10.16.10 *FOUND | Maiti Nepal

Nepalgunj is the saddest place on earth. It's the sort of place that should be a ghost-town. It's filthy, it's desolate and it's desperately poor. It's like a village full of broken things that no one fixes, with starving dogs that roam sewered streets, not beyond eating their own or anything else for that matter. It stinks, its insufferably hot and... our flight was delayed. This is not the sort of place you want to stay one second longer than you have to.

Due to it's proximity to the Indian border, Nepalgunj is a primary target for human trafficking. This is the place where "Officials" turn a blind eye with a pocket full of bribes to let pimps push their merchandise of flesh over the border to sell at market. Their "merchandise" being young women and children from the hill tribes which live to the north of the border, an area with very few roads or infrastructure. Because Nepal is an incredibly rural country with very few "big" cities, many of its citizens walk for days to get anywhere. School is out of the question, medical care is often what the local witch-doctor prescribes. I venture to say that in many of these remote locations, things haven't changed in years. In some situations, you think, well it shouldn't change! It should be fine as it. But is it? No it's not. If there is famine or floods, the people do not eat, they lose their livelihood, they lose their homes. How can that be helped? Should NGOs always meddle? If children are starving and people are dying from diseases that can be simply avoided, then yes, help should be provided. A government should see that all have access to clean water, to adequate food supply, to education and to roads that can connect them to greater needs. There is very little infrastructure which makes human relief work nearly impossible. Nepal relies heavily on human relief organizations—without them, there would be even more lives lost. So, when you have pimps crawling up in to these hills with talk of nice jobs in the big city—wouldn't your ears perk up? Desperation and misinformation lend themselves to wrangling the poor in to naively believing there is someone nice enough to provide a way out. And the next thing they know, they are jammed in to a brothel with twenty other girls somewhere in India. That's how the systems works. Tragically, 5,000-7,000 girls a year get "traded" right out of Nepal through places like this. 

There are several organizations that are pushing back and standing guard in places like Nepalgunj. Maiti Nepal is an epic organization making massive progress in the fight against human trafficking. Founder Ms. Anuradha Koirala has just been nominated as one of CNN Top 10 Heroes of the Year for her relentless work in standing up to the ugly reality of flesh trade. This is an organization which understands the second-place women and children have in their society making them excruciatingly volatile to exploitive labour and domestic violence.

Maiti Nepal, led by the feisty Ms. Koirala has grown in to an organization that is no longer ignored by the authorities in Nepal or India but rather counted on for the training watch-groups seeking to stop traffickers crossing borders. There are interception zones, rescue operations and transit homes along the major "flesh-trading" routes which are instigated and maintained by Maiti Nepal. There are also many who trek up in to the hills to provide awareness information for villages who don't know that their females are at risk. As a result, thousands of girls are saved from ending up in Indian brothels. The work of Maiti is a massive, ongoing undertaking with rehabilitation homes, schools, micro-business workshops, and HIV/AIDS help. Many lives have been spared as a result of one woman saying, "One day we will really stop it, the trafficking will end." I believe you!

To read at length about the work of Maiti Nepal, please visit: www.maitinepal.org