Desperate Girls

The Badi Girls

Between 7,000 and 12,000 young girls, aged 9-16, are trafficked each year from Nepal; mainly to India. According to Nepal Monitor/On line journal, 2007, there are more than 200,000 Nepali girls in Indian brothels.

The Dalits(untouchables) are the lowest level in Hindu society, and the Badi community, in Western Nepal, are the lowest of the low. As a displaced hungry people group the Badi community has made sexual subservience a way of life. Young girls from this group “serve” other groups. This has become a tradition and means of livelihood. Many girls, even when they are unwilling, are forced to serve as sex slaves. Family members knowingly sell their daughters to traffickers.

Though prostitution is illegal in Nepal, the industry reportedly has links with highly ranked officials and political leaders. Large groups of girls are taken across the border with many police and government officials being in collusion with traffickers and brothel owners.

Traffickers and related criminals are often protected by political parties, and if arrested, are freed using political power. As a result, there is an underlying distrust of police that has led people not to file cases against traffickers.

Domestic action involves activities of NGO’s and other volunteer groups. These groups are playing a major role to address girl-trafficking and sex slaves issues. Some NGO’s are playing a very important role to improve the situation. From creating social awareness to rescuing and rehabilitation, they are providing services (and relief) to those that need it the most – the likely victims as well as the rescued ones. The Lighthouse foundation is one of these.

*See Chandra Kala’s story on this blog site.

Friday 18 April 2014

Thursday 17 April , icing, welding and construction

The team is already is full swing.  Margaret and Delma are in the kitchen teaching making leaves and flowers for cakes..Barry and Norman are outside welding a frame for a covered area outside the kitchen.  Tomorrow,  some boys are coming to get instruction on welding.  Mo is completing her health classes with the half-way house women.  There will be dancing and singing afterwards, I'm sure.  Agnes and Salli are at school working with the teachers.  Grahame is at the Bible college.  ESL class continue twice a day.  Some of those young people walk for an hour to start at 6a.m. Walk home again and then repeat it in the afternoon.  Many go to work in between times.  The half-way ladies walk an hour each way to come for their training.  I, on the other hand, do the exciting task of grocery shopping, in the morning and each afternoon ,walk quite a distance to buy the fresh veges off the little carts that appear about 4 p.m.  Our front gate is a construction site.  Great mounds of gravel and sand, and a clapped out small cement mixer block our way.  I had to scramble over the gravel pile to get out to buy the food today.  They mix the concrete, then pulley it up in a big metal bucket.  The men on the top floor tip it onto large sheets of something with a man holding two corners at each end, the drag it to,the place it needs to be, the fling it down.  They worked flat out all day.  At least it was all men this time, and not some poor lady carrying the loads up on her back up three flights of stairs.  The Mackay team arrives tonight, so,we will have 22 people here now for another week. With two more arrived in a couple of day.




      
     Norman and Barry

Mo preparing for the dusty streets.

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