Kingdom of Nepal

Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world with almost one-third of its population living below the poverty line. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for three-fourths of the population and accounting for about one-third of GDP. Industrial activity mainly involves the processing of agricultural products, including pulses, jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain..  [The World Factbook, U.S.C.I.A. 2009]

Human trafficking and modern day slavery NEPAL  [Extracted from U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009]

Nepal is a source country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude. Children are trafficked within the country and to India and the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation or forced marriage, as well as to India and within the country for involuntary servitude as domestic servants, circus entertainers, factory workers, or beggars. NGOs working on trafficking issues report an increase in both transnational and domestic trafficking during the reporting period, although a lack of reliable statistics makes the problem difficult to quantify. NGOs estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Nepali women and girls are trafficked to India annually, while 7,500 children are trafficked domestically for commercial sexual exploitation. In many cases, relatives or acquaintances facilitated the trafficking of women and young girls into sexual exploitation. Women and girls are also trafficked to other Asian destinations, including Malaysia, Hong Kong, and South Korea for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.

The Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation estimated that, annually in Nepal, 20,000 to 25,000 girls become involuntary domestic workers. Bonded labor also remains a significant problem, affecting entire families forced into labor as land tillers or cattle herders. Over one million Nepali men and women work abroad in countries other than India, which is, by far, the most popular destination for Nepali workers; many of them migrate willingly to Malaysia, Israel, South Korea, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and other Gulf states with the help of labor brokers and manpower agencies to work as domestic servants, construction workers, or other low-skill laborers, and subsequently face conditions indicative of forced labor such as withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, deprivation of food and sleep, and physical or sexual abuse. Many are deceived about their destination country. Many Nepali trafficking victims are subjected to debt bondage, which can in some cases be facilitated by fraud and high recruitment fees charged by unscrupulous agents in Nepal. Many traffickers provide parents of victims a “salary advance” in order to place the victims in a state of indebtedness, which may then be used to compel those victims to perform labor or a service in order to avoid threatened serious harm. In 2008, there was an increased number of reports of Nepali men who had been recruited for work in Gulf States, but were subsequently trafficked into forced labor in Iraq and Afghanistan by manpower agencies. Nepal’s role as a destination for foreign child sex tourists appears to be growing, as efforts to confront this problem in traditional Southeast Asian destinations have become more effective, according to local observers.