Lost Daughters – An ongoing tragedy in Nepal

“In recent years, millions of women and girls have been trafficked across borders and within countries. The global trafficking industry generates an estimated five to seven billion U.S. dollars each year, more than the profits generated by the arms and narcotics trades,” quotes a Feb 2001, Asia Foundation and Horizons Project Population Council report.

In the late 17th century, the brothel area of Kamathipura was first established to service British troops in what was then called Bombay, India. In 2004, the cost to buy a sex-trafficked girl from Nepal in what is now called Mumbai, has risen to 100,000 - 120,000 Indian rupees (approx $2,004 - 2,405 USD). Girls trafficked from Nepal are known as a “tsukris.” They are those who have been indentured (forced) to work under a “never ending” contract commonly found with human trafficking.

The industry in the trafficking of Nepali girls is a very lucrative business. It can include forced labor, domestic and factory work. Young girls who are teenagers are often used in the sex-trafficking industries, though, because of the extreme profit for traffickers and the very low incidence of law enforcement arrests against sex-industry racketeers.

Arresting the traffickers can be very tricky. In rural Nepal this is a constant challenge as adequate police enforcement is often non-existent. Seen only as an investment to brothel owners, trafficked girls, in addition to cooperating in the daily sex-servicing of clients, are used by the brothel owners as “virgins,” as owners attempt to sell a girl’s virginity over and over again. This insidious crime can be found throughout the back alleys of Mumbai today.

So, why are most brothel owners interested much more in owning girls from Nepal versus girls from India?

The answer is obvious. Sex sells and girls from villages like Ichowk, Mahankal and Talmarang in the Sindhupalchowk district in northern central Nepal are full of girls who are more than anxious for a better life.

Besides this, Nepalese girls are cheaper to buy, much more cooperative and much easier to control and enslave. Girls from the rural regions are known to be much more obedient and considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them. Nepali girls coming from the rural farming areas, because of their naïveté, are much more easy to cheat and to force into debt bondage. This is because they have very little, if any, education and they usually do not speak any of the native languages of India.

“Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.
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