Horizons | Research Summary | Trafficking and Human Rights in Nepal: Community Perceptions and Policy and Program Responses

RESEARCH SUMMARY

August 2001

Trafficking and Human Rights in Nepal: Community Perceptions and Policy and Program Responses

Study Methodology

The study included three interrelated components:

Policy analysis: A rapid assessment of the policy context that underlies efforts to control trafficking in Nepal. This assessment examined the forces that influence strategic approaches, program priorities, intervention design, and funding opportunities for the prevention of trafficking and the care and support of trafficked persons. The methods included documentation review and interviews with key policymakers, program managers, and activists in Nepal.

Documentation of current intervention models: An assessment and analysis of existing, “on-the-ground” intervention programs for the control of trafficking in Nepal. This analysis paid particular attention to the operating values, goals, and strategies of the different interventions, highlighting assumptions about the underlying determinants of trafficking as well as the means of prevention and assistance to trafficked persons. The methods included interviews with individuals and key organizations (one donor agency, ten Kathmandu-based and international NGOs, and two anti-trafficking networks) involved in anti-trafficking activities in Nepal and a review of project documents and IEC materials.

What is trafficking?

A recent definition of trafficking proposed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights encapsulates a process of recruitment, transportation, and exploitative labor conditions:

“Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by threat or use of violence, abduction, force, fraud, deception or coercion (including the abuse of authority), or debt bondage, for the purpose of placing or holding such person, whether for pay or not, in forced labor or slavery-like practices, in a community other than the one in which such person lived at the time of the original act described.” (Coomaraswamy 2000)

Community-based study on trafficking: Primary field-based data collection to identify perceptions, knowledge and attitudes of community members about trafficking, the roles and opportunities ascribed to women, and the benefits of migration to seek work. Participants included adolescent girls and their families, as well as key gatekeepers and decision-makers at the community level. The research team carried out data collection, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, in three districts in Nepal: Jhapa, Parsa, and Palpa. This included key informant interviews, 43 focus group discussions with adolescent girls and other community members, and Participatory Learning and Action techniques. In addition, the researchers surveyed 1,269 randomly selected adolescent girls (ages 14-19) in the three districts.

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