NEPAL: Impoverished Rural Women
Prone to Exploitation in Towns
KATHMAMDU, 12 June 2007 (IRIN) -
Maili Buda, 35, is having an increasingly difficult life since her husband was
killed in Khalanga village, northwest of the capital, during a clash between the
Maoist rebels and government security forces nearly six years ago.
Peace
has been restored in the country but many Nepalese women like Buda remain
impoverished, say local aid workers.
“Women continue to get poorer by
the day and their hardship is compounded by the government’s neglect,” said
local development worker Jiwan Khadga.
He said many impoverished women
lost their male relatives during fighting with the Maoists or when they migrated
to India to escape the turmoil. “A large number of them didn’t return home. They
stayed in India and some remarried, even when their wives were waiting for
them.”
Lack of rights
“The worst off are women,
and their impoverished situation is exacerbated by their lack of rights to own
property and land,” said Biswo Khadka, director of Maiti Nepal, a prominent
organisation helping to protect impoverished women from being trafficked or
forced into prostitution.
Nepal has introduced laws to ensure equal
property rights for women but these are not enforced in the villages.
“We will have to launch a massive campaign to persuade the government to
give us its attention,” said 36-year old Rabina Regmi, who was displaced from
her home in the remote Ramechap District, nearly 200km east of the capital,
after her husband was killed by Maoists.
Today she lives in abject
poverty in the capital in a small one-room flat with her five children. Her
relatives denied her the right to inherit her husband’s property and literally
forced her out of her house.
Exploited
If the
women try to find work in urban areas they can end up in very vulnerable
situations and either get underpaid or are sexually exploited, according to
Maiti Nepal. The fact that most are also illiterate or semi-literate exacerbates
the situation. Nearly 65 percent of Nepalese women are illiterate.
 Women continue to get poorer by the day and
their hardship is compounded by the government’s
neglect. |
“I had no choice but to work in this
dirty environment,” said Rita Biswakarma, a 25-year-old waitress in a cabin
restaurant, where she often has to endure sexual harassment and even have paid
sex with customers. Many village girls working in Kathmandu are tricked into
working as waitresses and then forced into providing sexual services.
Fighting between government troops and rebels forced Biswakarma and her
two children to flee their village in the poverty-stricken Nuwakot District,
about 100km north of Kathmandu, nearly two years ago. Her husband also fled.
Some of the poorest people live in remote hill and mountainous areas in
the western part of the country, according to the UN’s International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD). These areas have low rainfall, poor soil, and
few roads or markets. Water supply, health, education and sanitation services
are virtually non-existent, according to IFAD.
