How is Nepal Particularly Vulnerable to Human Trafficking?

EVERY YEAR, NEARLY 15,000 NEPALI GIRLS AND WOMEN ARE TRAFFICKED TO INDIA’S FOUR MAIN CITIES.

Nepali girls are seen as attractive, due to their light skin. Nepali virgins are believed to cure HIV. For debt bondage, they are valuable for traffickers because they have been trained to perform many domestic tasks from a very young age. Because, girls are almost always uneducated, and their illiteracy and lack of employable skills allow them to be easily persuaded by predators, or by their own parents, to leave home to earn money elsewhere.

Thousands of lives at risk

The border between Nepal and India is quite open and anyone can cross without a passport or visa. Over recent years, over 200,000 young Nepali girls have been stolen from their homes and forced into sex slavery in the red light districts of India. Every year, nearly 15,000 Nepali girls and women are trafficked to India’s four main cities—Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, and Bangalore—for bondage-based commercial sex. In addition, nearly 7,000 women are trafficked to Persian Gulf countries each year.Nepali girls are also commonly trafficked to Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

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