More than 200,000 Nepali girls trafficked to Indian red light areas
Every month 7,000 Nepali girls are trafficked to India where they are forced into prostitution, the government has said.
A United Nations report on human trafficking just out said 79% of trafficking victims are sold for sex and the victims are mostly women and girls.
Altogether 200,000 Nepali girls have been trafficked to India, said Nepali state-run newspaper The Rising Nepal.
"We have a large number of Nepalese girls in India's red light areas,” Dr Govinda Prasad Kusum, Home Affairs Secretary said at the launch of the UN’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons on Friday.
“Controlling traffickers is proving troublesome because we share open borders with India and traffickers have a dozen ways to cross borders without being noticed," Dr Kusum said. Apart from India, Nepalese girls have also been trafficked to Gulf countries, Malaysia and China's Hong Kong, but the number of Nepalese girls in these brothels is unknown.
According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) the report is the first global check on the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. It looks at trafficking patterns, legal steps taken and specific reports of trafficking, victims and prosecutions in different countries.
"The number of convictions for human trafficking is increasing, yet in most countries the conviction rates rarely exceed 1.5 per cent, that is 100,000 people. The report clearly shows that the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation which makes up 79% of the victim population, and the victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and girls. The second most common form of human trafficking is indicated to be forced labour at 18% which is less frequently detected and reported than trafficking for sexual exploitation," said Deepika Naruka in Delhi, who helped put together the report.
Worldwide, almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children, the report said. And in some parts of the world this proportion is much higher. Children are abused for begging or exploited for sex as prostitutes, paedophilia or child pornography. Others are sold as child brides or camel jockeys. The exploitation of children is the most dramatic aspect of the crime. On the plus side, a large number of traffickers have been convicted in both India and Nepal, according to the report.
There are now seven SOS Children communities in Nepal which are home to more than a thousand children and young people as well as a variety of social, medical and educational facilities providing much-needed help and assistance for local communities.
Written by Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children
