CLS Christian Lawyer Magazine June 2014_Proofforweb.pdf Jun. 2014 | Page 12

RESCUING
THE VULNERABLE
IN NEPAL

BY KIRKLIN M. SCHWEITZER

A

lmost thirty million people globally live as slaves, nearly
half of which are in India alone.1 However, the girls enslaved in India, forced to work in brothels and debt bondage,
are not all from India. Many have been imported from neighboring Nepal—a small country that atracts mountain climbing tourists, blissfully unaware that traickers work all around
them, expanding the underground industry that is human traficking.
For many, Kathmandu, Nepal is associated with a trekker’s
challenging ascent up the world’s highest mountain—Mt.
Everest. Tourists ind that the narrow and bustling streets of
hamel—the tourist district of Kathmandu—cater to sojourning trekkers. Yet this idyllic glimpse of Nepal difers vastly from the day-to-day reality faced by most Nepalis.
Nepal is situated between India and China, and while its landmass is only slightly bigger than the State of Arkansas,2 the
total population amounts to more than thirty million.3 he
landscape of Nepal is mountainous with litle infrastructure or
industry outside of Kathmandu—a mere 17% of the popula-

10

tion lives in urban areas.4 Nepal ranks amongst the poorest and
least developed countries in the world.5 Unfortunately, human
traicking thrives in Nepal.
According to the United Nations, “traicking in persons” is deined as the recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of
the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power
or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or beneits to achieve the consent
of a person having control over another person, for the
purpose of exploitation.6
India is estimated to have the highest number of enslaved persons in the world—nearly iteen million.7 Many are aware of
the egregious human rights violations of Nepal’s close neighbor to the south, but fewer people know that Nepal ranks in
the top ive countries for prevalence of human traicking.8 It
is commonly referred to as a “source country” as many Nepali girls are traicked across the Nepal-India border—oten
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER | JUNE 2014