REHABILITATION OF GIRLS RESCUED FROM BROTHELS | Society

Trafficking of girls in Nepal is espoused with prostitution in Indian and international sex markets. At present there are innumerable girls put into forced sex and prostitution in a foreign land. This created a national concern. Thus came several national and international organizations working on the issue of girls trafficking in Nepal. Prevention of future trafficking has been a focus for quite sometime, but the question arose on the fate of the rescued girls. As can be seen, girls trafficking, a social issue has been raised repeatedly but the rehabilitation of the rescued girls has not been explored in details. Therefore, we (Anjana Goenka, Grishma Shrestha, Rakshendra Man Patrabansh and Sijan Sharma), students of 1st Year, Masters of Business Administration, School of Management, Kathmandu University chose to conduct a research on "Rehabilitation of Girls Rescued from Brothels", as a partial fulfillment of the course on Research Methodology.

To begin with, what is trafficking? "Trafficking is the transportation of persons by others using violence or the threat of violence, abuse of authority or dominant position, deception or other forms of coercion, for the purpose of exploiting them sexually or economically for the profit or advantage of others, such as recruiters, traffickers, intermediaries, brothel owners and others." Our research lay in the aspect of trafficking of girls for the purpose of prostitution. As per our research, we found that the girls are trafficked through various methods. Some are married or lured for marriage. Some, from vulnerable and poor families, are lured with work proposals starting from domestic work, baby-sitting to jobs at factory and finally trafficked for prostitution. And some are even tricked, kidnapped, and trafficked for prostitution.
Sex trafficking makes women and minor girls an object of sale and use and it is a total violation of human rights. It places women and girls in danger and denies her right to life and security. Girls and minors are kept as bonded laborers for years till they can flee. Some die of disease and others of violence. They suffer rape, beating, and multiple abortions and are treated as outcasts in the society. As we all know, young minor boys are also abused and exploited, but the percentage of them is much less compared to that of girls. This again reflects the effect of gender discrimination and unequal power structure that largely exist in our society.

Realizing this problem in our society, we conducted a research with the aim of finding the present scenario of the rehabilitation of the girls rescued and brought back to Nepal who were previously trafficked to a foreign land in brothels. It also aimed at exploring how far the government, NGOs and INGOs have been effective in solving the problem of rehabilitation of the rescued girls. The study was conducted within a time span of three months using both primary data and secondary data.

The rescued victims in various rehabilitation shelters prepare to earn their livelihood through commercial production of various goods like food, clothing and decorative items to name a few. The market for these goods has been limited to the international market and the local market's contribution has been very negligible due to lack of awareness and the non-acceptance by the society. Realizing the obstacle in penetrating the local market, we the research group organized a one-day exhibition of these goods in Basantapur Chowk on the 4th of December 2000. The exhibition attracted a good number of customers throughout the day and the public's response was enthusiastic to the products. Hence, what we need is awareness and the collective effort of the society to curb the existing problem at least in the matter of being supportive to these victims' ordeals.

Rehabilitation is a long drawn and complicated issue that cannot be settled by quick fix solutions. Each year victims are rescued back to Nepal and rehabilitation of those victims rescued has been a major problem since the ratios of the returnees to the existing infrastructures are not sufficient. More rehabilitation centers needs to be initiated to cope up the inflows. With due acknowledgment to the government's efforts on the rehabilitation of these victims, it is imperative that the effort still needs to be strengthened by factors like creating more job opportunities to the victims and an honest support to the NGOs working towards this noble path of bringing back hope to these victimized women.

During our research, what we found was that the youth of today are very willing to help these girls in whatever way possible but they have not been able to do so as they are not aware of how they could contribute in making life of these girls a better one. What we suggest is that first of all, we should accept and treat them as normal people and not look at them as some cast outs. If we pride ourselves as being civilized and desire progress, prostitution must be eradicated. But one must get to the heart of the matter. Those responsible for nurturing the institution of prostitution must be brought to book, while the prostitutes must be rescued and rehabilitated adequately, instead of forcing them into a hell worse than the present state that they live in. When someone declares that he wants to eradicate prostitution and in the same breath asserts that rehabilitation is not his concern, one is forced to doubt his sincerity. Let us not cheat ourselves at this hour of need anymore. We need to protect the rights of these women in prostitution by bringing them out of it. We should remember that these women did not choose for this job but were forced into it. We should not neglect these victims and talk about development alternatives, but we should rescue all victims from their living hell and provide them with safety, security, shelter, education and most importantly proper childhood, for all those ill fate children who have been forced into this trade. We should think of awareness and advocacy programs to make people aware of the happenings. But, at the same time, while making such a sensitive issue known to the public, we should also be careful and serious about the secondary violations of the rights of the victims through exposure by media, research and tests. Last but not the least as being a sincere citizen of this land it is our duty to help in whatever way to support the cause for the unification of these victims back to our society. With a final note, we should condemn prostitution, but not prostitutes.