I had very little salary coming in: about 7,000 rupees, and I had a son to look after.

 

But I really wanted to reach out to these homeless women. So I asked them, “If I give you a job, will you work and stop begging?” And they said, “Yes”.

 

And during that period when I was talking to the homeless women, I began asking about trafficking and they were aware of it. They thought it was a very big crime.

 

Anyway, I agreed to support them. I supported eight women on the streets by giving them small shops, which are called nanglo pasal. [A nanglo is a very wide, shallow platter made from bamboo; pasal means shop. The nanglo is set up on a stand, in the street, from which the person sells his or her goods – thus a kind of shop.] They would sell, cigarettes, sweets, matches and all those kinds of things. But I made sure that each woman would give me back, every day, two rupees. I didn’t want them to take the whole thing for granted. I explained to them, “If you give me back two rupees, I can support another women.” That’s how I started.

 

It was just like being a teacher. I was teaching them to be self-sufficient.

 

These were the two things that motivated my work on women’s issues.

 

Then, in 1993, I established Maiti Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: Why?

 

KOIRALA: These women had been saying to me, “OK, you have told us so much about trafficking and sexual exploitation. We have daughters, but all day we are busy with the nanglo pasal. In the meantime, they are playing around, here and there. Maybe they could be exploited while we’re busy with our work. Can’t you keep them and make them go to school?

 

I didn’t have the means to do this, but their words touched me. So I decided to start Maiti Nepal because, yes, these girls were prime candidates for sexual exploitation. I started with 10 children.

 

DUNHAM: What was the age group?

 

KOIRALA: 10 to 13-years old. That is the most vulnerable age for exploitation. Actually, ages 6 through 16 are all vulnerable. But 16-year olds are the most numerous. So I started a home for them.

 

Then, in 1994, with the cooperation of the police, lawyers, doctors, nurses, students, I said to myself, “I’m going to devote all my time to spreading awareness about sexual exploitation and trafficking – throughout all the villages.”

 

For example, Sindhupalchok district has 69 VDCs [village development committees], out of which 23 are vulnerable to trafficking. So we went to these 23 VDCs and created awareness campaigns.

 

DUNHAM: What were these programs like?

 

KOIRALA: It’s not like just talking, talking, talking. We put up posters, distribute pamphlets, and sing popular Nepali songs as a means of gathering the people together. And then we disseminate the message. Police accompany us and they explain to the villagers that there are laws against these crimes. Then the lawyers explain what the penalty for trafficking is. Then the nurses tell them about HIV-AIDS. So this is how we go around in all the districts. And gradually, Maiti Nepal became known for these programs. By the time we had brought our program to seven districts, we became very well known in Nepal.

 

So after that, every time a girl was identified as being sexually exploited – even when Indians rescued Nepali girls in Indian borthels – they would send them to Maiti Nepal. That’s how we developed a significant network.

 

DUNHAM: Earlier, you mentioned working with the police. In the beginning, did that interaction create any problems for you and your work?

 

KOIRALA: No, they were very willing to work with us. There was a police superintendent, now retired, who took the initiative to work with us. Even two Inspector Generals of the Police – one after the other – were very helpful and actively involved in our campaign. Frankly, the two groups in Nepal that have been most helpful to Maiti Nepal have been the police force and the judiciary. I don’t know about other areas of their work, but in this instance, they have been very sensitive.

 

To give you one example, for the last eight or nine years, both the police and the judiciary have annually visited Maiti Nepal for lectures and they actually take one class from a Maiti Nepal survivor. The survivor tells them their personal story, and they are truly moved by it. Sometimes they even ask to more stories from other survivors. What I think is that when they hear these stories, they can’t help but think of their own daughters and how horrible it would be if it happen to them.

 

Before, it used to take the judiciary system one to two years to finalize a sexual exploitation case. Now, within fifteen days to three weeks, the case is usually finalized. It’s that fast, now, because of the judiciary’s sensitization to the issue.

 

DUNHAM: When did Maiti Nepal begin their retrieving of girls confined in Indian brothels?

 

KOIRALA: The first time we brought girls back from India, there were 236 girls involved. It was a mass operation in India. When they were returned to Nepal, Maiti Nepal took in the majority of the girls and other NGOs took in the remaining victims.

 

DUNHAM: What year was this?

 

KOIRALA: 1996 or 1997.  But after that event, we started to work on our own. We knew other NGOs in India, but we still had go to India ourselves. That was difficult. I knew only one Indian who could help me. He was quite powerful. He was the Mayor of Mumbai. He was one of the most famous personalities in the state of Maharashtra.

 

Later, I decided we should start our own organization there and we created Maiti Mumbai. The problem was that we had difficulty in registering the organization in India because we were Nepali. But through our coordinator in India, with the help of seven other people, we registered the organization under the name of Rescue Foundation.

 

DUNHAM: So walk me through this. How many Nepali girls are being trafficked?

 

KOIRALA: Even after our awareness campaign, parents were still reluctant to report that their girls were missing. Everybody said that there were 150,000 to 250,000 girls in India who had been trafficked from Nepal. But, when we consulted the police records in the Nepali stations, there were only 1,100 or 1,200 reports of girls trafficked.

 

DUNHAM: Why such a discrepancy?

 

KOIRALA: In those days, the attitude of the police was – if someone reported that their daughter was missing – their attitude was, “Oh, she must have eloped.” It was a huge gender problem. If a girl got kidnapped, it was just assumed that she had eloped.

 

These days the reporting of missing girls is much better. In our awareness program, which is ongoing and done eight times a year – and we now have offices in 29 districts – we really stress the importance of reporting missing children. And the parents now report missing children at a much quicker and at a much higher rate.

 

And here’s something else that might surprise you: Not all the clients are bad.

 

DUNHAM: Define “client”

 

KOIRALA: The client is the man who comes to sexually use a girl after she has been sold to a brothel. Some clients are very good. If the girl cries, he takes the full address of the girl’s home back in Nepal and then he writes to the parents and advises them to go to Maiti Nepal with the entire information as to where the girl is – what brothel, what room in the brothel and the fact that she wants to come back to Nepal. So the parents come to us with the information and a photograph of their daughter and we scan the photograph and send it to our investigating officers in various places in India. The rescue officers pursue the case by going to the address given and, if they find the girl, they rescue her.

 

DUNHAM: But the officers have to be very careful when they enter the brothels, right?

 

KOIRALA: Yes, the officers pose as clients, they go into the brothels with hidden cameras, and in that way we make a positive identification of the girl. And they convince the girl that they are not there to exploit the girl. They say to her, “I’ve heard that you want to go home. I’m here to rescue you.” And if the girl says, “yes”, they go to the police.

 

Even the Indian police have now become very cooperative. They take immediate action when they hear it is a Maiti Nepal operation. It is at this point that the Indians take over. We can’t make the raid because we are Nepali. The Indians go into the brothel and rescue the girls. And from there, they are sent back to Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: How long does it take – from the time your guy goes into the brothel and then goes to the Indian police – for the Indians to respond and rescue the girl?

 

KOIRALA: In one to two hours it’s all finished.

 

DUNHAM: Quickness is crucial. I know from my own work that the girls can get very excited when an undercover “client” comes in. Sometimes the brothel owners become suspicious of the girl’s behavior and they will immediately remove them from the brothel and hide them somewhere else, before the police arrive. [See my report in Cambodia, when I posed as a sex tourist:]

 

ON FREEING SEX SLAVES IN CAMBODIA

 

KOIRALA: Yes, girls are often moved from brothel to brothel. In fact, that very thing happened to us three months ago. There was a fifteen-year-old girl who was trafficked to India and somehow she called her seventeen-year-old sister with a mobile phone number. The sister and some friends came to Maiti Nepal, crying with the information. The girl told her sister that she had been taken to Leh, Ladakh. But by the time the investigators took over, she had already been shifted to a brothel in Meerut, India.

 

And then, only yesterday, she called again. And her sister and friends are due to arrive here, at Maiti Nepal, any minute now. The information we have is that they moved the girl again: According to the report, she is now in Delhi. She called and she must have been using her client’s mobile phone. The sister wrote down that number, we gave it to the investigation officer and right now he is tracing the number. So I think we will get some answers today.

 

DUNHAM: Demographics. It used to be that Nepali girls were trafficked to Bombay or Calcutta or Delhi, but that’s changed, right? Now there are many Indian brothels much closer to the Indian-Nepali border. 

 

KOIRALA: Yes, the destinations, as well as the origin, have changed demographically. As I told you, originally, there were seven districts in which Nepali girls were being trafficked. Now, it exists in all 75 districts of Nepal.

 

Even you, such a great personality – the first place that came to your mind was Mumbai. Everybody in their heads has Mumbai, Mumbai, Mumbai. But that is no longer the case, Mikel. In fact, Mumbai is now absolutely empty of Nepali girls, and the same goes for the number of Indian girls, for that matter. It’s really different now. The brothels have shifted to Nagpur, Pune and other places within the same province.

 

As you said earlier, I have been telling everyone that the destination for girls trafficked from Nepal is getting closer to the Indian-Nepali border. If you go from Bhairahawa, Nepal, there are now brothels in Maharajgung, Utter Pradesh [which is right across the border of Nepal]. If you go from Biratnagar Rani, there are now brothels in Farbeshgung, Bihar [India]. In eastern Nepal, if you go from Kakadvitta, Jhapa district, there are now brothels in Khalpada, Siliguri, India. If you go from Birgunj, there are now brothels in Motihari [India]. So the Indian brothels are coming closer, closer, closer to the Nepali border.

 

But still, the eastern border of Nepal is the most widely used.

 

DUNHAM: Why?

 

KOIRALA: It’s just easier for traffickers there. As for the destinations, they’ve shifted in India to Nagpur, Pune, Meerut – and this really surprised me – Chandigadh and Ludhyana [both cities in the Punjab]. These cities used to be very clean. Even Agra is now a destination. In fact, we just received five girls who had been rescued in Agra. These are the new places coming up.

 

But now, we have trafficking problems with China, too.

 

DUNHAM: China?

 

KOIRALA: That’s right. And the style, the method, the way trafficking is done now has changed. The places, instead of being called brothels, they are now called “dance restaurants”, “cabin restaurants”, “guest houses”…

 

And you know very well that no matter what they call them, they are still brothels.

 

What’s the definition of trafficking? If you are forced into prostitution, that is trafficking. Children under the age of sixteen– even with or without their consent – if they are used for sexual purposes, that is trafficking.

 

And the 10-year conflict in Nepal compounded the problem. So many people fled their villages and came to the cities in search of safety. And the children of these displaced people were lured into these dance restaurants, cabin restaurants or guesthouses and prostitution flourished in these places during those ten years – in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar, Birgunj, Bhairahawa. And the children worked in these places but they were also sexually exploited.

 

And the dance restaurants, etc., became the source for traffickers who were taking girls to China. In China, there are similar dance restaurants, cabin restaurants and red-light areas.

 

DUNHAM: What about the Nepali border police next to the China border?

 

KORIALA: We have border police, customs, and an immigration office in place. But Nepali citizens crossing into China get a one-day pass. And this is a problem for curbing sex trafficking. So many people cross the border for shopping and they come back to Nepal the same day. The problem is that the authorities, who issue the passes, don’t check to see if those Nepalis come back on the same day or not. Because they don’t have to give the pass back, once they return. Illegally, the trafficked child ends up in China for months and months without anyone knowing. They may return to Nepal months later.

 

In a way, the poorly monitored Chinese border is just as open for traffickers as the Indian border.

 

DUNHAM: Let’s return to the Indian border for a moment. I know that Maiti Nepal has set up checkpoints – intervention outposts – along the border to watch out for traffickers.

 

 

KOIRALA: There are 26 official routes to cross from Nepal into India. Of those, Maiti Nepal has 10 checkpoints. We work closely with the police at these checkpoints. The girls who are working at the checkpoints are girls who, themselves, are survivors of sex trafficking. We put them there because they know the mode of trafficking.

 

Of course, sometimes there are problems because we are independent from the state. For instance, if one our girls identifies a potential trafficker and notifies the nearby police, asking them to interrogate the suspect, we, at the same time interrogate the girl. We are certain that this is a case of trafficking. But sometimes the police will say, “No, no, no, no. This is not a trafficker.”

 

You can’t put all of the police in one basket. Out of a thousand policemen, one may be bad. When we find such a policeman, we notify the higher authorities and that policeman is immediately transferred away from the border.

 

That’s why I defend the police: Most of them are very sensitive to the issue.

 

DUNHAM: The policeman is transferred? Not fired?

 

KOIRALA:  No. They may be sent to somewhere very remote.

 

And now, we have a presence along the Chinese border as well.

 

Unfortunately, there are so many unofficial border crossings that we can’t cover them all. The Nepali border is very porous. Especially along the Indian border there are so many constraints to monitoring: not human resources but financial resources.

 

However, we have a program in small villages called Safety Net.

 

DUNHAM: The Safety Net programs are located in the Terai, along the border?

 

KOIRALA: Yes, and we spread awareness that if the villagers see a girl leaving with a boy, they must be intervened, because this could very well be sex-trafficking in the making.

 

DUNHAM: I first interviewed you in 2006. Since then, what has changed in the world of sex trafficking?

 

KORIALA: The guises, the lures of sex traffickers have changed. Now they advertise for foreign employment in the Middle East and other places, which can be big traps for naïve girls. The girls think they are going to foreign countries to become housemaids, dancers, saloon people. But that’s not what really happens.

 

Can you imagine, there are girls now being trafficked to Kyrgyzstan! Right now we have a girl that was in Kyrgyzstan. She was beaten and burned on her inner thighs and was really sick when she arrived at Maiti Nepal. But now she’s better and the criminal who trafficked her has been captured. And just last week, we intercepted four girls who were on their way to Kyrgyzstan, taken by the same person. So we are filing a case against him today!

 

Tanzania! Girls are being sent to Tanzania as dancers. And if you look at these girls, you would guess that they are educated and well off. They have ipads, iphones, high heel shoes, dyed hair, hair extensions that are very expensive – the traffickers do all these things here for the girls before they are sent to Tanzania or Goa [India]. The traffickers spend about120,000 rupees on each girl [approximately $1500]. But when the girls get to Tanzania or Goa or wherever, their salaries are deducted from the money that was originally spent on them. They get nothing there.

 

DUNHAM: What about the false advertisements for jobs on the internet for girls?

 

KOIRALA: And not only the internet; the newspapers! The advertisements say, “WALK-IN INTERVIEW! Get a job immediately!” And the traffickers advertise salaries up to 25,000 rupees per month [approximately $350]. But when the girls go to the “hiring office”, they are seized by traffickers and sent somewhere.

 

I have been fighting for so long about this. Everyone has a right to have mobility. Everyone has the right to work. But when you take a girl from a rural village and move her straight to a big city and, then from there, straight to the Middle East or Krygyzstan or Iran or Israel – do you think that these girls are going to be in good circumstances, even if they aren’t being trafficked for sex work?

 

Earlier, you pointed out that these girls have no skills. Imagine what happens to them in foreign countries where they have been hired as housemaids. They’ve never used an electric iron, they’ve never seen a vacuum cleaner or an electric washing machine and they don’t speak the local language. They’re not trained for any of this.

 

What I’ve been saying is that both the receiving and sending countries should have an agreement about the necessity of making sure that the girls have learned all these skills before they are sent to a foreign country. We are not saying to stop sending girls abroad. There are few opportunities for them here. But we’ve been blocked by the authorities who say, “Oh, this is safe migration.”

 

What is safe migration? I’m telling you, Mikel, everyday one or two or three girls return from foreign countries – the planes fly in here at night – and they have gone mad. They get off the plane with only one plastic bag. And when we look at their passports, we see that they have been working in the foreign country for two years and yet they have nothing to show for it. They have gone mad. They come back beaten, bruises all over their bodies. Some of the girls don’t even remember where they came from.

 

It can take months to track down where they came from. It can take up to a half a year for their mental stability to get better. In the meantime, who is going to give us money to take care of these girls? We are personally doing it ourselves.

 

I can give you an example. There was a press conference recently about eight girls who had just returned from the Middle East empty-handed. And the journalists asked them, “There are girls who come back with money, why not you?” And the girls answered, “Maybe some girls are lucky, but we couldn’t tolerate what we were made to do. We thought we were going to a job, that’s why we went, but it turned out to be something else.”

 

These girls were being sexually exploited by the employer, the employer’s son, the son’s friends, employer’s friends – they were forced to have clients 20-25 times a day…the same number of clients-per-day as girls in Indian brothels.

 

DUNHAM: How many girls has Maiti Nepal rescued?

 

KOIRALA: 22,000 girls so far – since 1994. Everyday, we intercept four to five girls whose traffickers are trying to get them through the border points. Sometimes, we manage to capture the traffickers. We have managed to convict 686 traffickers. They are sentenced to jail terms from 12 to 35 years.

 

DUNHAM: Of those convicted, how many are women traffickers?

 

KOIRALA: About 30% of the traffickers are women.

 

 

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For more information about Maiti Nepal’s activities

 

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Mikel Dunham’s interview with Mandira Sharma: Protecting Rule of Law on behalf of abused women in Nepal

 

April 15, 2013

 

Depending on whom you talk to in Nepal, Mandira Sharma, founder of Advocacy Forum-Nepal, is either an enlightened frontrunner of women’s rights, or a strident uber-feminist, who threatens the male-dominated legal system.

 

When I met her for this interview in Budanilakantha, I sensed determination but not stridency. There is will in her voice and a forward-marching compactness to her thought process, but her timbre is decidedly gentle, as if to suggest that she has been spending as much time consoling women as she has been fighting for their rights.

 

In the event, the detainees' stories that Mandira has brought into public view illustrate a whole sequence of common illegal practices: flaunted habeas corpus, torture, falsified evidence, isolation from families, and lack of information about the right to counsel. For women detainees especially, the abuses are compounded by instances of sexual harassment.

 

In 2001 she founded the Advocacy Forum with other defense lawyers, all committed to securing the rule of law and justice to all Nepalis, regardless of gender.

 

 

 

DUNHAM: Where did you grow up?

 

SHARMA: I was born in the western part of Nepal, the district called Baglung. It was somewhat remote when I grew up. We didn’t have an accessible motor road, which made a huge difference.

 

DUNHAM: Did you come from a farming family?

 

SHARMA: Yes, basically farmers.

 

DUNHAM: How big was your village?

 

SHARMA: Now it is growing, because it has become some kind of urban town. But at that time it was a small village.

 

DUNHAM: Did you have siblings?

 

SHARMA: Yes, I had two brothers and one sister. One brother died at quite an early age.

 

DUNHAM: As a young girl, what were your expectations? What kind of life did you think you would have? Did your parents support you in going to school? Or was marriage their main priority?

SHARMA: The expectations for a girl in my village was to learn how to do household chores and to look after others. Education was OK up to a certain level; up to the eighth grade. People felt that, as a girl, you needed to be literate, but not too educated. It wasn’t necessary for a woman. It was a waste.

 

But we kids were lucky enough in our family. Basically it was my mother who fought within the family to send us to school. Fortunately, all of us had opportunities to continue our educations beyond eighth grade.

 

DUNHAM: Was there a secondary school in your village?

 

SHARMA: Yes, there was, but after we completed our School-Leaving Certificate (SLC), we had to choose the subject for our higher studies. At that point, we didn’t have many options to choose from in the village. For example, I wanted to study medicine at that time. I concentrated on science and math, which were required in order for you to be eligible to go attend science college. But it was not available in the village. And my family was not in a position to send me alone to other towns – Pokhara or Kathmandu.

 

In both cases, the towns were too far away and we had no family members living there, so sending a girl child on her own to another town wasn’t going to happen.

 

DUNHAM: How old were you then?

 

SHARMA: Sixteen. I had no choice but to change my subject. Law. Of course, I was not that happy because law was not something I wanted to pursue. It was my mother who encouraged me to study law, saying that “there are very few female lawyers in this country; may you contribute more.” But I was very upset that I was not able to pursue science. Anyway, I studied law because that was what was available to me.

 

DUNHAM: What about your father? Was he hesitant to see you continue your studies?

 

SHARMA: My father didn’t see that much value in sending girl children to get a higher education. He had seen many women, who even though they were educated, had to spend all their time at home and that is what he use to tell me. He didn’t prevent us from continuing our education but I think in his mind he thought it really wasn’t that necessary. He didn’t encourage us. And I think he was also scared that something might happen to us if we went away to school.

 

DUNHAM: Was it in law school that you first became interested in women’s issues?

 

SHARMA: No, it was before that. Even growing up, I was aware of women’s issues. For example, my older brother: When he completed his SLC, he went to Kathmandu for further studies. Also my other brother [cousin?] was planning to go to school in another town. And I felt there was a restriction on me just because I was a girl. So I had a sense of what discrimination was at an early age. I resented that.

 

But then came along the democratic movement of 1990. There was a big change going on in Nepal at that time, even in my district. I saw many of our teachers being arrested because they were pro-democracy. And even before that, I saw some of my family members being arrested, detained –

 

DUNHAM: On what grounds?

 

SHARMA: On the grounds that they had different political ideologies. At that time, you weren’t supposed to have any other ideology than the ongoing Panchyat [the political system of Nepal in effect from 1962 until 1990, formulated by King Mahendra after overthrowing the democratically elected government and dissolving the parliament in 1960. The political system was a party-less "guided" democracy in which the people could elect their representatives, while real power remained in the hands of the monarch.]

 

DUNHAM: Was you family affiliated with any particular pro-democratic party?

 

SHARMA: At that time, I didn’t really make that distinction. It was either a multi-party system or the Panchyat system. This was prior to 1990.

 

In 1990, I saw that many people in the multi-party democracy movement were being arrested. I was just starting college. I also heard a lot of stories about torture, while people were in detention. At that time, I had not had the opportunity to talk to any of those torture victims, but I was aware of that situation.

 

But within that period, I completed a Certificate Level of the Law. [Proficiency Certificate Level – equivalent, in America, to a high school diploma.] A bachelor’s degree was not available in that village, so, if I wanted to continue my education I had to go to Pokhara or come to Kathmandu.  So it became a family issue once again: How could they send a daughter alone? I was too young, not grown up. There was real tension within the family.

 

 

 

 

 

So that’s why I got married. Because I wanted to pursue my education and my family thought it was safe for them and OK for me to leave the house if I got married.

 

DUNHAM: For you, marriage was your key to freedom.

 

SHARMA: For me, yes.

 

DUNHAM: That’s not always the case.

 

SHARMA: Exactly, but for me, in my case, I really felt a sense of freedom when I got married.

 

DUNHAM: When did you move to Kathmandu?

 

SHARMA: 1991.

 

DUNHAM: And at that time, Kathmandu was a hotbed of political activity.

 

SHARMA: That’s right. And I think the 1990s movement was very successful. There were a lot of political detainees, who were released. And at that time, I joined a group that provided medical treatment for those torture victims who had been released from detention centers.

 

DUNHAM: What was the name of that group?

 

SHARMA: Center for Victims of Torture.

 

DUNHAM: Is it still around?

 

SHARMA: It is still around. There were medical professionals in the group and they provided treatment and my job was to document the stories of the recently released detainees.

 

DUNHAM: Were these people also seeking legal justice?

 

SHARMA: No. At that time, there was no legal framework for seeking justice. The detainees were released and then they were free and that was, at the time, all the justice they were going to get.

 

But what I realized was that torture destroys a person. There were people who I had known prior to torture, for example, who came out of prison with completely different personalities. Not only did the torture destroy the person, but it destroyed the victim’s family as well.

 

That’s when I really developed a determination to help people pursue justice and, hopefully, to prevent those sorts of things from happening in the future. I worked with that group for around ten years. I visited many prisons in Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: In and out of the Kathmandu Valley?

 

SHARMA: Oh yes, I visited more that 40 districts. And I was especially looking at women prisoners. When they got into prison, there was no one to follow up on their cases. They didn’t under stand the court language. I met a lot of women who were tortured into making forced confessions. There were women who had served their sentences and were still in prison for more years than what they were sentenced for. There were women with their young kids in prison. There were a lot of women with psychological problems. There were women who were committing suicide while in prison. And most of the stories were not actually known to anyone. And the stories were never recorded. The plight of these women and how the justice system was dealing with these women was not really discussed.

 

DUNHAM: What about the ostracism factor? Did their families cut them off?

 

SHARMA: Very much so. Not only were the women cut off but their children were ostracized as well. In some villages we found that the children were treated as untouchables because their mothers had committed a crime.

 

DUNHAM: So these women were really alone and on their own.

 

SHARMA: Really alone. We also found that when it came to men in prison, their women were very supportive of them. They would try to help their husbands. They tried to find lawyers. In the meantime, they also maintained their homes and took care of their children. They waited for their husbands to return.

 

DUNHAM: In other words, the male prisoner doesn’t usually have to worry about his children because he knows his family will take care of them.

 

SHARMA: Yes, as apposed to the women. The women are on their own. No support.

 

There was and there still is a huge gender discrimination on this issue.

 

I also worked with Bhutanese refugees, especially women who had just come from Bhutan. They had been forced to leave their country. Many of them were sexually abused. Terrible stories. Torture. So we helped to set up some sort of support group within the camps.

 

DUNHAM: When did you work in these camps?

 

SHARMA: Between 1992 and 1996.

 

DUNHAM: What was your role there?

 

SHARMA: My role was to document the individual cases: to record how they were treated, who did what and when, that sort of thing. And then I would refer the cases to the appropriate service providers: NGOs, medical professionals. And because there was no provision for counseling at that time, we coordinated with a number of groups who could train women. For example, the Bhutanese women didn’t feel comfortable sharing their stories to anyone within their own community, so they were suffering in silence…when in fact there were a lot of the women who were going through the same problems.

 

So we tried to bring all of these women together.

 

DUNHAM: Group therapy?

 

SHARMA: Exactly. They shared their stories with one another. We also assisted them in their medical treatment. Many of them had medical problems.

 

DUNHAM: Since then, what has been your major focus in work?

 

SHARMA: In 1999, I decided to go the U.K. for furthering my studies in law. I got a scholarship for my masters in human rights law. It was at the University of Essex. And that course of study really broadened my horizon. Back in Nepal, I had been working in the field and I had ten years of experience with all kinds of atrocities happening in the country. But somehow I felt that there was a missing link between what we did nationally and what avenues were available on the international level in addressing the victims. How could I use that as a tool to trigger change in my country? These were the kinds of things I questioned and learned about while I was in Essex.

 

And when I came back from Essex, in 2001, I decided to establish a forum, which is now called Advocacy Forum. The idea behind it was to prevent atrocities from happening.

 

Let me explain. When working with victims, it is very important to provide medical treatment, legal counseling, psycho-socio counseling, etc, to those who suffer. Fine. But how do we prevent the atrocities from happening? That was why I wanted to create Advocacy Forum. The main objective of this organization was to go to the police detention centers and to document what really happened there. And because of our presence there, we could prevent the atrocities that were happening. That’s what I planned to do.

 

At that time, however, detention centers were closed to the outside world. The police wouldn’t allow anyone to go in there.

 

A distinction needs to be made here. There are prisons, which are relatively open; you have access to them. But detentions center, where you are sent prior to being move to prisons – and depending on the crime, you could be detained from 25 to 30 days – those are the places and that is the phase where and when people are tortured or ill-treated.

 

And that’s where we wanted to intervene. And it wasn’t just police detention centers. It was also military detention centers. Remember, the 10-year conflict was at its height. There was a state of emergency. People were arrested and detained by the military as well. We had no access to military detention centers, but sometimes, the military would transfer people to the police detention centers, and that’s when we began to hear what was going on within military cells.

 

DUNHAM: But how did you break through and get access to the police detention centers?

 

SHARMA: It was very difficult. But I found a law to help us out. For example, the constitution that we then had said that every accused and detained person had the right to consult a lawyer. So we used that as a constitutional tool to challenge the police. We told them, “You have to ensure that every single detainee has access to a lawyer. Either you ensure it or allow us to provide free legal assistance.”

 

Yes, we were there to provide legal assistance, but at the same time we wanted to see how people were treated there. Still, the police were reluctant to help so we brought a case to the Supreme Court. And that’s how we negotiated our access to the detentions centers.

 

At that time, the legal system was still pretty primitive, I would say. Lawyers, themselves, we’re not prepared to go along with our demands. They thought that a lawyer’s job did not start in the detention centers; their job began only when the case went to court. That’s how the bar association regarded their role.

 

We responded to the lawyers by saying, “No, no, that’s too late if you are only conferring with your client after their case goes to court. The papers and evidence is prepared while the person is in detention. It is a vulnerable period for any detainee. That is the time when a detainee’s access to a lawyer is crucial.”

 

But there was no system like that in place. We were challenged by a number of lawyers, including the bar association, telling us that what we were doing was unethical: “You are reaching out to the client. That is unprofessional because the client is supposed to come to you, seeking your support.” That’s the way the lawyers thought the client-lawyer relationship should be.

 

DUNHAM: Absurd.

 

SHARMA: Yes. So we responded by asking, “How can you believe that a person locked up in detention has the ability to come to you, seeking your help? How can they speak to you if you don’t first reach to them for help?”

 

DUNHAM: Were there any women lawyers at that time?

 

SHARMA: Very few. Very few but they weren’t sympathetic with our view. What we were doing was political work: challenging the police and the state, going out to talk to the detainees, many of whom were political detainees – arrested for supporting the Maoists, or accused of being a terrorist. Yes, there were women lawyers taking cases to court, but I didn’t see any of them supporting our detention issue.

 

Ten years later, I believe that the lawyers’ primitive perception has changed.

 

We were also able, after the Jana Andolan II [the 19-Day Revolution in 2006] to change the constitutional language in the interim constitution. Today, the interim constitution states that all detainees have the right to legal counsel beginning with their arrest.

 

DUNHAM: Important distinction.

 

SHARMA: A very important distinction. So over a period of time, the understanding of the legal community has changed.

 

DUNHAM: What are the biggest challenges you are now facing?

 

SHARMA: One of my biggest strengths is my documentation. This documentation is not just limited to cases of torture. In 2001, during the 10-year conflict up to 2006, we were doing lots of monitoring and documentation of human rights violation cases. I concentrated on the five categories of violations: torture, extra-judicial killings, sexual abuse, disappearances and the use of children in armed forces.

 

Initially, I had an office in Kathmandu, which was later expanded into three other regions. Now my organization is in 16 different districts. We started with just a few people, including some members of my family because we needed all the help we could get. Most people didn’t want to take the risks we were taking. But now we have a big team of lawyers – around 100 people on our team.

 

During the conflict, we documented thousands of cases of torture, hundreds of cases of rape, disappearances, killings – and we were documenting cases on both sides – the state and the armed groups. But what really haunts me, every day, is that despite all the cases that we have documented, despite all the victims who have come to court, despite the activities of the National Human Rights Commission – all of these institutions – not even one case has been prosecuted.

 

DUNHAM: Not one?

 

SHARMA: Not one.

 

 

Even those cases that have occurred since the 10-year conflict, if these crimes were committed by the political ones who are in power, the powerful people always get impunity. The law doesn’t really protect everyone equally. People in Nepal are not equal before the law. There are certain people who are always above the law.

 

Remember, the conflict and everything that followed occurred, in part, because people wanted to be treated equally and wanted the elimination of discrimination. But despite all of the promises, we have not been able to bring those powerful perpetrators of crimes to justice. That bothers me a lot. And this is what my organization is now concentrating on – especially in the case of sexual violence against women, rape of women in detention, rape of women in Maoist camps…we have not been able to make anyone accountable.

 

DUNHAM: Even though the press has been covering it more and more?

 

SHARMA: Yes. Despite the press, there has been no prosecution. It’s not because victims don’t want prosecution, it’s not because activists are not gathering the evidence – it’s because the state protects the criminals, not the victims. That’s where are biggest challenge lies: How can we break that cycle of impunity in Nepal?

 

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For more information about Advocacy Forum-Nepal link:

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Mikel Dunham’s interview with Gita Upreti: A Nepali Woman who rose through the police ranks and served with the UN peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan

 

April 11, 2013

 

DUNHAM: The last time we met was in Gorkha, several months after the 2008 elections. That interview covered your life from early childhood to becoming Gorkha’s first female Deputy Police Superintendent. Basically, I’d like to pick up from where that interview left off, because you have done many interesting things since then. [CLICK HERE for First Interview with Gita Upreti.] Where did you go after your transfer from Gorkha?

 

UPRETI: I came back here, to Kathmandu headquarters in the training department. Specifically, I returned to the Women and Children Service Center.

 

DUNHAM: Did you believe that improvements had been made for women, since you left Kathmandu?

 

UPRETI: After the election there was a period of great hope for women. Women were expecting more improvement. They were looking for opportunity. They felt that the door was open. Social awareness of women’s issues, among women, had also improved. They were more aware of their rights. It was really encouraging. 197 women parliamentarians had become members of the CA [Constituent Assembly]. And in the early months after the election, we were all excited. The CA brought forward many issues about women. They talked about social inclusion. They were talking about women representation within the leadership and the decision-making level. The CA even brought a few women into the leadership.

 

Even within the police, they brought a few women into the decision-making level. Based on positive discrimination, they got promoted. 

 

All of that was good. But you know, the continuation of sustainable development is more important. And the continuation of development wasn’t forthcoming. I mean, OK, just having a few women in positions of importance in the CA really didn’t add up to a significant change. That was my personal feeling.

 

DUNHAM: A lot of talk but no action?

 

UPRETI: Yes. It was like the male leaders were saying, “We’ve given you some good positions now don’t interfere – be happy what we have given you.”

 

DUNHAM: And what about the police department?

 

UPRETI: Yes, if you are talking about within the police department, the answer is yes: There were significant changes for the better. When I first worked at the Women and Children Center, the men could and would say, “Hey, you and your women’s rights are talking rubbish.” Now, everybody likes to talk about gender issues, gender-based violence. If the high-ranking officer doesn’t know about the issue, they will look ignorant. So now they think, “I need to talk about gender issues to look professional.” That’s how it is now. It is qualified improvement. But we still have a long way to go.

As I said, when I came back from Gorkha, I was involved with developing training programs. I said, “Why don’t we change the curriculum? The times have changed.”

 

DUNHAM: What specific changes were you advocating?

 

UPRETI: There are three different levels of training curriculum in our department. One is for police constables, one for assistant sub-inspectors and one is for inspectors. I was stationed at the training directorate so I did have access to decision-making. And I advocated a new comprehensive curriculum that talked about how to deal with the female and child victims of gender-based violence, like domestic violence, sexual abuse, child exploitation and juvenile justice.

 

Under my direction, a team was formed to review that curriculum. And finally the issue of women and children was included. And I’m happy to say that that’s now in the curriculum. It’s quite extensive.

 

DUNHAM: What about the number of policewomen? Has it increased in Nepal? Female victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse need to have woman officers to help them. In Gorkha, I remember you talking about how awful it was for victims to have to report their abuse cases to male officers, who did not sympathize, who did not believe and who often made the women feel shame.

 

UPRETI: Yes, at that time, the Women and Children Service Center was not incorporated into the structure of the  police system. But now it is included. Now it is a permanent part of the system. I also trained male officers, which is very important, in order to sensitize them to women’s issues. But to answer your question, out of the entire new recruitment within the police force, 45% of the positions are reserved for various marginalized groups. Within that 45%, 20% are women. That’s the mandate. But when you break it down, still only 9% of the new recruits are women.

 

It’s a big change, but…..

 

DUNHAM: Today, how many women inspectors are in the police force?

 

UPRETI: Not more than twenty. And most of them are in the Kathmandu Valley. We have 75 districts in Nepal. So you can see that women are not properly represented in the higher ranks.

 

DUNHAM: How long were you here in Kathmandu with the Women and Children Service Center??

 

UPRETI: One year. After that, I went to Darfur, Sadan. It was 2009-2010.

 

DUNHAM: You went as a Deputy Superintendent of Police under the umbrella of the United Nations?

 

UPRETI: Yes.

 

DUNHAM: What was it like being a woman officer in Darfur?

 

UPRETI: (Laughing). It was quite a shock in the beginning. I was assigned as a gender officer. We used to conduct “confidence-building patrols”.

 

DUNHAM: What did that mean?

 

UPRETI: Basically, we were there to explain to the locals why we were there as UN police. Later, I got a new job as Reform and Restructuring officer. It was about restructuring or changing what the local police thought about police work.

 

You have to understand: The people of Darfur have fought their whole lives. Even the local police had no idea what real police work was. What does rule of law mean? They didn’t know. What about human rights? They didn’t know. What is community policing? They don’t know. Even, what is investigation? They didn’t know. The local police were in an extremely preliminary stage of development.

 

I was in charge of four branches: human rights, the community policing section, the gender section and coordination and cooperation between the local police and the UN force. It allowed us to have meetings, trainings, conferences, and things like that.

 

DUNHAM: Was it a challenge between the two groups in terms of sharing information with one another?

 

UPRETI: Oh! In the beginning, the people would not talk to you! You are a police officer! They saw the UN police as the enemy. It was as if they thought we were going in there to destroy their entire culture, the religion and the entire system within which they operated in daily life. Live there is ordered around the teachings of the Koran. That is the real law.

 

And it was part of our duty to bridge that gap of understanding – to build trust. Obviously, without trust, you can’t do anything. We were strangers trying not to be strangers.

 

But, again, the most important challenge for us was that Darfur was and is totally under Sharia Law [the moral code and religious law of Islam].

 

 

DUNHAM: A foreign female police officer dealing with Muslims: That must have been doubly or triply challenging.

 

UPRETI: Exactly. Oh my god. I have never had to work so hard to build rapport with other people. I went with my fellow UN police officers to the community so that I could talk to the locals. But the community refused to talk to me because I was a woman. I was embarrassed. At that time, I was the only female officer among the group. And in that group, the men were from many different countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Gambia, and Kenya. And they, my fellow officers, hesitated to talk to me, too, because I was a female.

 

But I kept going back to the communities and, eventually, I was able to build some rapport. And after one or two months, it was really nice to work with them. They welcomed me at their training academy. And finally I said, “Can we now conduct some training that you like?” And their answer was, “Well, maybe yes, maybe no. We have to talk the training director.”

 

Another obstacle was that they were very conscious about rank and file. Higher-ranking officers would not talk to lower-ranking officers. It was very rigid. If there was a female officer, they would not speak to you. They were very concerned about protocol. And we had to maintain that protocol.

 

Later, we conduct a human rights training. Also, we spoke about investigation, community policing and gender policing.

 

Eventually, though, we were able to coordinate with them. We were able to form a women’s police network. At every one of those training, we brought with us women police officers. In the beginning, at the academy, they said, “Oh, our women officers are not that interested in having a training.” But we told them to bring in the women anyway. As it turned out, the female officers were so smart and they, the Sudanese policewomen connected with the UN policewomen network quite well. We finally could talk to them informally as well as formally. It was really, really nice at the end.

 

DUNHAM: Did you visit the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps?

 

UPRETI: Oh yes. The women in the camps used to come up to us and feel our arms to see if we were really women. Oh my god, they couldn’t believe that we were female officers. It really excited them. On the other hand, if there were males around they wouldn’t speak to us. Even if you were a male officer with the UN, the men in the IDPs would not allow the women to speak. At first we didn’t understand. When we came, they would go inside and wouldn’t come out.

 

So we told them, “We are females, like you. You can tell us the problems you are having here in the camps.” So we women police officers went in a group, without men, to talk to the women in the camps.

 

And eventually, we made real headway. I was able to train the women in the camps to become community volunteers. They could wear jackets, patrol at night. If something happened they would call us and we would send help to address the problem.

 

DUNHAM: The women were the ones policing the camps?

 

UPRETI: Most of the volunteers were men but there were also a few women volunteers. Still, just having a few women involved was really something.

 

DUNHAM: You were in Sudan for two years?

 

UPRETI: Fourteen months.  I returned to Kathmandu and was posted at headquarters, this time in the legal section, which looks after the code of conduct. Then I got promoted to Superintendent of Police (SP) and became the first woman SP to head a district.

 

DUNHAM: The Kavre District.

 

UPRETI: That’s right.

 

DUNHAM: Just this week in the local papers was a story about several rape cases in Kavre. Is the violence against women in Kavre any greater than cases in other districts, or is it more or less typical of other districts?

 

UPRETI: Kavre is not typical. It has two highways and a higher rate of criminality than most other districts. Also, because of the highways, the criminals use Kavre as a transit point. They can go to Tibet-China to the north using the Araniko highway. And to the south is the Dhulikhel-Sindhuli highway, which leads into the Terai and the Indian Border

 

DUNHAM: When you say transit point, are you talking about the movement of drugs, or sex trafficking or other illegal products?

 

UPRETI: I’m talking about illegal trade in wildlife, red sandalwood, even gold. When I was transferred to Kavre, no one but me believed that gold was being moved through the district. Nobody believed that gold was coming illegally from China. But under my watch, I caught nine kilos of gold, coming from China to Kathmandu. It was an historic seizure that I made.

 

DUNHAM: Was it gold bullion?

 

UPRETI: Yes. And I got into a lot of trouble – a lot of pressure – for capturing that gold…as if I had made a mistake. But my procedure was totally correct, thorough and I was very personally involved in making that arrest and confiscation.

 

DUNHAM: How? How did you go about that?

 

UPRETI: I personally checked hundreds of vehicles on the highway at night, myself. It was very unusual for a Superintendent of Police to go out into the field and do that kind of work. But I did. I got some information that something was coming from China into Nepal. So I stood in the middle of the road at night with my colleagues. A male SP would have just sent someone else to go and check. But I didn’t trust anyone and I said, “I have to go there myself.” I started checking cars at midnight. At the checkpoint, I stopped and searched every car, until I found the car with gold in. The driver was Nepali

 

DUNHAM: I hope the driver is now behind bars.

 

UPRETI: Yes, he must be. But this in Nepal: You never know.

 

DUNHAM: You don’t know where he is?

 

UPRETI: You never know.

 

DUNHAM: Let’s talk about other contraband: the wildlife and the sandalwood. It is going in the opposite direction: from Nepal to China. Right?

 

UPRETI: Right. After I took over in Kavre I was really surprised. It was not just tigers and sandalwood. Everything was going to China. You can’t imagine. Wildlife, human hair, sunakhari [rare orchids] , many kinds of herbs…I confiscated 25 kilos of rare orchids one time!

 

DUNHAM: What about sex trafficking?

 

UPRETI: You would be surprised. You always hear about girls being trafficked to India. But it’s not just India. It’s also in China. Have you heard about it?

 

DUNHAM: Yeh, I’ve heard about it. There’s a big market for girls in China because of the “one-child” policy, which has been in place in China for many years. Since parents can only have one child, they often abort female fetuses until they get a son. So now, many years later, there are all these young men who don’t have any women to marry. When I was working undercover in Cambodia in 2004, raiding brothels that housed under-aged girls, many of those girls were actually on their way to China to be sold to men there. I know all about it. But I didn’t know they were being move through Nepal to China. [For the story of my undercover work in Cambodia, CLICK HERE.

 

UPRETI: I see.

 

DUNHAM: Is Kavre district an origin district or simply a transit district for illegally trafficked girls?

 

UPRETI: Both. Girls do originate from Kavre and Sindhupalchowk districts. Some of the girls come from the Tamang community…not all, but they are certainly an easy target for traffickers. Girls are a very big market in Khasa [Nepali-Tibetan border town just inside the China border.] Once the girls are transported to China, they are not allowed to return to Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: As SP, have you caught traffickers in action in Kavre?

 

UPRETI: No.

 

DUNHAM: What about domestic violence in Kavre?

 

UPRETI: It’s very high – much higher than most other districts. Kavre is developed and adjacent to Kathmandu. The people are educated. The land is fertile. 50% of the vegetables coming to Kathmandu come from Kavre.

 

Still, the domestic violence and suicide rate is very high.

 

DUNHAM: Are the rates going up because there is an actually increase, or is it more a matter of the incidents being reported at a high rate?

 

UPRETI: Exactly. The cases were always there but they weren’t reported…until recently. There was no system or access for women. Now there is a Woman and Children Service Center. Now, there is an actual physical location where women can go to report. That makes a big difference.

 

DUNHAM: Are the women committing suicide in Kavre of reproductive age or does suicide occur in all ages?

 

UPRETI: All ages, even seventy-five-year old women.

 

DUNHAM: What’s the most common way for a woman in Nepal to commit suicide?

 

UPRETI: Poison is the most common and hanging is in second place. Oh my god, when I went to Kavre and saw the data, I was shocked. There were certain villages in which the suicide rate was much higher than in other villages. So I targeted these villages and conducted an awareness campaign. And the communities were so happy when they realized that they had a Women and Children Service Center available to them. They said, “There is someone who will listen to us, now. Instead of people just blaming us for being victims of abuse.”

 

DUNHAM: It’s nice to have a place to go to where you won’t be judged.

 

UPRETI: Yes.

 

DUNHAM: Are there drop-in centers in Kavre, where women will be safe from their abusers?

 

UPRETI: Yes, there are safe houses.

 

DUNHAM: How long are the women allowed to stay there?

 

UPRETI: Initially they can stay for one month and then they can extend it for another fifteen days. But it’s still not enough. The Domestic Violence Act is not a strong enough law to truly protect the women.

 

DUNHAM: Especially if the woman has to leave the safe house after only one month – with no place to go but back to the house where her husband, who beat her in the first place, is waiting for her.

 

UPRETI: Yes, it’s very sad. We all agree that the Domestic Violence Act was a good first step, but it is not enough.

 

DUNHAM: I’ve heard that one of the problems is the judicial system, once the case has been filed. The women go to court, time and again, only to be told that the hearing has been postponed again and again. And eventually the postponements simply wear the women down and they drop the case. The legal system lets them down.

 

UPETRI: Yes, and I’ll give you an example. A nine-year-old girl was raped in Kavre. The case was filed. The police took all the proper statements and followed proper proceedure. Then we sent those documents to the court. But, still that case has not gone to trial.

 

DUNHAM: When was the case filed?

 

UPETRI: Two or three years! Now, she doesn’t understand what has happened to her. When her case finally goes to trial, she will be thirteen or fourteen, and it will be very painful for her. She will be stigmatized. It’s terrible. If her case could have been heard immediately, when she was still nine, it would have been much easier on her. But, no, she’s had to go back to court, time and time again.

 

Think about it! Let’s say that it finally comes to trial after four years, what effect will than have on her? She’ll be fourteen. A teenager! And she’ll have to go through the entire rape incident again. To relive her rape victimization! She will be re-victimized! She might decide that “the rape was my mistake.” And think what it will do to her, as a teenager, to have to expose herself in front of the court. Wouldn’t it have been much easier on her if she had had the trial at nine? By now, all of that would be in the past.

 

DUNHAM: What about incest cases?

 

UPRETI: There are now many more cases reported. Now, the child abuse cases and the resultant punishment of the perpetrator are very high.

 

In terms of punishment, if it is a rape case, the man is sentenced for seven years. But if he rapes a child, the prison term is at least ten years. Maybe the increase in punishment is one of the reasons that child abuse cases have risen.

 

DUNHAM: How long will you remain in Kavre?

 

UPRETI: I retired last week!

 

DUNHAM: No one told me. Wow.

 

UPRETI: I’m now free. After 30 years in the police force, there is compulsory retirement. So now I’m jumping into social work.

 

DUNHAM: Here in the Valley?

 

UPRETI: Yes, probably. I’ll be working in the jail system with the prisoners. I have already registered an NGO.

 

DUNHAM: What made you decide to go into that line of work?

 

UPRETI: As a police chief, I saw the conditions of the prisoners, how they were treated and when they are released, how low their expectations are. Where will they go? The families might blame them, they might blame themselves. If someone is inside a prison for twenty years, where is there family when they finally get out? Who will accept them? Once again, they must face the stigma society places on them.

 

There are already services available inside the prisons. But I don’t believe that their services are adequate.

 

DUNHAM: You will be concentrating on re-habilitation?

 

UPRETI: Well, some of the existing organizations provide skill training, but it is not comprehensive.  You also need counseling on life skills to be able to face the outside world. That’s what I want to concentrate on.

 

 

 

 

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Dunham's interview with Ram Kumari Jhakri: On politics, motherhood and advice to younger women who want to enter Nepal's political arena

 

April 7, 2013

Ram Kumari Jhakri rewrote the history of Nepali politics by becoming the first woman president of any student organization in the country. It was not an easy victory. She grew up in a poor family in a remote rural village, determined to enter politics and to fight discrimination in Nepal. Hard work paid off. She moved to the capital and quickly caught the attention of other youth leaders. In 2004, during a demonstration in front of the King’s palace, she was beaten by security; her wounds were captured on film and the following picture became iconic:

 

 

In 2008, she became President of All Nepal National Free Student Union (ANNFSU), the student wing of the Communist Party of Nepal – United Marxist-Leninist, (CPN-UML). Prior to that she was the most recognizable female leader of Jana Andolan II, otherwise known as the 19-Day Revolution, which marked the end of King Gyanendra’s dictatorship and, eventually, the abolishment of the 250-year-old monarchy. In 2008, national elections were held, resulting in a 601 members of a Constituent Assembly, tasked with the drafting of a new constitution for what now was the Republic of Nepal. During all of these dramatic changes in Nepali politics, Ram Kumari remained known and continues to stand out as a force for social change.

 

 

 

DUNHAM: The Constituent Assembly (CA) is now disbanded. But during its four-year run, one thing that distinguished it was the fact that 33% of the members were women. That was a first in Nepali politics. How would you describe the performance of the women in the CA?

 

JHAKRI: Given the composition of Nepali society, one-third representation in parliament – just suddenly, 33% of parliament made up of women – this is a great achievement. We had a common understanding, among the population, not to focus on the quality of these representatives but, instead, to welcome the inclusive nature of the parliament – inclusive of women from all walks of life, thus reflecting the true social structure of Nepal.

 

DUNHAM: During the four years of the CA, what were you doing?

 

JHAKRI: I was active in the Student Front [ANNFSU, at that time. I had no official role in the constitution-writing process, but as a political cadre, I was publicly involved in various discussions about the constitution. Since the whole process has collapsed, what we discussed during that period, in my view, is no longer relevant.

 

The achievement of the April 2006 revolution achieved many things. It brought the rebels into mainstream politics and the CA was established, which was inclusive and reflected the true map of Nepal. Since then, on the one had, overall, the CA was a failure because it did not bring the end result. But on the other hand, it was a valuable learning process for all the representatives, including those who came from underprivileged society and who had not had previous exposure to policy-making.

 

DUNHAM: But as I understand it, the majority of the constitution-writing process was completed before the collapse of the CA. Could not that be considered a partial success? All the data that was collected, all of that work produced something, right? It won’t just be thrown out the window, surely.

 

JHAKRI:  I think that will depend on the political consensus among the various political parties. It will also depend on the composition of the next CA, if and when the next election takes place.

 

What will be the political positions in that CA? For example, in the previous election, the UCPN-Maoists were the largest party. Nepali Congress was the second largest. UML was the third and the Madhesi parties held the fourth position. I believe the composition after the next election will be different. So the question is: After the next election, will the new CA adopt, partially adopt or discard entirely the previous work entailed in the constitution-writing process. The next elected members of the CA may not choose to take ownership of what was drafted and agreed upon by the previous CA. It will depend on many things: how federalism will be defined and what each party’s position will look like. Should we have a president, a prime minister—what kind of government do we want? There is also the issue of the judicial system.

 

So in regard to the past CA’s drafts, etc., the next CA may only use that work as reference material.

 

The Maoists dominated the last CA, but after the next election, a different party might prevail. A different coalition may emerge.

 

DUNHAM: So all of that work, that collected data could be thrown out by the next CA?

 

JHAKRI: The true representation of the people is reflective by the election results. The elected parliamentarians opinions is superior to any collected data. The next CA may decide to re-collect data and the analysis of that data may be quite different. For example, federalism was a very powerful agenda in the last election. But it may be less important in the next election, even though the parties can’t back off from the issue. The Madhesi parties still regard federalism as the most important issues. But the other parties may be less interested. Right now, the UCPN-Maoists is paying lip service to the question of federalism. But the UML and NC have lost interest in the issue of federalism.

 

We will have a federal state, but the question remains: What kind of federalism will that be?

 

DUNHAM: You are not only a youth leader in your party, the UML, but you are woman leader as well. In the upcoming elections, will you be emphasizing women’s issues?

 

JHAKRI: Since I’m affiliated with a political party, I’ll be campaigning along the party line. But, even though I’m a political cadre, as a woman and as a youth leader, I will definitely be focusing on women’s issues. Youth issues will also be my priority, especially how to bridge the generation gap. Bridging the generation gap and women’s issues are common concerns for all youth leaders in all the parties.

 

DUNHAM: In the next election, there will be a lot of young women able to vote for the first time. I would think that it is only natural that these young women will be looking at you as one of their role models. You have been such a high-profile woman, not only during the Jana Andolan II, but even before that…I’m thinking of in 2004, when you were beaten in front of the King’s palace, and that photograph of your bloodied face was very widely circulated. And from that time forward, you have set an example for women who are interested in the political arena and want to work for social change.

 

JHAKRI: Yes, I do feel a certain responsibility to set a good example for younger women.

 

During Jana Andolan II, we, youth envisioned a certain kind of new and prosperous Nepal, the Republic of Nepal, realized through a political process. But now, we should focus on utilizing politics for better planning, management and production. Instead of dreaming about the future, it’s time to make the dream a reality. As a woman, twenty years ago, I only dreamt about social and political change. But now, it is time to achieve these dreams by utilizing the political process. The women who have just turned eighteen and will be voting for the first time in the next election, I would suggest to them to stop dreaming. It’s time to act.

 

 

DUNHAM:  If an eighteen-year-old woman came up to you right now and said, “I want to emulate what you have done – to rise up through the political world. How best can I do that? What is your advice?” How would you respond to her?

 

JHAKRI: Political parties in a democracy are very important. Politics is about teamwork, based on ideology and philosophy.

 

First of all, I would suggest that the young woman should define for herself what her personal ideology and philosophy are, and which political party best conforms to her ideas. To have an impact on society, she needs to become affiliated with one party or another. She can’t make an impact on her own or win office in an election. To have political validity, she needs wide public support and that will come through the teamwork of a political party.

 

Secondly, whatever political party she chooses, she must stop dreaming and implementing her political ideology. She needs a concrete plan as to how to achieve her political ambition, while effecting social change at the same time.

 

When I started my political career, I envisioned change but had no idea when it would take place. Now, I realize that envisioning is not enough. I’m not going to live to be 200 years old. If I don’t act now, it will be too late. I want to see the change in my lifetime. People have talked about democracy, democracy, democracy for half a century now. The current practice of democracy, and the space it has provided for the transformation of our society, is enough to realize our dreams if we remain focused and faithful.

 

To those up-and-coming women and all women, in general, I would request that they focus on economic development and social transformation. That is what I am trying to do and that is what I hope they will do.

 

DUNHAM: Let’s switch from politics to your personal life. You are now the proud mother of a fourteen-month-old and healthy son. This is a new experience for you…new territory. How does your experience of motherhood differ from your own mother’s experience, many years ago? In your opinion, is it easier to be a mother now than it was, say, three decades ago?

 

JHAKRI: Definitely, there has been significant change from thirty years ago. The society in which my mother lived and the one in which I now live are entirely different. I think that some of the old, traditional family values are better. For example, I live in a joined family of twenty people from my husband’s side. My inlaws, their brothers and sisters and their children – we share the same house and the same kitchen. I am the youngest daughter-in-law in that family and they have been enormously supportive and helpful in bringing up my son.

 

By contrast, people who are in nuclear families today, they have been able to break from the extended family tradition, but I think they are living a sad life. In Nepal, there are not many good day-care and child-care centers. I would be concerned about the well being of my son, if I didn’t have my extended family. For example, tonight, I would be concerned during this interview if I didn’t know my child was with my family.

 

If I had to bring my son with me to this interview, it would be very problematic. The roads getting here are too rough for a stroller. The air quality is very polluted. I wouldn’t want him breathing it.

 

In a rural environment, those living in traditional extended families have an easier time raising their children. However, in the rural areas, there are alarming concerns of lack of health facilities and poor nutrition. This is different than in the urban areas where facilities are available and nutrition is generally better.

 

I have not personally been a part of the urban nuclear family experience. I have always been part of an extended family. But the demographics of the young population – the dramatic shift from rural to urban – has made it increasingly difficult to preserve the best aspects of traditional family values. The nuclear family has provided freedom for the parents, but, in terms of the upbringing of their children, they face different difficulties because of a lack of extended family support.

 

If we were a welfare state and had various facilities available to us, the nuclear family would not be as difficult. But the state does not provide any support. Everything has to be taken care of by the parents and/or other family members.

 

Basically, my family’s support makes it possible for me to continue my career. The only thing that only I can and must do is breastfeed. Everything else, my family can take care of.

 

DUNHAM: Regarding your career, though, have you met work-related obstacles?

 

JHAKRI: When I had my child, I couldn’t continue my work for almost a year. It is very hard in this society to have a child and a career at the same time. Even in my political party, I’m almost like “on leave”. When, eventually, I return fulltime, I will have to start from zero, from a different place -- whatever achievement I have had in the past. It’s hard to make up for lost time. Even in my party, which also reflects society-at-large, does not have a friendly attitude for a childbearing mother in the workplace.

 

Let me give you one example that was a bitter experience for me. Around June-July of last year – my child was just six months old – I was attending a party meeting and they were discussing giving me additional responsibilities. They told me, “Either you have to leave the child behind, or be satisfied with limited responsibilities.” I high-level party leader told me that.

 

When I wrote about that incident on facebook, many of my friends consoled me by saying, “That is an example of masculine hegemony. Don’t be discouraged. Stand up and fight. You have our support.”

 

For my interview with Ram Kumari Jhakri  (and other youth leaders)in 2007, 

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

For my interview with Ram Kumari on political instability in 2011, 

 

CLICK HERE

 

 

 

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Dunham’s interview with Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba – Nepali parliamentarian, psychologist and women’s rights activist

 

April 4, 2013

 

Few women, who were selected to be in Nepal’s Constituent Assembly (CA), have a more distinctive résumé than Dr. Deuba. She obtained her Ph.D in organizational Psychology from Punjab University, India. She is the President of SAATHI, a non-governmental organization working in the area of violence against girls and women in Nepal. She is the Executive Director of SAMANTA Institute for Social and Gender Issues, a non-governmental organization working mainly in research and training on multi-sectored issues pertaining to gender. She is also the founder and chairperson of Rural Women's Development and Unity Centre, which has established a low-risk birthing center in far-western Nepal. She is also married to ex-Prime Minister and leader of Nepali Congress Party, Sher Bahadur Deuba.

 

Ultimately, the Constituent Assembly failed in its mandate to pen a new constitution. It has been disbanded indefinitely, until new elections are held. And no one seems to know when that will be, although next November is the current (some say overly optimistic) date being bandied about by political leaders.

 

Yesterday I visited her home to find out what it had been like to be in Nepal’s political arena at this historical juncture – particularly since this was the first time that women, in significant numbers, had been part of the decision-making.

 

 

 

DUNHAM: How well represented were women in the Constituent Assembly?

 

DEUBA: The 2007 interim constitution of Nepal had a clause for women’s equality. Clause number twenty. And it stated that there had to be 33% women in the parliament. That clause was also reaffirmed by a clause in the election. So that’s how, all of a sudden, from less than 5% women in the parliament, it shot up to 32.89%. We almost met the 33% quota. And it was representative of caste, ethnicity, and language –proportional representation. That’s how I got in: as a Chhetri woman from far western Nepal. If that clause had not been in place, we would not have had so many women represented in the last CA.

 

DUNHAM: Was there camaraderie among the elected women that bridged the different party lines?

 

DEUBA: Oh yes. A lot of it. And the main leaders of the parties – all male -- were not very happy with it. It was very strange, you know, that despite of all their so-called commitments to women’s issues and empowerment, we were not allowed to formally form a woman’s caucus. There was a caucus, per se, after a lot of lobbying, but it was not like a full-fledged women’s caucus should have been. They did not give us the high level of support required to run a caucus.

 

And their logic was that, if you had a women’s caucus, then you would have a caste caucus, a language group caucus – that sort of logic. In any case, it took more than a year, almost two years to get that caucus running because the male leaders dragged their feet.

 

In the beginning, we women were put into different committees to draft the constitution. I was in the committee to look at how the federal system would work. Within that group, we had to do a lot of separation of rights: what the central government and what the state government would do respectively. And despite coming from all different parties, (and even parties that had daggers drawn during the conflict), all the women had similar views about how women in Nepal should be treated and what their status should be.

 

So we had a lot of camaraderie and sisterhood. We learned a lot from each other. And I think the women were very serious about what they wanted to do. That was the good part.

 

DUNHAM: The bad part?

 

DEUBA: The bad part was that all the parties, whether it was the UCPN Maoists, the Nepali Congress, the UML –all the party leaders tried their best – and I think succeeded – in minimizing women’s leadership. For me, my stint in parliament was one of the most disempowering phases of my life.

 

DUNHAM: Why?

 

DEUBA: Part of the fault is my own. But part of it was how the political system in Nepal is set up.

When I went in as a parliamentarian, I was a novice.  In my personal life, I have always fought or worked hard to get where I have reached. That’s the way I am. But when I became a member of the proportional list, I felt a bit uncomfortable. I felt like I had come in from a backdoor entry. And I was burdened by the feeling, though I could see a lot of men in parliament, in the same situation, were not burdened at all.

 

Also, we women didn’t know quite how to behave. The men would act very important and they would be backslapping and laughing and they looked like they knew everything about politics. On the other hand, we women were a bit hesitant to express ourselves. By training I am a psychologist: I saw that our behavior in the parliament was very different from the men’s behavior.

 

DUNHAM: You were witnessing up close the “good old boys” club?

 

DEUBA: Oh yes. Definitely. Definitely. And even then, I gathered strength to go and hear what they would talk about. Because they all looked like they were doing very important things. All of them would come into the well of the hall and they would be talking and looking very important. But I was determined to hear what they were saying. I thought, “Maybe they are discussing something important and I’ll pick up some pointers.” So I went up to their huddle. And I listened. And it was really funny. They were discussing, “Where did you buy your waistcoat? Oh, your topi [traditional Nepali male cap] looks really nice.”

 

And I thought, oh god, look at men: They make petty things look like they are doing something important. And it was a real lesson for me. Because, in all of my other working spheres, I work with men too. But in those other situations, it is a pretty equal situation between men and women: whether academic, research or development field. We men and women mostly treat each other equally. Men always respected me for my achievements, or my education, or whatever.

 

But in the CA, despite my very public image, the men in politics regarded me as just my husband’s wife -- a senior leader’s wife. That’s why she’s there, that sort of thing. I could read their minds. They regarded the other women in the same manner. They would try to minimize our importance. They would never ask us to participate in any important debate.

 

I tried, in the beginning, to raise my voice. I would go to the chief whip and I would say, “I want to make a statement on this issue.” And he would give me an expression as if to say, “What do you know about it?”

 

And I’m sure I was better read than most of the men in the room. But only the senior leaders of the parties would be given time to speak. And much to my horror and to the horror of many women, we realized you have to tow the whip’s line. You can’t just speak out of turn. The whip has to write a letter and give it to the speaker and then you are allowed to speak.

 

But this whip [presumably Laxman Prasad Ghimiri] was such a sexist; he thought we women were invisible.

 

And I remember an incident, and I’ve written many times about it: I went over to the whip and I wanted to talk on one issue about carteling of transporters. And he told me, “There are so many women who are already going to speak.” And that day there were some protests in town about violence against women. So a lot of women had already written their names to speak about the violence. But I was not going to speak about that issue. I was going to talk about carteling of transporters. So I told the whip that I wanted to speak about another issue of public interest.

 

And do you know what he told me? Something I thought I would never hear in my entire life. He told me, “Aren’t you happy to be seen? Do you need to be heard?”

 

DUNHAM: Wow.

 

DEUBA: I was flabbergasted. I’ve always been encouraged to voice an opinion. And I remember: I just turned around and went and sat in my chair. And I thought, “What did he just say to me?”

 

But it really got me thinking about the attitude of men toward women. I think the whip did it completely unconsciously. And I thought, “If he can say that to me, what must he be thinking about the ordinary women in Nepal?” In his mind, we are nothing. We are just objects. Of all the things that mark your life, this was a mark that I will never forget. It was a revelation.

 

We thought that we were representing other women in Nepali Congress, but look what was happening to us by our own whip! And I think a lot of women had this feeling. The party got us there but they did not let us play any role.

 

DUNHAM: Were there no women in leadership roles?

 

DEUBA: The leaders allowed one or two women to be heads of committees, but they also were minimized. For instance, in parliament, I was in the committee for natural resource management and we had this very capable young woman from Dang. Her name is Shanti Chhaudhary. She was the head of the committee. But she was just manipulated by all these powerful men. She was not allowed to take any lead. They would be telling her, “Say this, do this, this should be our agenda.” And she would just follow their lead.

 

I became really disgusted. This was not what I wanted to do.

 

And the key agendas that women wanted to follow, like the citizenship rights, the men ganged up together: They would tell us they would do it, but in the end, none of them delivered. We wanted equal rights on citizenship, from every aspect.

 

One of the contentious aspects of our citizenship law is that if a Nepali girl marries a foreign man, he is not granted the same rights as if a Nepali man marries a foreign woman. We were against that inequality. The men in parliament turned our argument around and they made it look like we were trying to discriminate against daughter-in-laws, who come from other countries. So what we said was, “We are not trying to alienate daughter-in-laws; we want equal treatment for our son-in-laws as well. Our daughters should have the same rights as our sons should have.”

 

But the men played tricks within the women inside the parliament. Women parliamentarians, who had been married from India into Nepal – they all became ministers – and the men went around saying to them, “See all these Nepali women parliamentarians from the hills? They are trying to make you unequal citizens.” That’s not what we were trying to do. We were demanding equal rights for men and women.

 

The men’s contention was that, “Ours is a patriarchal society. Daughters are supposed to be given away.”

 

And we said, “That’s why we are writing a new constitution! Why? Because we don’t believe in that patriarchal society!” In the end, we talked to Prachanda, Sushil Koirala, Jhalanath Khanal, Madhav Nepal – all the leaders from all the parties. And they all said, “Yes, yes, yes.” And in the end, they passed an unequal law.

 

We were very angry about that. Even in this upcoming CA, that’s going to be one of our key agendas.

 

We looked at the laws of other countries. When you look at India, which is the world’s biggest democracy, you have to stay in India for five years –whether you are a daughter-in-law or a son-in-law – and then you are awarded citizenship. Why shouldn’t it be the same law in Nepal? Also, in the United States, you have to stay for a certain number of years – but it is equal for sons and daughters.

 

And the other point that we feel very uncomfortable about with is this: A woman who marries a foreigner is not allowed to give her Nepali citizenship to her children. That is not fair.

 

DUNHAM: Nepali citizenship can only go be passed down through the father.

 

DEUBA: That’s right. There has already been an edict from the Supreme Court saying that Nepali women have the right to pass down their citizenship through their offspring.

But even the parliamentarians of the very young generation, in the last CA, were not ready to change the law. They kept referring to the children of the girls as “nephews and nieces” and the children of the boys as “sons and daughters”.

 

The men were making a distinction that compromised my full rights. So, you see, those sorts of very patriarchal attitudes still prevail today in Nepal.

 

When we have the new elections, this is one of the issues we are going to have to address.

 

DUNHAM: What would you guess was the median age of the male parliamentarians?

 

DEUBA: 55? 56? The women were much younger by comparison – between 35 and 40 – especially from the Maoist side. There were the youngest.

 

DUNHAM: Were the Maoist women vociferous?

 

DEUBA: No, they were the least vociferous. It was very interesting to watch. They were totally brainwashed about ideology and strictly voted the party line. They were not allowed to voice any individual thought. Those who did voice an individual though were punished. They dared not differ from the other party cadres. That we could see.

 

DUNHAM: What about the education level of the female parliamentarians?

 

DEUBA: Very low. I think there were very few who had even completed high school. I think I and another woman – a professor -- were the only ones who had a Ph.D. There were a few women with masters in Nepali Congress – two or three. Not that the degrees mattered. We women were all treated as equally ignorant.

 

The original idea, of course, was to create a parliament that was inclusive. There was a lot of reaching out to women from marginalized communities. So some of them were totally illiterate, because they had never had the chance. But again, the education of the women didn’t matter. We were all treated like cattle.

 

DUNHAM: What about the issue of violence against women? Was it properly addressed in parliament?

 

DEUBA: I think one of the best things that happened in parliament was the passing of the domestic violence bill in 2009. Actually, my organization, SAATHI, we created the first bill on domestic violence in 2002. But somehow after that, we had a lot of ups and downs and that bill never took off really. It was just tabled and that was it. The 2009 bill, which was passed, was one of the best things we did for the women in Nepal. The rules and regulations have been completed now, but still there is a lot of work to be done. The traditional attitude of domestic violence -- “it’s a family affair” – has not changed that much.

 

The other positive thing that we initiated in the past parliament was a committee formed in the prime minister’s office: the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Violence Against Women. Seventeen secretaries of ministries participated in the committee. The prime minister chaired it. The Chief Secretary coordinated it and me and two other parliamentarians were advisors on that committee. Some headway was made. At least the government took it on as an issue. And the committee made a plan of action on what they would do to counterbalance violence against women. Some stressed awareness; some suggested a one-stop drop-in shelter for women victims of violence. A place where you could go and file your complaint and then be given all the services like medical, legal, police, whatever. It was a good start in the right direction. But even so, as an advisor, I was not very happy with it because it just became ritualistic.

 

DUNHAM: How do you mean “ritualistic?”

 

DEUBA: The committee members would just come and discuss and then…look…I worked in this sector for a long time. We would give them advice, like the open women’s shelters, which was good. But then it was decided that a victim could only stay in a shelter for three weeks. You weren’t allowed to bring in your children.

 

I objected and said, “How can you have women coming in without their children? And how can you tell a woman that she can only stay for three weeks at the end of which her only option is to return to the husband who beats her up?” But the men would not listen to things like this. And the standards of the shelters were not very good. The drop-in shelters did not have enough counseling facilities.

 

There was a lot of discussion with the Ministry of Home. Policewomen deal with the violence against women cases. But there are examples of abuse against the policewomen and in some instances they didn’t even have their own restrooms. So how were these women going to adequately deal with the rights of other women?

 

And, for me, here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back: There was this case where an officer of the migration department and a policeman raped a migrant worker on her way back to her home in Nepal. The government never said anything about it. We gave the story to the papers, we contacted the government but the committee didn’t want to call a meeting. So I resigned. I didn’t want my name associated with a committee that doesn’t do anything. As for those two men, I think they were allowed to leave the country.

 

So what I am saying is that changes for the better have been made but we haven’t done nearly enough.

 

The legal system to protect women is particularly deficient. I did a study in 2004 on rape, incest and polygamy and – at least in the case of rape – most of the complainers would withdraw the case after a while. The women would become fed up with going to court and never having a hearing; the investigators don’t hand over the reports and, finally, it just becomes a big hassle in the women’s lives.

 

DUNHAM: And one has to wonder how many of the cases are actually reported because of the stigma attached to being raped.

 

DEUBA: Exactly. And we found out that even in the cases where there is family support for the victim – or survivor in some cases -- the family, itself, is exorcized by the larger community. In our society, the general feeling is that this awful thing should just be kept quiet. There’s a tremendous amount of shame involved brought on by ancient conventional thinking.

 

The damage done to women in Nepal because of their lower station in ife, as reflected in data, is very telling. Among women of reproductive age – between 15 and 45 -- the highest cause of death is now suicide. Young women in Nepal are using suicide as a coping strategy, in far greater numbers than in most other countries.

 

DUNHAM: If you are a member of the next CA, what, as a woman, will you do differently?

 

DEUBA: I’ll be more assertive. And I’m not going to go away. And I will tell the men, “You may not like me, but I’m a parliamentarian just like you and I’m not going to go away.”

 

 

……………………...............................................…………………….

 

 

WOMEN IN NEPAL: Mikel Dunham’s interview with CNN’s 2012 “Hero of the Year” Pushpa Basnet

 

April 2, 2013

 

KATHMANDU: Pushpa Basnet is a Nepali social worker striving to strengthen the rights of children living behind bars with their incarcerated parents. She is Founder/President of Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) and Butterfly Home, two non-profit organizations in Kathmandu. Her efforts were internationally recognized last December when she won the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year Award, a high-profile Hollywood event hosted by Anderson Cooper. Receiving the award has been life-changing for Pushpa. To give but one example, Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon is now producing a documentary about Pushpa’s work.

 

The work for which she is famous is far from glamorous. She has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents. She runs a day care center for the prison children and a residential home for older ones. She has also helped to provide alternative residence, school enrollment, free meals and medical care to them.

 

What is perhaps most remarkable is that Pushpa is only 29 years old.

 

Today, I interviewed Pushpa at her “Butterfly Home” located in the Budanilakantha area of Kathmandu.

 

 

DUNHAM: A great deal has been written about your work since the CNN award, not the least of which is that the award comes with a $300,000 grant. That’s an enormous amount of money by Nepali standards – one of the poorest countries in the world. What interests me most is that you are such a young woman, living in an ancient patriarchal society; and yet you have accomplished so much as an independent women and against quite significant odds. How have your broken through Nepal’s gender barrier? Or has Nepal changed that much in the last few years?

 

Let’s begin with your childhood. Where were you born and when?

 

BASNET: I was born here, in Kathmandu, in 1983.  Both of my parents come from a business background. I see my parents as very hard-working persons. We grew up in Dilli Bazar, in the center of the city. I have an older brother and a younger sister.

 

DUNHAM: What sort of business is your family involved with?

 

BASNET: Importing hydropower equipment from Japan, Singapor, Spain, China, Hong Kong…so most of the time during my childhood, my father and mother traveled a lot.

 

After a certain time, I decided I wanted to stay in a boarding school. As kids, we were really protected from the outside world. Because of the city atmosphere, we weren’t allowed to go outside that much. My dad didn’t feel comfortable letting us play outside in the streets. I was very curious and I wanted to interact with the outside world. My dad wanted to give us everything but he was also very protective. And we were very scared of my father because he was huge and the silent type. But my mom was a very close friend to me.

 

DUNHAM: Did you get your wish to go to boarding school?

 

BASNET: Yes, here in the Kathmandu Valley...a very good one. Both my sister and me attended.

 

Also, at an early age, we traveled with our parents a lot. Especially my dad wanted us to see what life was like abroad. In fact, my father believed that a girl should see the world before she gets married and settled down. He encouraged us to be independent. Until, we were in our late teens, we didn’t dress like girls. We were the tomboy type. And my father always told us, “You should do your work by yourself. You cannot depend upon any man.” For instance, we had to make citizenship on our own. [Note: Basnet is referring to the Nepali process of getting issued a citizenship card, which every sixteen-year-old must go through -- sometimes a lengthy and complicated process.] We were not allowed to depend on our father. That was my dad’s mentality.

 

On the other hand, we were given more opportunities than our brother. I felt that. My father’s thinking was, “OK, tomorrow the girls will get married, they will then have their husbands, they will have their life. But until that day, my girls should have the best lives.” On the other hand, my dad thought that his son would have plenty of opportunities, once he was grown…to travel…things like that.

DUNHAM: And what about the importance of education for you girls?

 

BASNET: My mom was sixteen when she got married. Too young!

 

DUNHAM: Why so young?

 

BASNET: Because her mom died and a guy from Kathmandu came to ask for her hand and so she got married. But my mom always wanted to study, so it was important for her that we girls got a good education. As for my dad, he too always focused on our studies.

 

DUNHAM: You were lucky to grow up in that kind of environment.

 

BASNET: Yes, but I really feel sad that whatever academic opportunities my parents provided for me, I never took that benefit! Of course now, I have my Bachelors, I have my Masters in two subjects. But back then, I wasn’t motivated or particularly gifted in academic studies. I was average. I was very good in extra-curricular actives, like sports, arts and craft…I was outstanding. But education? I thought, “Education doesn’t do anything for me.”

 

When it came time for my School-Leaving Certificate exam [SLC, which is similar to the tenth grade in the American system], I failed! And that was my turning point. There were 128 students taking the exam and I was the only one who failed!

 

 

 

That same day, my dad was preparing to fly to Japan, and I could see that he was crying. My relatives were telling him, “Whatever money you invested in her education, you could have invested it instead in business; you would have profited. But there is no profit in investing in girls! She has hurt your reputation!” So here was this very strong man – my father -- and I saw him crying because of my failure.

 

So at that moment, I promised myself that some day I would make him proud. I didn’t know in what way I would make him proud.

 

I had to wait a year before I could re-take the exam, and this time I passed.

 

DUNHAM: How old were you at the time?

 

BASNET: Seventeen.

 

DUNHAM: As I understand it, by twenty, your idea to help children in prison had already taken shape. How, in that three-year time gap, did the idea emerge?

 

BASNET: During the year that I had to wait to re-take my SLC exam, I got a chance to volunteer in Balmandir. [A large government-run orphanage in Kathmandu.] I learned a lot through that volunteer work. I saw how the organization was run, but I also realized how lucky my childhood had been. I had parents, they provided everything for me, but I did not respect it. Everyday I had complained. But orphans, they had no one to complain to and no way to obtain what they wanted. Whenever these orphans received something, they were happy and grateful.

 

So I studied my Eleven and Twelve [the higher secondary schooling in the Nepali system] at St. Xavier Academy. At that time, I still didn’t know what subjects I wanted to study. So I landed up in commerce because that’s what my parents wanted me to study. I passed in all my subjects …no failures this time.

 

Then it came to study for my Bachelor Degree. I wanted to study in the United States. But my dad didn’t want me to do that and, really, I was scared also. My dad said, “No way. You have to stay back in your country and do something here.” My dad was the kind of person with a long-term vision. He still wanted me to get into the family business. But I was never interested in that.

 

St. Xavier had a Bachelor program in Social Work. In that program, there were three days a week for the classes and two days for internship in various organizations for one year.

 

DUNHAM: What year was this?

 

BASNET: It was 2004. The problem for me was that it was really hard for me to get into that program. In Nepali terms, it was like getting into Harvard…something like that. So, how, with my grades, could I get admitted? I had one thing going for me: My year’s experience at Balmandir Orphange. And, ultimately, that volunteer work was what got me into St. Xavier.

 

From the beginning, I was discriminated against because everyone knew that I had failed my SLC, low grades. I was laughed at. Both the students and the teachers laughed at me. One teacher in particular, picked on me and looked down on me and the situation grew worse and it was really hard for me.

 

The second year, I was placed in a police station in Kalimati for my internship. I got a chance to visit the law court and the police headquarters, but I never had a chance to visit the jail. The only jails I had seen were in the movies. So I asked one of the women police officers if I could get permission to visit the jail. And she said, “OK”. And that was one of the most important moments in my life. 

 

 

When I went inside the jail, I found it to be a beautiful community. It was quite a warm place. I was with the policewoman and two of my friends. We weren’t allowed to actually go inside the cells but there people all around. So at one point, there was a woman washing her clothes and she had a nine-month old girl playing on the floor. In Nepal it’s no big deal to just go up and hold someone’s child. And that’s what I did. One of the police told me not to do that. “Her mother is a bit cracked,” she said. So I lowered her down, the baby held on to the hem of my dress. And I suddenly thought, “Oh, this girl has called me up. This is not a place for her to be stuck in.” 

 

When I got back to my home, I told my parents that I had seen a small baby and I wanted to help her. And my parents said, “No way. You have your college, Pushpa. You cannot change directions like that -- just hold on to anyone’s baby.”

 

For a week, I couldn’t get the baby out of mind. During that same week two things happened at the college that were bad. First, I got into a big argument with a teacher and he kicked me out of his class. Second, a friend and I got caught bunking my class [playing hooky]. The result was that I was suspended for a year.

 

But my mother said, “Don’t worry. You’ll wait for a year and then you’ll go back.” I was terribly embarrassed about the whole thing but I also thought, “If my parents are still supportive, it doesn’t matter. I need to face reality. If I have made mistakes, I have to face it. That’s my punishment. But I should not give up my hope.”

 

That year’s suspension from St. Xavier turned out to be a real opportunity. It was a perfect time for me to show my teacher that I could do something of real value. And that’s the time when I started my organization with a couple of friends and my sister. That’s when we started gathering money, taking old stuff from my home.

 

DUNHAM: What was the level of cooperation from the Department of Prison Management?

 

BASNET: It varied according the jailers. I went to the jailer in the Kathmandu jail and said, “Sir, I saw a small girl inside the prison. I want to do something. Can I come into the jail and start a small program?”

 

And the jailer said, “OK, Pushpa, but I cannot just give you that girl. You can’t do this as an individual. You need to come as an organization.  And you need to have a concrete idea.

 

And I said, “I want to start a school inside the prison.”

 

And he said, “If you want to do that, it’s nothing new. You won’t be changing the environment. If you really want to do something new, you need to start something outside the prison.”

 

I was only twenty and the idea of starting something outside the prison was much more challenging that what I had in mind.

 

And he said, “Why don’t you go to the CDO [Chief District Officer], ask him how to register an organization.

 

DUNHAM: What was this guy’s name – the jailer? He sounds as if he was instrumental in your work.

 

BASNET: Yes. Rishi Kesh Dhungel is his name. On the one hand, he was trying to push me away, probably because he didn’t believe I could do it. But on the other hand, he was showing me the way. One of my friend’s brothers was a lawyer who helped with the legal work. But it was still difficult for me to find people who could share my vision. Eventually, my friends and I got the seed money to get the organization started.

 

But it was still very difficult to get the organization registered. The officials said, “Oh you are too young, girl. And they made fun of me. They really couldn’t believe that a young girl was capable of starting something like this.

 

My dad was totally against the idea, too. I think he was afraid of me getting into trouble…working in a prison, you know? But my mom was totally supportive. “Do what you want to do. Believe in yourself.” She believed in us.

 

After finally getting registered, I took the papers back to the prison and they said, “OK, now you need to have a place to take these children.”

 

So we rented a small place and set up a small classroom. So that’s how we started, only as a day care center.

 

The next problem was with the parents of the children: To let their children go away from them – that took a lot of convincing because the mothers didn’t know who I was. But it was the jailer, Rishi Kesh Dhungel, who convinced the mothers. He played a very important role in overcoming that hurdle.

 

DUNHAM: Let’s talk about the mothers for a moment. What are the crimes that put these women into jail?

 

BASNET: Drug dealing, human trafficking and especially murder…usually, killing their own husbands.

 

DUNHAM: How many years are these women incarcerated?

 

BASNET: For drug dealing, twenty years.

 

DUNHAM: You have achieved so much already. What are your next goals?

 

BASNET: I’m now concentrating on going outside the Kathmandu Valley and focusing on other jails. Remote prisons. I’m going to remote prisons now to work.

 

DUNHAM: In how many districts outside the Valley have you been working?

 

BASNET: Sixteen, up until now.

 

DUNHAM: How do you find out that there is a child incarcerated with his or her parent? Who notifies you? Is there a system in place?

 

BASNET: Not really. Initially, I just worked with the Kathmandu prison. I just walked in and saw the children. Now, after the CNN award and all the publicity, the people contact me. Tomorrow, for instance, a girl is coming from Bardia [mid-western Nepal] prison. When a mother calls me for help, I have to tell them to send me all of their papers. I must have proof that that child belongs legally to that particular mother. Because, in the past, I’ve had cases where “parents” were faking that they had a child. I have to be very careful about fraud.

 

DUNHAM: Are there fathers in prison, who have their children staying with them, or is it just mothers?

 

BASNET: There are fathers with kids in jail. I have children who come from imprisoned fathers. But in male jails, only boys are allowed to be with their fathers. The girls are not allowed. If a husband has killed his wife, and if he has a daughter, for a few days, the female jails will take care of them.

 

I’ll tell you about one current case. I have a six-month old baby, here in Butterfly House. She’s been here since she was one-and-a half months old. Her father killed her mother just because his wife wouldn’t cook him an omelet.  Can you believe it? He set her on fire with kerosene and she died of the burns. So the police called up and told me about the father and asked me if I could take the daughter. Now she is with me and the father is in Kathmandu prison.

 

But usually, if a father is in prison, usually he has relatives to take care of his children. But if a mother is in prison, she is considered to have disgraced her family and the family won’t take the children.

 

DUNHAM: What are the main reasons for women killing their husbands?

 

BASNET: Because of sexual abuse and physical abuse. The women get so angry and feel so helpless and then one day they just snap and they end up murdering them.

 

DUNHAM: How has the CNN award changed you and your organization?

 

BASNET: Before, when I spoke, people didn’t care what I had to say. Now, whenever I speak, people take me very seriously. That’s the reality. Sometimes I think, “Is this really happening?”

 

Before, if my documents had to go through the government, they wouldn’t read them properly. Now, they are much more careful and read closely.

 

Also, there is this: We have always been transparent about our spending. But now there is much more scrutiny about our expenses because of the CNN grant money. On a personal level, I’ve lost much of my privacy. That’s the down side.

 

DUNHAM: What are you future goals?

 

BASNET: In five years I would like to have my own Butterfly Home.

 

DUNHAM: I’m confused. You do have your Butterfly House. We’re in it!

 

BASNET: Right now, we just rent this building. We need to have something that we actually own. In five years I hope to achieve that goal. In ten years, I would like to have one of my children, who has grown up in the Butterfly Home, to take my position. In fifteen children, my children will be getting married. By then, I hope that they will go back to their villages and start their own branches of Butterfly House.

 

That’s why, whenever I go outside the Valley to visit jails, I take my older children with me, so that they can see what this is all about…how I do my work. And when we come back, they have to write a report. You see, they are learning the business of what they are now participating in as beneficiaries. My children are Butterfly House’s real future.

 

 

 

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For more information about Pushpa Basnet’s organization, click on the link below:

 

CLICK HERE: Pushpa Basnet's Website

 

 

 

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Taking sex education to villages in Nepal – Family Planning Association of Nepal

 

March 14, 2013

 

Rachel Williams, a freelance writer for The Guardian, recently traveled to Banke district, west Nepal, and Kavre district, south-east of Kathmandu, courtesy of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Her goal was to explore sex education in Nepali villages, a project spearheaded by the Family Planning Association of Nepal. As highlighted in the short audio slideshow below, marriage, menstruation and sex – topics still taboo in much of rural Nepal – have been discouraged until recently, at the expense of the well being of young Nepali women.

 

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

 

Established in 1959, Family Planning Association of Nepal (FPAN) became an associate member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1960 and full-fledged member in 1969. Prior to establishment of the Association, the concept of family planning was quite new was considered against religion, tradition and socio-cultural values in Nepal. FPAN, in consonance with the social system, focused on information and education as a means of advocating a small family as a norm among the rural masses. The family planning program in the government sector gained momentum only after the establishment of the Maternal and Child Health Division at the Ministry of Health in 1965 and the launching of the National Family Planning and Maternal and Child Health Project in 1969. Since then FPAN started complementing and supplementing the national health and population programs. Its target populations at present are the poor, marginalized, underserved people including adolescent, sex workers, IDU, LGBTI, PLHIV, GBV survivors, trafficked returnees etc.

 

for more information about FPAN CLICK HERE

 

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Al Jazeera Video: Rallies Against Rape in Nepal

January 3, 2013

 

Nepalis are rallying for the safety of women after nationwide protests in India.There have been days of protests inKathmandu, with demonstrators accusing the government of failing to act and protecting the guilty. Al Jazeera's Subina Shrestha reports from Kathmandu.

 

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Pushpa Basnet of Nepal is the 2012 CNN “Hero of the Year”

 

December 4, 2012

 

What do you do with your children if you are a mother sentenced to a jail term in Nepal? If you don’t have someone to take care of the kids, they must go to jail with you.

 

28-year-old Pushpa Basnet is trying to change all that and, for her efforts, she was named CNN’s 2012 “Hero of the Year” at a glittering ceremony Sunday night in Los Angeles. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anderson Cooper hosted the event at the Shrine Auditorium. It was an all-star tribute including Susan Sarandon, 50 Cent, Maria Bello, Adrien Brody, Viola Davis, Josh Duhamel, Jeff Gordon, Cullen Jones, Jane Lynch and Rainn Wilson.

 

Each of the 10 CNN Heroes nominees received $50,000 in recognition of their work, and Basnet’s nonprofit, the Early Childhood Development Center, received an additional $250,000 grant.

 

 

Basnet’s Work

 

As one of the poorest countries in the world, Nepal lacks the social safety net that exists in most Western nations. Space is extremely limited in the few children's homes affiliated with the government. So when no local guardian is available, an arrested parent often must choose between bringing their children to jail with them or letting them live on the streets. Nepal's Department of Prison Management estimates that there are at least 80 children living in the nation's prisons.

 

"It's not fair for (these) children to live in the prison because they haven't done anything wrong," said Basnet, who started a nongovernmental organization to help. "My mission is to make sure no child grows up behind prison walls."

 

Basnet is one of several in Nepal who have started groups to get children out of prison. Since 2005, she has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents. She runs a day care program for children under 6 and a residential home where mostly older children receive education, food, medical care and a chance to live a more normal life.

 

Since 2005, Pushpa Basnet has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents.

"I had a very fortunate life, with a good education," Basnet said. "I should give it to somebody else."

 

Basnet was just 21 when she discovered her calling, she said. While her family ran a successful business, she was studying social work in college. As part of her studies, she visited a women's prison and was appalled by the dire conditions. She also was shocked to discover children living behind bars.

 

Basnet decided to start a day care to get incarcerated children out from behind the prison walls. While her parents were against the idea at first -- she had no job or way to sustain it financially -- eventually they helped support her. But prison officials, government workers and even some of the imprisoned mothers she approached doubted that someone her age could handle such a project.

 

"When I started, nobody believed in me," Basnet told reporters. "People thought I was crazy. They laughed at me."

 

Basnet was undaunted. She got friends to donate money, and she rented a building in Kathmandu to house her new organization, the Early Childhood Development Center. She furnished it largely by convincing her parents that they needed a new refrigerator or kitchen table; when her parents' replacement would arrive, she'd whisk the old one to her center.

 

Just two months after she first visited the prison, Basnet began to care for five children. She picked them up at the prison every weekday morning, brought them to her center and then returned them in the afternoon. Basnet's program was the first of its kind in Kathmandu; when she started, some of the children in her care had never been outside a prison.

 

Two years later, Basnet established the Butterfly Home, a children's home where she herself has lived for the past five years. While she now has a few staff members who help her, Basnet is still very hands on.

 

"We do cooking, washing, shopping," she said. "It's amazing, I never get tired. (The children) give me the energy. ... The smiles of my children keep me motivated."

Coordinating all of this is no easy task. But at the Butterfly Home, the older kids help care for the younger ones and everyone pitches in with household chores.

 

When Basnet hears about an imprisoned child, she'll visit the prison -- even in remote areas of the country -- and tell the parent what she can provide. If the parent agrees, Basnet brings the child back.

 

She is still eager, however, for the children to maintain relationships with their parents. During school holidays, she sends the younger children to the prisons to visit, and she brings them food, clothing and fresh water during their stay. Ultimately, Basnet wants the families to reunite outside prison, and 60 of her children have been able to do just that.

 

 

 

 

In 2009, Basnet started a program to teach the parents how to make handicrafts, which she sells to raise money for the children's care. Both mothers and fathers participate. It not only gives them skills that might help them support themselves when they're released, but it also helps them feel connected to their children.

 

"Often, they think that they're useless because they're in prison," Basnet said. "I want to make them feel that they are contributing back to us."

Making ends meet is always a struggle, though. The children help by making greeting cards that Basnet sells as part of her handicraft business. In the past, she has sold her own jewelry and possessions to keep the center going.

 

Her biggest concern is trying to find ways to do more to give the children a better future. She recently set up a bank account to save for their higher educations, and one day she hopes to buy or build a house so they'll always have a place to call home.

 

The $300,000 CNN award should go a long way in realizing her dreams.

 

 

 

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Thomas L. Kelly’s superb photographs of Nepali Adolescent Girls

 

December 2, 2012

Internationally renowned photographer Thomas L. Kelly’s latest one-man show, "Adolescent Girls in Nepal - Between Tradition and Modernity" opens in Kathmandu December 7. (See gallery information below. Captions provided by the photographer.) 

 

Adolescent girls in today’s Nepal are part of a world in transition. On the one hand, gender inequality and cultural norms limit their choices and determine their future from a young age. Internationally, girls of developing countries remain more vulnerable to poverty, climate change, food crises, conflict and war.  In Nepal, where they can also face child trafficking, economic exploitation, domestic violence, sexual harassment and abuse, it’s not surprising that the picture portrayed by the media and donors is often grim and heart-rending.

 

But the reality is a complex one that also includes strength, resourcefulness and encouraging changes. When Kelly set out in October 2012 to capture the images for this show, he returned with images of many strong and confident adolescent Nepali girls. These young women are not mere victims of male dominance, criminal activity and poverty. They are valuable assets to the positive development of Nepali society, and deserve attention through a photo exhibition dedicated entirely to them and the broadening scope of their lives.

 

Generally speaking, today’s Nepali adolescent girls are more literate, more educated, and more gender-egalitarian than in the past.  Boys and girls alike are far more open towards an expanded role for women in society.  But the modernity that brings so many new dreams and possibilities, and enables these young people to experience so much more mobility, freedom and material wealth, also comes with new risks and challenges. How these young people deal with the challenges facing them, from persistent vulnerabilities to emerging risks, will set the course for Nepal’s future. Kelly’s one-man show is important because it puts real faces to these changing times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DREAMS: “I want to be a football champion! After practice, I come home and do house hold chores. I have my dreams. I’ll be a champion.”- Gauri Rana (hay on her head.)

Rana Tharu Village, Dhangadi, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maoist ex-combatant at Bharatpur Cantonment, Nepal

 

 

 

POLYANDRY: The stability of the family-this is the constant preoccupation of societies the world over. Among the Nyinba of Nepal, a woman is expected to have a number of husbands at the same time. It is normally an arrangement where a woman marries a group of brothers and moves into their household. Passionate attachment to any one of them is frowned upon, for it risks alienating the others and threatens to break up the family. While the practice of polyandry has been explained as a special adaptation to a land where resources are limited- family property does not have to be divided up when all brothers are married to the same woman-the Nyinba, in fact, tolerate a variety of marriage arrangements. They prefer polyandry but permit polygyny, monogamy, and even “conjoint marriages,” where a man in a polyandrous marriage marries another woman on the side. Their tolerance contrasts sharply with the Western insistence on monogamy as the only “natural”family arrangement.

Richen 23, wife Tsering Kanjom, 17, Urgin , 13, Nima Tenzin, 8.

Humla, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEAUTY PARLOR: I noticed the seductive poster outside the parlor and waited for a customer to enter or exit. The owner of the shop, Rama noticed me standing outside with a camera and asked me inside. I entered. Inside, a woman was getting her eye brows plucked. The outside temperature was 36 degrees. Sweat was pouring down my face. Rama offered me a bench seat and sent her helper to bring a bottle of Sprite. Questions were asked, “what country do you come from, what are you doing here, how did you learn to speak Nepalese.” I explained, and then received the permission to set up my photo.

Dhangadi, Kailali, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPLE HARVEST: Jumla bahinis delight in the harvest. "We live for these days… our apples are so mitho chha”

Jumla, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PARVATI: “Every morning I paint the Shiva lingam tilaka. I bow to Shiva as my protector.”

Jumla, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KARNALI TECHNICAL SCHOOL: Exam day. Chandra Rokaya is studying to be a nurse, the boys, engineers.

Jumla, Nepal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WATER MILL: “I wake up early and know where I have to go. The water mill room is so cold. I burn corn stalks to stay warm and dream about a time when my father can afford to send me to the machine room and get our flour grinded. The days are long, the mill keeps turning and for now, this is my duty.

Jumla, Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MUSLIM SCHOOL: Dhamboji Chok, Nepalgunj. Nepal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRICK CARRIERS: With more than a million people now living in the Kathmandu Valley, the demand for housing and office space creates jobs for many under-age children (as well as migrant Bengalis) in the brick factories that populate the outskirts of Kathmandu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Youth Communist League (YCL)

Sarlahi, Nepal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEPALI SEX WORKERS and a madam wait for clients in front of the legendary ‘cages’ on Falkland Road, in Mumbai’s working-class brothel district. It is the destination of many trafficked children and women. Contrary to the myth of Nepali girls being coveted for theirgrace and beauty, they are imported to India because they are cheap.

 

Falkland Road, Mumbai.Nepali sex workers and a madam wait for clients in front of the legendary ‘cages’ on Falkland Road, in Mumbai’s working-class brothel district. It is the destination of many trafficked children and women. Contrary to the myth of Nepali girls being coveted for their grace and beauty, they are imported to India because they are cheap.

Falkland Road, Mumbai.

 

 

EXHIBITION INFORMATION: 

 

Opening reception: 7 December at 5.30 pm

The exhibition will be opened by Henning Hansen Chargé d'Affaires a.i., German Embassy

Thomas L. Kelly will be present at the opening.

Dates of the exhibition: 7- 16 December 2012

Venue: Indigo Gallery, Naxal, above Mike's Breakfast.

 

 

More about Thomas L. Kelly

Kelly first came to Nepal in 1978 as a USA Peace Corps Volunteer, and has since worked as a photo-activist, documenting the struggles of marginalized people and disappearing cultural traditions all over the world. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he has been recording the lives of sex workers and the traditions of prostitution across South Asia. Thomas has worked extensively for UNICEF, UNDP-Nepal, GIZ, Save the Children Fund (USA), Aga Khan Foundation, DFID, U.K. , Institute of Child Health (ICH), U.K., on the subject of child prostitution, trafficking, Safer Motherhood/Saving Newborn Lives, Conflict and Resolution, and numerous other subjects. His editorial work has appeared in publications worldwide, including, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, and The Observer, U.K., From 1990-1991 he was the Corporate photographer for The Body Shop Int., UK specializing in documenting the Press Campaigns of the Company. He currently represents Gamma Press, France in Nepal.

 

Apart from photography, he has produced and directed films and videos on prostitution, violence against women, and esoteric ethnic practices, among other subjects for Discovery Communications, USA, National Geographic, and the BBC. He has researched and photographed the books: Sacred Landscape-Pilgrimage in Tibet: In Search of the Lost Kingdom of Bon, Tibet: Reflections from the Wheel of Life; The Hidden Himalayas; Kathmandu: City on the Edge of the World, Abbeville Press, N.Y., N.Y., Fallen Angels: Sex Workers of South Asia, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Roli Books Int. New Delhi, India,) Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, Viking Penguin, N.Y., N.Y. and Cultural Traditions on Hinduism-Sadhus, Cuerpos Pintados, Santiago, Chile.

 

Thomas was the AV Technical Advisor for The Youth Expression Project, YEP, a program in South Asia to help young people (ages 15-23) to identify and voice their concerns about parental and societal values, HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, and sexual abuse. The project was about aiding them to understand their problems, concerns, hopes, fears, frustrations, and learning how to use media (writing, photography, video) to express those concerns on a public platform. Their media outputs were directed to parents, teachers and the general public.

 

 

For more examples of Thomas L. Kelly’s work, visit his website:

 

http://www.thomaslkellyphotos.com

 

 

 

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US, Nepal, Australian Militaries Join Forces to Aid Nepali Villagers

 

September 25, 2012

 

A multinational team led by U.S., Nepalese, and Australian military members and civilians treated more than 4,100 villagers, repaired and renovated three schools, and shared expertise Sept. 10-15, during Operation Pacific Angel 12-4 in Nepal.

 

The first Pacific Angel mission in Nepal featured free medical assistance in pediatrics, optometry, physiotherapy, public health infection control, food safety, women's health and pre-post partum nutrition care.

 

A very real example of the benefits of working together came during the mission when a newborn baby got a second chance at life. The child was a breech birth, and local doctors had pronounced him dead when two Project Hope doctors teamed up with a Nepal army nurse to provide rescue breathing -- reviving him, to the delight of a grateful family. (See above photo)

 

In addition to the thousands of patients receiving care, 80 Nepal Aamy and U.S. military designers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, painters and brick-layers enhanced and improved a school, hostel, restroom facilities, water tank and pump systems and school cafeteria at Macchapucchre primary and secondary schools and at the Macchhapuchhre district post.

 

Nepali children look through a window at Machhapuchhre Higher Secondary School of Dhikur Pokhari, Nepal, and watch U.S. Air Force and Nepalese army civil engineers repair one of the school's buildings during Operation Pacific Angel 12-4 on Sept. 9, 2012. Operations like Pacific Angel build and sustain relationships with our multinational partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

The U.S. and Nepalese also shared information and techniques related to humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and emergency response. Members of the Nepal army, U.S. Air Force and Pokhara police force held classes and conducted simulated exercises at the Western Regional Nepal Army Headquarters.

 

The entire effort featured over 200 Nepal army, U.S. Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force and Mongolian Armed Forces members. They were assisted by the staffs of Gandaki Medical College, Teaching Hospital and Research Centre Private Limited (Charak Hospital), Himalaya Eye Hospital - Nau Danda Training Health Post and the Western Regional Health Directorate. Also helping were volunteers from the Junior Red Cross Of Shree Macchapuchhre Higher Secondary School,and the Dikhur Pokhari Youth Network.

 

Participants, officials and local citizens reflected on the successful mission during a ceremony at Machhapuchhre Higher Secondary School in Kaski District, Pokhara, on Sept. 17. During the closing festivities, a U.S. Air Force general officer spoke on the value of teamwork and partnership.

 

 

 

"We are honored to have worked alongside the Nepal army through our Pacific Angel program and deeply appreciate the hospitality our Nepalese hosts have extended to us," said Maj. Gen. Russell J. Handy,  the Director of Operations, Plans, Requirements and Programs for U.S. Pacific Air Forces.

 

"These efforts are a visible expression of our combined commitment to peace and stability in this region -- with the desire to strengthen the relationship between our countries and our continuing resolve to ensure increased humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in this region," Handy said. "Throughout this past week, we have been continually impressed with the professionalism of the Nepal army and applaud the Nepal army and the Ministry of Home Affairs for their diligent efforts to improve the quality of life of Nepal's citizens."

A Nepali man smiles after receiving new glasses during U.S. Pacific Command's Operation Pacific Angel 12-4 Sept. 10, 2012, in Nepal. Pacific Angel 12-4 is a Pacific Air Forces planned event that enhances humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities between the United States and Pacific partners. The U.S. was invited by the Nepal government to provide support by conducting medical, optometry, and civil engineering programs. 

 

Officiating over the ceremony for Nepal was Nepal Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Nepal Bhusan Chand and Western Division Commander Maj. Gen. Victor.

 

Since 2007, Pacific Angel operations have been the cornerstone of U.S. Pacific Air Force's engagement efforts to partner with host nation military personnel throughout the Asia-Pacific region to improve the lives of tens of thousands of people and integrate operations with like-minded military and civilian professionals.

 

(Article Courtesy of Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs)

 

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Human Rights Watch says Nepal’s ban on women working in Gulf States Wrong-Headed

 

August 16, 2012

 

On August 9, Nepal’s cabinet banned women under the age of 30 from working in Arab Gulf countries as a solution to the ongoing sexual and physical abuse of young women trapped in those states.

 

But two days ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement strongly advocating that the new ban should be revoked. Instead, the Nepali government should concentrate on improving “protections, so that domestic workers can migrate safely – such as by ensuring full monitoring and accountability of recruitment agencies in Nepal.”

 

At the same time, HRW said that governments in the Gulf should adopt long overdue labor protections and immigration reforms, including ending the discriminatory treatment of domestic workers, to combat the abuse of Nepali and other migrant workers.

 

The ban is a response to several publicized cases of abuse of Nepali domestic workers, including long work hours, unpaid wages, and in some cases physical or sexual abuse.

 

See my related article of Oct. 14, 2011, Nepal will allow 150,000 women to work and once again face the dangers of becoming maids in Gulf States:

 

Nepali Women in Gulf States

 

"Nepal is right to be concerned about its migrant domestic workers, but imposing a ban on women under 30 from traveling to the Gulf does not solve the problem and discriminates against young women", said Nisha Varia, senior women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

 

"A better strategy would be to crack down on abusive recruitment practices, ensure that women migrate with an enforceable contract in hand, and equip embassies to respond quickly to complaints of abuse."

 

Official Nepali emigration figures state that as many as 1,000 migrants pass daily through Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu; many others leave by land through the porous Indian border.

 

Many domestic workers have positive experiences and together send home billions of dollars in remittances each year to Asia. Others face abuse.

 

Human Rights Watch has documented discrimination and abuse against Asian domestic workers in the Middle East for several years.

 

Labor laws in the Gulf exclude domestic workers from basic protections guaranteed other workers such as a weekly rest day, limits to hours of work, and compensation in case of work-related injury.

Restrictive immigration rules make it difficult for domestic workers to escape from abusive employers.

 

A ban on the work in the Gulf may drive women desperate for work to migrate through irregular channels, putting them at greater risk of exploitation and trafficking, Human Rights Watch said.

 

Human Rights Watch interviewed Nepali domestic workers in Saudi Arabia during the previous ban and found that they were especially likely to encounter abuse.

 

They had no information about their rights, no employment contracts, and were more likely to migrate with illegal recruiters who left them heavily indebted.

 

If they faced abuse from their employers, their precarious legal status made it more difficult for them to approach or receive assistance from authorities.

 

Instead of a blanket ban on young women that denies them important employment opportunities, Nepal's government should work with other labor-sending governments to demand stronger protections for migrant workers in the Gulf, Human Rights Watch said.

 

It urged the Nepali Government to improve training of migrant workers, to monitor recruitment agencies rigorously, and to ensure migrant women know where to get help if they need it.

 

"Governments in the Gulf should heed the concern about abuse against domestic workers in their countries," said Varia. "They should move quickly to include domestic workers in labor laws, prosecute abusive employers, and improve cooperation with labor-sending countries."

 

Nepal has obligations under its interim constitution and international law to protect women from discrimination, including in employment.

 

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which Nepal ratified in 1991, requires states to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment.

 

Human Rights Watch also called on the Nepali government to ratify the International Labor Organization Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers.

 

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Additional Indian troops along Nepal border

 

June 29, 2012

 

India has just announced that it will deploy an additional 8,000 troops along its borders with Nepal and Bhutan. The deployment will largely be achieved by July.

 

 

The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) guards the 1,751-km Nepal and 699-km Bhutan borders. The SSB (“Armed Border Force”, in English) is one of India's Central Armed Police Forces. It is often referred to as a paramilitary force, although it is not one of the three officially defined paramilitary forces of India. It is currently under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India. It was formerly known as the “Special Service Bureau”.

American Himalayan Foundation’s ongoing fight against girl trafficking in Nepal

 

April 21, 2012 

On April 30, 2012, the American Himalayan Foundation is hosting a benefit for its STOP Girl Trafficking initiative in Nepal, which was launched in 1997. To date, the program has helped prevent nearly 10,000 girls in the Himalayan region from falling into the common trap of becoming sex-trafficking victims.

Unlike other organizations that provide upfront assistance and then move on, STOP Girl Trafficking (SGT) and the American Himalayan Foundation are committed to rescuing at-risk girls in Nepal from the threat of trafficking by keeping them in school and, even more unique, supporting each girl through graduation and beyond.

According to a report issued in 2009 by the U.S. Department of State, more than 22,000 Nepali women and girls – the majority ranging in age from 12 to 18 – are trafficked annually. Forced prostitution and constant physical abuse – not to mention a high probability of contracting HIV – awaits them.

SGT began with 54 girls in 1997, when it traveled to remote villages to encourage girls to remain in school and to educate girls and their mothers on the dangers of sex trafficking. Since then, SGT has established programs at 400 government schools in districts plagued by some of Nepal’s highest rates of trafficking. Presently over 9000 girls are safely attending school thanks to the efforts of Dr. Aruna Uprety, the Nepali physician and activist who initiated the program, in partnership with the American Himalayan Foundation. The graduation rate for SGT scholars is 82%. Fewer than 2% have dropped out of the program.

Clearly, this is an initiative that is time-proven and well worth Westerners’ support.

 

 

 

 

BENEFIT DETAILS

The upcoming event, to be held in San Francisco at The Four Seasons, will include the attendance of several notable activists working in cooperation with the American Himalayan Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Siddharth Kara is an author and one of the world's foremost experts on modern day slavery and human trafficking. He is the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Visiting Scientist on Forced Labor at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is best known for his award-winning book, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2009). His next book, Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia is scheduled for release in 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Aruna Uprety, who created STOP Girl Trafficking, has a deep understanding of women’s issues in South Asia. In addition to her work with the American Himalayan Foundation, she founded Rural Health and Education Trust in 1995 and has lived and worked with Afghan women in Kabul in the aftermath of the US-led war against the Taliban. She has researched and published numerous articles on HIV/AIDS, STD, Sex Workers, Abortion, Maternal Health, Health Workers, Law, and Rural Women.

Her research includes: Baseline Study of Simulated STD Patients & Chemists in the Land Transportation Routes, Baseline Survey of Commercial Sex Workers & Clients, A Situation Analysis of Regional & Zonal Hospitals in Management of Family Planning and Post Abortion Related Complications. Her published works include: Your Health Is In Your Hands: A health guide for Women, Where Women Have No Doctor, Beijing Platform For Action, Women’s Health in Nepal: A situational analysis.

Dr. Uprety is also the author of a monthly column on various topics on women’s health and rights, including prolapsed uterus, anemia, gender, AIDS, family planning, trafficking, child health, and nutrition and has worked on Asmita, AIDS, an information booklet for the barely literate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jon Krakauer, is the American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writing about the outdoors and mountain climbing. He is the author of best-selling the non-fiction books Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

 

 

 

For information and reservations to the April 30^th event:

 

American Himalayan Foundation Events

 

or call:

 

415-288 7250

 

 

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Mikel Dunham’s “CAUGHT IN NEPAL” is now available worldwide

 

November 8, 2011

Today is the pub date for my newest book, a project that began more than three years ago. I gave digital cameras to Tibetan refugees stranded in Nepal with the task of documenting their daily lives in their settlements. Caught in Nepal is the result of that joint effort. The book includes my essay on the 2000-year-old relationship between the people of Nepal and Tibet. 

The book is now available. If you are not in Nepal you can still purchase a copy directly through the Nepali publisher’s website, (located in Kathmandu), or, if you prefer, through amazon.com. 


Vajra Publisher's Link

 

Amazon.com Link

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Announcing premier of documentary on sex-slavery in Nepal

 

June 26, 2011

 

Actress Demi Moore has partnered with Anuradha Koirala and the CNN Freedom Project for the documentary, "Nepal's Stolen Children," premiering Sunday, June 26 around the world. 

Ms. Koirala was selected as CNN’s 2010 Hero of the Year. 

There are an estimated 30,000,000 slaves worldwide.

Interview with Ram Kumari Jhakri : On Nepali Women and Nepali Politics

 

May 5, 2011

“Nepalis are very proud of our current quota of women in the Constituent Assembly – one -third of the members are women. But now, looking back, we have to ask, “What have these elected women achieved on behalf of women’s rights?”

Of all the young political leaders that have emerged in Nepal in the last ten years, Ram Kumari Jhakri has become the most prominent women in the youth movement. From 2008-2010, she was the National President of All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU), the sister ally of Nepal Communist Party (United Marxist Leninist-UML). Today, she remains active in UML and extremely popular among the younger activists who are politically committed to Nepal's future.

 

DUNHAM: The last time we talked was in 2007. Since then, there seems to be some progress with women’s issues. We sometimes here about these things in the Western press. Anurada Koirala’s winning of CNN Hero of the Year 2011 for her work in anti-trafficking in Nepal is the best-known example. Her achievements illustrated that women were doing something for other women in Nepal. But on the other hand, sex trafficking is about the only woman’s issue that the Western press is covering. Women’s health issues, for example, are far less covered. If you were given the opportunity to talk to women in America, how would you describe what’s going on here in terms of women’s rights? 

Chhaupadi: Nepali tradition of banishing women during menses continues

 

 

March 24, 2011

A great challenge for Nepal, one of the worlds’ poorest nations, is to find the means to finance education programs, which reverse age-old superstitions directed toward women.

No superstition is more dangerous to women’s health in Nepal than the belief that females must be isolated during their menstrual cycle and during and after childbirth. (Concerning the latter, women bearing children are banished for up to eleven days away from family members, causing critical danger and increasing complications that can, and do, lead to maternal and child mortality due to excessive bleeding, asepsis, snake bites and other complications.)

The practice of isolating women is called chhaupadi pratha. Nachhunu, the Nepali word for menstruation, also translates as “untouchable”. Even in modern Nepal it is common for women who are menstruating to be considered ‘impure’ and untouchable during the days of their menses. Everything they touch during the time of their menstruation can be considered impure.

What Nepali Women See on International Women's Day 2011

 

March 8, 2010

Click on photos for enlargment:

 

 

 

 

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WOMEN WRITERS OF NEPAL, a new book by Jagadish SJB Rana

 

 March 3, 2011

Women Writers of Nepal: Profiles and Perspective, is a compendium of condensed biographies of fifty-four women writers who have contributed to Nepali literature, primarily during the 20th century. Born between 1860 and 1960, the writers represent a broad spectrum of the talented and the not-so-talented, but all have in some way left their imprint on an extremely dynamic and transformative era in Nepali history. 

The author divides the timeline of his compendium into two equal parts: the first half the the 20th century, when the Rana family enjoyed absolute rule over the kingdom; and the last half of the century beginning with the 1950 revolution, which ended the Rana regime and marked the renewal of Shah monarchal control, as well as sudden influx of technical and cultural influences from the outside world. 

Reconnecting with Anurada Koirala, 2010 winner of CNN’s Hero of the Year Award

 

November 28, 2010

Last night in Hollywood, Anurada Koirala – founder of Maiti Nepal, the Nepali anti-trafficking organization -- was feted following her win of the prestigious CNN Hero of the Year Award. The awards ceremony was held earlier in the week at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, emceed by Anderson Cooper and with nearly 5,000 people in attendance.  

UNDESIRED: Walter Astrada’s searing documentary on violence against Indian women

 

October 29, 2010

Argentinean photojournalist Walter Astrada -- with the help of an Alexia Foundation grant and in collaboration with Media Storm -- has created a 12-minute documentary about violence against women and the societal pressure exerted on Indian women to bear sons – a situation that is perfectly mirrored in Nepali society.

The film is not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, I recommend it to all of my readers.

The undesirability of daughters originates from the belief that men make money while women, because of their expensive dowry costs, are a financial burden. As a result, there is a near constant disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until old age, women face a constant threat of violence and too frequently, death.

The numbers are staggering. Since 1980, an estimated 40 million women are “missing,” by way of abortion, neglect or murder. 7,000 female fetuses are aborted every day according to the U.N., aborted solely because they are girls. One dowry death is reported every 77 minutes. Countless others are never known.

FILM CLIP: Blind Cricket for Women and the Indomitable Spirit of Nepalis

 

 July 27, 2010

In 2007, AlJazeera/English brought a film crew to Nepal and produced an inspired twenty-minute documentary about one blind man’s effort to launch a national cricket tournament comprised solely of blind athletes, including young Nepali women.

Update: Human Trafficking and Slavery in Nepal

June 22, 2010

 

According to the just-released U.S. State Department’s 2010 Traffic in Persons Report, 

Nepal made some progress in its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts in 2009. But the Nepali government’s efforts were not enough to remove the nation from a “Tier 2” status, which indicates that Nepal has still failed to fully comply with the minimum standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victim Protection Act. 

Lack of resources, the ongoing political instability in Nepal and trafficking-related complicity by government officials, were listed as primary obstacles preventing the young republic from making more progress.

 Below is the full report. 

Ujwal Thapa: Nepalis Photographing Kathmandu’s Paralaysis

 

May 6, 2010

Ujwal Thapa, an indefatigable Kathmandu blogger and businessman, recently created a Facebook Event in anticipation of the Maoists’ May Day demonstration and the nationwide strike that followed.

He called it “Understanding the Maoist Bandh. One thousand opinions and photos.”

Ujwal called for all concerned citizens to rub shoulders with the demonstrators and document their experiences and feelings concerning the mood on the street.

“Lets go in the streets and understand why they are so passionate in bringing Nepal into a halt!” Ujwal implored.

The response was overwhelming. Below are a few of the hundreds of posted opinions and photographs taken from May 1-3. (click on photos for enlargement)

Video: Nepali Women migrant workers and the dangers they face

 

April 10, 2010

 

For the short film produced by the United Nations CLICK HERE

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Suicide Leading Cause of Death Among Young Nepali Women

 

January 23, 2010

 

 

 

The IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,  reported yesterdays that suicide has emerged as the single leading cause of death among women in Nepal aged 15-49, outranking other causes such as accidents and disease.

 

The Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Study 2008/2009 undertaken by the Family Health Division (FHD) of the Department of Health Services looked at changes in maternal mortality in Nepal since 1998, when the last survey was done.

 

The yearlong study of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) was carried out in eight districts chosen to represent different ethnicities and levels of development in Nepal.

 

The total population of women of this age group in these districts was over 86,000. But in preliminary findings that the study described as shocking, of the 1,496 deaths recorded, suicide - rather than maternal-related issues - was the single leading cause of death, accounting for 16 percent of deaths.

Nepali Personnel Reported Safe in aftermath of Haiti Earthquake

 

January 14, 2010

 

As horrific as the news is coming in from Port-au-Prince, there is good news for Nepalis who have family members and loved ones in Haiti. According to Brigadier General Ramindra Chhetri, spokesperson for the National Army, all Nepal Army soldiers deployed in the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti are safe, except for one man who sustained unspecified injuries. More than 1100 Nepali Army troops are on the impoverished island of which 350 are deployed in Port-au-Prince. This comes as an enormous relief since it is reported that 100 people are missing in the rubble of the collapsed UN headquarters building in Haiti – including mission chief Hedi Annabi.

Meanwhile, according to Republica, the contingent of Nepali police is also believed to be safe. There are 27 Nepal Police officers stationed in Port-au-Prince and 125 policemen stationed in Cape Haikian, 260 kilometers north of the capital. Additional good news: The 11 Armed Police Force officials from Nepal are reported unharmed.

Sex Trafficking and Why Prostitution should not be Legalized -- an article by Ruchira Gupta

 

December 24, 2009

 

Outlookindia.com just published an article  written by a friend of mine, Ruchira Gupta, one of the world’s preeminent leaders in anti-sex-trafficking. Among other things, Ruchira is the founder and president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide.  (Ruchira’s complete bio can be viewed at the end of the article.)

Alex Masi’s photographic documentation of child labor in the Subcontinent

November 21, 2009

click on image to enlarge

 

 

For years I’ve been photo-documenting human rights issues in Nepal, including child labor. Recent statistics shows that about 7 million Nepali children between the ages of 5-14 are working. Apart from health considerations, this negates their chances of getting an education. Nearly half of these children are working full time. Some of them work in India and even further abroad.

 

I was recently in touch with Alex Masi, a London photographer who shares my interest in child exploitation. Alex has taken some amazing shots  of  Indian child laborers in the last few years. The brilliance of his photography makes verbal social commentary almost superfluous. Alex’s work has appeared in “Vanity Fair”, “Marie Claire”, “Newsweek”, “'Condé Nast Portfolio”, “El Pais Semanal”, “Aftenposten Innsikt”, “L' Espresso”, “US News & World Report”, among other international magazines and publications.

The photographs that Alex has allowed me to publish are from his Hidden Youth series, a project documenting child labor in Firozabad, India, an extremely polluted city in Uttar Pradesh (not far from Agra) famous for its glass bangle industry. Firozabad is the only place in India where these bracelets are manufactured and they are sold worldwide – perhaps in a store near you.

In Alex’s words:

Most of the work is carried out by local children, raised to be tools of mass production, chained to a life of exploitation inside their own homes, where the glittering bracelets they handle everyday assume the form of handcuffs to a future of servitude. Due to extreme poverty and a lack of choices, over 20.000 young children are still employed in this area, considered to be one of the highest concentrations of child labour on the planet. Forced to work to support their disadvantaged families, children as young as five can earn an average of 30-40 Indian Rupees [approximate one US dollar] for eight or more hours of work daily, while being unable to receive any sort of education. They sit in crouched positions, use solvents, glues, kerosene and various other dangerous materials while breathing toxic fumes and spending most time of the day in dark, harmful environments.

 

 

To see more of Alex's superb work, visit his website by clicking on his name below:

Alex Masi

  

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SURVIVOR: Dunham's interview with a Nepali Girl Sold into Sexual Slavery

 

April 17, 2009

INTERVIEW WITH SUNITA DANUWAR

































DUNHAM: Sunita, thank you so much for taking time to speak with me – particularly since this is Nepali New Years day, when everyone is on holiday. We are here in Kathmandu at the office of AATWIN and also Shakti Samuha. You, along with fourteen other girls, founded Shakti Samuha in 1996. Why was it founded?

SUNITA: In 1996 India enacted a law that made it illegal for girls under the age of eighteen to be involved with the sex trade. Many brothels were raided at that time and underage girls were rescued. Of the 500 girls rescued, 128 were from Nepal. I was one of them.

The Risks of Nepalis Working Abroad: Dunham's Interview with Raj Kumar Guni

April 15, 2009



























In 2004, twelve Nepali non-skilled laborers were captured in Iraq, held hostage, tortured and finally murdered. One was beheaded while being videoed. The grizzly event was later aired on television throughout the Middle East. The remaining eleven hostages were shot, execution-style.

A terrorist group calling itself the “Army of Ansar al-Sunna”, who took credit for the carnage, later explained that the Nepalis had been “punished for helping the US.”

In fact, the victims’ connection to the US-led coalition was non-existent. They were lured to Iraq -- promised that they would earn the kind of money that was hard (if not impossible) to get back home.   They had no political agendas. They were simply coming to Iraq to be cooks and cleaners.

The US annual report on human rights abuses in Nepal 2008

March 2, 2009

































Published by BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, issued on Wednesday, Feb 25, 2009


This is excellent resource material. The report’s breakdown includes:

1.    Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
2.    Disappearances
3.    Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishmen
4.    Prison and Detention Center Conditions
5.    Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
6.    Role of the Police and Security Apparatus
7.    Arrest and Detention
8.    Denial of Fair Public Trial
9.    Trial Procedures
10.     Political Prisoners and Detainees
11.     Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies
12.     Property Restitution
13.     Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home by Security and YCL
14.     Use of Excessive Force and Other Abuses in Internal Conflicts
15.     Killings
16.     Child Soldiers
17.     Freedom of Speech and Press
18.     Internet Freedom
19.     Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
20.     Freedom of Religion
21.     Societal Abuses and Discrimination
22.     Freedom of Movement
23.     Internally Displaced Persons
24.     Protection of Refugees
25.     Stateless Persons
26.     Bandhs
27.     Elections and Political Participation
28.     Government Corruption and Transparency
29.     Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of          Alleged Violations of Human Rights
30.     Discrimination of Women
31.     Discrimination of Children and Child Abuse
32.     Trafficking in Persons
33.     Persons with Disabilities
34.     Treatment of National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
35.     Discrimination and Abuses toward Homosexuals
36.     The Right of Association
37.     The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
38.     Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
39.     Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment
40.     Acceptable Conditions of Work

Update on Girl Trafficking in Nepal

December 7, 2008





“For the last decade it has been estimated that 6,000 - 7,000 girls are trafficked out of Nepal each year. But these numbers have recently risen substantially. Current numbers for girls trafficked out of the country are now 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. This is compounded as the US Central Intelligence Agency states that most trafficked girls are currently worth, in their span as a sex-worker, approx $250,000 (USD) on the sex-trades market.” from Lost Daughters – An ongoing tragedy in Nepal, an article co-written by KAMALA SARUP and LYS ANZIA of Women News Network (WNN) a non-profit media news network that brings in-depth international women’s news seldom covered by the current public media stream.

I’m recommending this article to those who are interested in the ongoing girl-trafficking crisis in Nepal. The sad fact is that nearly a quarter of a million Nepali girls have been reduced to the status of  “sex products for sale.” India, China, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other mid-Eastern regions are the leading countries that exploit Nepali girls in the sex-trafficking industry. And once imprisoned in brothels, which can last for years, the young women not only face brutality on a daily basis, but are at a very high risk for AIDS. According to a 2004 World Bank report, to give but one example, it’s estimated that 50 % of Nepalese sex workers in Mumbai brothels are HIV positive.

But not all Nepali girls, forced into prostitution, are exported to foreign countries. On the matter of domestic trafficking, the article cites my 2007 interview with Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, Executive Chairperson of Samanata Institute for Social and Gender Equality in Kathmandu:

“Controlling trafficking has been compounded by the conflict of the last ten years. The communities [in Nepal] became poorer and some of them had no recourse but to try to find a means for a livelihood. During and after the conflict, there was a lot of displacement, a lot of women came to the urban centers, and most were not equipped to get into jobs. They were not educated -- no skills. So a lot of them became ‘dancers’, you know? So now, it’s like a phenomenon. Every town you go to, you have all these dance bars. It’s just a front for brothels.”

For the complete article, including an eight minute video:
Lost Daughters -- An Ongoing Tragedy in Nepal

For my interview with Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba:
Mikel Dunham talks with Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba

For more information on Women News Network:
Women News Network Home Page

 

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Mikel Dunham's book review of "Kathmandu Valley Style"

November 17, 2008





































Kathmandu Valley Style is a sumptuous photography book just released by Serindia Publications (Chicago). It celebrates the unique architectural movements, artistic styles and artisan virtuosity that have made Kathmandu one of Asia’s most intoxicating cities. Nepal’s capitol is a kaleidoscope of influences brought on by a succession of monarchal dynasties, scores of ethnic groups, and an overlapping Hindu-Buddhist-shamanistic spiritualism. Ancient palaces and temples still rule the skyline. The virtuosity of the valley’s Newari wood and metal craftsmen, (second to none and still in high demand), transforms pink brick walls into vibrant backdrops for dark intricate doorways, roof struts and window casings of phantasmagoric delicacy drunk on their own convolutions. Down every narrow street edificial wizardry is on display – an indentation here, a vermilion-smudge there – that keep the viewer riveted to Kathmandu’s native exuberance.





























There are numerous photography books that have focused on the historical visual delights of Kathmandu. But Kathmandu Valley Style has managed to bring a new perspective by documenting what is happening with the city’s architectural standard bearers today, by photographing recent restoration projects and, perhaps most important, by evoking a narrative of what may lay ahead for the capital’s aesthetic stamp.

The book zooms into interiors and private residences where the public, up until now, have been denied access – an entrée made all the richer by insights provided by eminent Western architects who have fallen in love with the Kathmandu Valley and brought their talents to bear on the city’s preservation.




Thus we have first-time-ever glimpses of rarified interiors: the private quarters of Kuthu Math, a structure originally built in 1748 to house Hindu holy men; the residence of South Korea’s ambassador, a new but magnificent tribute to traditional Nepali culture and style; writer/explorer Ian Baker’s eclectic and tantric abode tucked away in Naxal; restaurateur Kunal Lamas perfectly preserved house hiding in the midst of touristy Thamel; the grand prayer room of Tshering Tashi’s house on the edge of Gokarna Forest; politician Pashupati SJB Rana’s magnificent residence reflecting the Rana style of cobalt Venetian chandeliers and princely portraits; writer (and former consort of Prince Basundra) Barbara Adam’s century-old Thapa house laden with Bhutanese textiles and Tibetan carpets, to name but a few.

Like the look of Kathmandu itself, Kathmandu Valley Style is a collaborative effort.

Lisa Choegyal, author of several books, including Offerings from Nepal, and a leading expert in pro-poor sustainable tourism throughout Asia, has made Nepal her home since the 1970’s. She is a board member of the Nepal Heritage Society and a founding director the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust. 

Gautam SJB Rana, co-author of The Ranas of Nepal, masterminded the highly acclaimed Babar Mahal. Together, Choegyal and Rana used their extensive networks to gain access to previously unpublished private residences and historic buildings. Their commentaries on the photographs are eagle-eyed and prophetic in terms of how 21st century Nepal can modernize without forsaking the country’s invaluable heritage.

Craig Potton, one of New Zealand’s leading photographers and conservationists transcends the typical Architectural Digest-type coverage. He is as accomplished with exterior photography as he is with tight interior shots. And his eye for meaningful detail is crisp and superbly illuminated.

Kathmandu Valley Style is an important addition to Nepali identity—the text and photographs acknowledge the past while addressing what is possible in the present and in the future as well. Highly recommended.


















 

 

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Women in Nepal: Interview with DS Police Chief Gita Upreti

 

October 14, 2008

 


Historically, Nepal’s legal system has been a hybrid of Hindu law and English common law. The Muluki Ain, derived from patriarchal Hindu caste law and custom, has served as a general code of civil and criminal law and procedure, applicable to all Nepalis regardless of religion or ethnicity: property, inheritance, adoption, marriage, divorce, homicide, rape, incest, and many other subjects were covered by the Muluki Ain. However, when formal law – a particular statute or the constitution – has come in conflict with the Muluki Ain, formal law generally takes precedence. As a result, in the last half-century, women’s rights have improved in Nepal, although far from what the Western world would characterized as gender equality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in women’s health care. Nepal’s maternal mortality ratio, for instance, is about one in twenty-one women. Abortion-related deaths have been estimated to be as high as 4,000 per year. Less than half (47%) of births are assisted by trained health workers or traditional birth attendants. Fewer than one in five mothers receive postnatal care within the first two days after delivery. In all of the above cases, the risk-rates rise dramatically when addressing those women living outside the urban areas; the vast majority of women still live in remote agricultural settings.

Mikel Dunham’s interview with Nepal’s Finance Minister Dr. Bhattarai

 

September 23, 2008

Early this morning, I had my third interview with Maoist-second-in-command Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, the newly appointed Finance Minister of Nepal. Dr. Bhattarai’s first act in office was to introduce the national budget on September 19. This morning we spoke on several issues –tourism, Tibetan refugee deportation, crime against women, inflation – all of which have an impact on the stability of the world’s newest republic.

On Tourism

 
DUNHAM: Mr. Minister, if this new administration succeeds, history will remember it as the government that broke the chains of the old ways, returned peace to the land, and charted a completely new and innovative course toward Nepali prosperity in the 21st century. As the Minister of Finance you have a great deal to say as to the manner in which the government proceeds.

In the last two weeks I’ve talked to a variety of leading businessmen and what’s most surprised me is that, no matter what political affiliation they may be with, they seem to genuinely hope that you and the Maoist –led government succeed. They are saying, “Let’s wait and see and be patient and hope for the best.”

Patience may be a virtue, but in the political world, an administration cannot expect to enjoy public patience indefinitely. A year from now, you will need to be able to identify improvements that have been made in the financial sector. People will want to see at least the beginnings of a better life for them.

Your government’s plans are bold in meeting those challenges. But there are certain sectors within the Nepal business world that already show vigor – asking only to be left alone, at least for the time-being.

I’m thinking particularly of the tourist industry. Its leaders tell me that they are poised for a very robust October and November 2008, for instance. Foreigners will be pouring in and filling the hotels and seeking Nepal’s natural beauty like never before.
But…

One thing they are concerned about is the visa hike reportedly proposed. They’re saying, “Please not yet, Mr. Minister. Because of the shaky financial market and high oil prices, tourists are looking at all travel costs very closely. The visa hike would be a real turn-off for many tourists. Once we’ve got a full head of steam, then it’s a good time to raise the visa. Don’t cut us off at the ankles just when we have gotten back on our feet again.”

Here is one of those industries that you can hold up to the public a year from now and say, “See how tourism has improved since our administration?”

How do you respond to this and what discussions have you had with the leaders of the tourist industry about the raised visa cost and other industry-related concerns?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABARAM BHATTARAI: As you know, the Nepalese people have been going through exciting times these last few years – very exciting times in Nepalese history. The people have put their faith in us. We are in a newly formed government, only one month old. We have put forward the policies and programs and the new budget. There has been comparatively positive response to all of this.

As you know, our main task is peace and development. Peace and development are interlinked. Until and unless we have peace, we can’t have development. And until we have development, we can’t have sustainable peace. So that’s why we are focusing on development: to have sustainable peace. That’s why, in our budget and policies and programs of the government, we have prioritized certain sectors.

One is modernization of our agriculture sector. Our agriculture had been traditional, feudal and two-thirds of our labor force has been engaged in that. That’s why we want to modernize and commercialize agriculture: so that the majority of the labor force engaged –two-thirds – can switch over to non-agriculture jobs in the service sector jobs. 

The other sectors we have focused on are tourism and hydropower. We will be focusing on these sectors in the coming days.

You have correctly pointed out that tourism is one of the kingpins of our development process. And for that, the situation is comparatively positive and favorable. With the coming of the tourist season, there is a lot of expectation for the success in this sector. To stimulate the economy, we are trying to develop plans to attract more tourists and to provide good tourism infrastructure.

As you asked, the visa should be a non-issue. I haven’t gone through visa charges. I’ve just learned this from you. If it is too high, then we can look into that.

But the main thing is we want to welcome tourists. Nepal is a very beautiful place and the tourism industry can be a very good contributing factor for our long-term development. Therefore, we don’t want to put up any such barriers, which would discourage the tourist arrivals. We will look into that.

On the possibility of re-settling Tibetan refugees: Send them to America?

 
DUNHAM: In order to achieve your fiscal goals, you must cut out the fat when and where you see unnecessary expenditure occurring. It seems to me that one way to reduce expenditure and win foreign hearts is to allow any Tibetans currently living in Nepal who want to, to be repatriated to American soil. The American government has made it clear that they would be willing to bring these Tibetans to the U.S, but have felt blocked and shut out by previous Nepali governments. Why not let those who want to go, go to American if invited? As it stands now, aren’t they a burden on the budget rather than an asset?


FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: We will look into the Tibetan issue.

Since the new government has just formed since one month before, we haven’t had time to go into that. We will look into that. We don’t want them to make a burden on our economy. But in our budgetary allocation, and elsewhere, there is no allocation for Tibetan refugees. I think they have been surviving from other some other sources of income.

The Tibetan issue is slightly tricky, also. Since Nepal is sandwiched between the big countries, China and India, we have to balance our foreign policy very delicately. Keeping that in mind, we will try to solve this issue.

DUNHAM: Recently, 137 Tibetans were detained at the Tibetan Reception Center. It’s been predicted that at least half of them do not have the refugee certificate card. They will therefore be deported to India. When I spoke to the Home Minister a few days ago, he assured me that, in the future, they will continue to be deported to India, contrary to the rumor that they might be deported to China.

Couldn’t it also be possible that, if there are future deportees and the United States is willing to bring them to American soil, couldn’t the deportees just as easily be sent to America? Is that a possibility?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: That…that we have to look into that. I would like to look into that further.

On crimes against women and the need for more policewomen

 
DUNHAM: In the past few weeks, I’ve been talking with a number of women in the police force. Out of 57,000 police officers only 2000 of them are women. But this small minority has made a real difference out there in the field in helping victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking. Women are essential in creating a trust between the victim and the police officer. Female victims need to be able to talk to other women.

The Women’s and Children’s Service Center, for example, is doing a terrific job even though they are extremely understaffed and financed to operate a successful operation. Reducing violence against women and curtailing sex-trafficking will be, over the long run, sound economic policy.

So what I’m saying is: Here’s a department that’s already working admirably but really needs help. Have you included in your budget significant monies to pay for an increase in the number of policewomen to specifically deal with women in crisis? And wouldn’t this increase in policewomen be a very cost-effective measure to take for the new government?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: Yes, definitely, yes. I fully agree with that. If there are more women in the police, it will give a more human face to the police force. In general, it will send a good message to the public.

As far as crime against women goes, it’s very rampant in this society – sex-trafficking and all these things – domestic violence. To look into that also, if there are women officers in the police force, it will ease the whole situation. That’s why I fully agree with your assessment.

DUNHAM: You support the idea of increasing the women personel --?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: Yes, definitely, definitely. In fact, our policy has been to increase the number of women in all sectors of the state, including the security forces. So, if not 50%, at least 33% should be the target. This has been the position of our party.

DUNHAM: And are you running up against any resistance from other parties to achieve that goal of increasing women in all sectors of the state?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: Of course there will be resistance. Ours is a feudal society and this patrimonial culture is still here. Keeping that in mind, there will be resistance. Even then, we have to fight against that. And we are ready to fight against that. 

On Inflation

 
DUNHAM: I see we’re running out of time. One more question, Mr. Minister. Businessmen in Kathmandu, at least the one’s I’ve talked to, say their biggest concern about the new budget is whether or not you will be able to control inflation. What measures are you prepared to take in order to curb inflation?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: No, in spite of the people’s apprehensions, the budget is not inflationary. People think it is a very ambitious budget, but that is not so. Even if you go by the international norms and standards of macro-economic stability, it is within the bounds. We have not crossed that limit. We have very meticulously calculated it and I don’t think our budget will lead to inflation.

But the inflationary pressure is an international phenomenon. You see, we have a very open economy, an open border with India, so some of the inflation would be imported from outside Nepal. That would be very difficult for us to contain.

DUNHAM: That’s right.

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: But internally, we will revise policy. The best way to control inflation is to improve the supply side, you see? -- if you make good supply arrangements that can check inflation, and other measures also were working.

DUNHAM: When you talk about other outside forces… right now, America’s financial debacle seems to be spreading in every direction. It’s a mess. As Finance Minister, to what degree do you think the American problem will ripple into Nepal’s economic stability?

FINANCE MINISTER DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI: Actually, it has some impact. But it doesn’t have a very big impact because our economy is a very peripheral economy. We are at the far periphery of the global economy. In that sense, I don’t think there will be a very big impact, but it will have some impact. So we will work out measures, keeping this in mind.

 

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Mikel Dunham’s exclusive interview with Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister Bam Dev Gautam

 

September 18, 2008 – Kathmandu, Nepal

 

This morning I conducted a filmed interview with Deputy Prime Minister Bam Dev Gautam at the Ministerial Residence Compound in Pulchok. Gautam serves as Deputy Prime Minister, the number-two man in Nepal’s new government. He has also been appointed Home Minister, a position that oversees all matters of security in Nepal. Known as a long-time advocate of a multi-party democracy in Nepal, Gautam played an integral role in 2004 when he helped orchestrate meetings between the rebel Maoists and the Seven Party Alliance –a political merging that eventually led to the demise of the 260-year-old monarchy. This morning, Gautam and I spoke on a variety of issues including corruption, gang violence, rule of law in Madesh, sex trafficking, intra-party strife and the question of Tibetan deportation. As far as I am aware, it was during my interview that Gautam said for the first time, unequivocally, that Tibetans would not be in danger of being deported to China – not now nor in the future.

DUNHAM: I believe that improving the infrastructure in Nepal  -- and as soon as possible  -- should be a priority in the new government. But it is also my opinion that, before you can build infrastructure, the government must establish rule of law and nation-wide security. Do you agree with this?

HOME MINISTER GAUTAM: What you say is right, to some extent, but the development of infrastructure is not the only important work. Right now, the most important work is to achieve

Should Nepal's Politicians be watching Kenya?

An Uneasy Look Back at 2007 in Nepal
FEBRUARY 12, 2008

2007 was a year of electoral postponements, growing violence in the Terai, continuing economic deterioration, lawlessness, lack of accountability and new shades of terrorism.

On the impunity of violence against Nepali women

Interview with Devi Sunuwar
JANUARY 10,2008

Almost two years after the 2006 Peace Movement that forced the king to step down, Nepal continues to be plagued by a gross deficit in human rights protection. With few exceptions, civilian victims of the 10-year insurgency have yet to see justice served on rapists, extortionists, kidnappers and murderers who perpetrated their crimes under the guise of government forces and/or Maoist insurgents. According to Amnesty International -- although there is ample blame to spread around -- it was the arbitrary arrests, torture, forced disappearance and extra-judicial killings of individuals perpetrated by the military police and the Royal Army that were most egregious.

Nepal's Political Future: An Interview with Nepal's Brightest Young Leaders

December 17, 2007

DUNHAM: I’ve asked you to meet me tonight because I regard you as the fresh voices of Nepal and because I know you deserve far more attention than you receive from the old guard. When I ask people in power about the deplorable waste in youthful human resource in Nepal, they pay lip service to the youth, but I see very little resolve to take action on your behalf, even though, astoundingly, 60% of the population in Nepal is under the age of 30. I’m here to find out what it’s like to be young in Nepal. What are your aspirations? What are the pitfalls of trying to promote new ideas in a patriarchal society?

Britain and Nepal: Interview with UK Ambassador Dr. Andrew Hall OBE

BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH NEPAL
Interview with Ambassador Hall

The history of relations between the United Kingdom and Nepal span two centuries, dating back to Great Britain’s colonial rule in India. A brief war between the army of the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Nepal took place from 1814 to 1815 when, in the south, Gorkha forces encroached upon British territory. Nepal, which had continuously expanded its boundaries since King Prithvi Narayan Shah’s consolidation of Nepalese territory in the late 1700s, now overplayed its hand. The British troops ultimately prevailed and a peace agreement resulted in Nepal losing nearly a third of its previously claimed territory. The Anglo-Nepal War officially ended with the ratification of the Treaty of Sugauli (1816). Thereafter, a British Representative was stationed in Kathmandu in a large compound provided by the Nepalese government.

Nepali Girl Trafficking Increasing -- Interview with Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba

 September 30, 2007


In recent years, the estimate of the number of Nepali females being traffickSed each year to India (and beyond) was approximately 6,000-7,000. However, according to the latest report issued by the UN Regional Office for South Asia for Prevention of Drugs and Crimes--released last week--at least 10,000 to 15,000 girls are now trafficked from Nepal to the subcontinent. The office labels trafficking as the world’s fast-growing international organized crime.

Sex Trafficking in Nepal-2007

U.S. Department of State's Latest Assessment

Each year the State Department submits the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report to Congress. Each country is assessed on its previous year's record of prosecution, protection and prevention. It also examines the nation's efforts to rescue, rehabilitate and reintegrate victims of trafficking.

A country that fails to make significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons, per U.S. law receives a "Tier 3" assessment--"Tier 1" being given to the least egregious of countries. Currently, Nepal is classified as "Tier 2". Below is the State Department's analysis.

Nepal is a source country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude.