WUNRN
NEPAL - ADVOCACY TO END ETHNIC
GIRLS' INDENTURED SERVITUDE
The kamlari system is
a form of indentured servitude that persists 90 years after the official
abolition of slavery on the plains of southwestern
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July 9, 2012 - Shanta Chaudhary was eight
years old when her parents sold her into effective slavery for $75, sending her
to scrub, cook and sweep for 19 hours a day at the house of a stranger in
southwestern
Now a strident rights campaigner,
politician and one of the country's most influential women, she weeps as she
recalls 18 years spent as a "kamlari", rising at 4:00 am, receiving
regular beatings and witnessing rape and abuse.
"I remember the torture. I had to
carry weights much heavier than me even when I was sick. And I couldn't see my
parents and I could never experience a mother's love," she said.
"Even my married years were spent in
someone else's house. When I think about my past my heart seems to burst. Many
kamlaris were even raped and I have seen it myself."
The kamlari system is a form of indentured
servitude that persists 90 years after the official abolition of slavery on the
plains of southwestern
For generations, ethnic Tharu girls as
young as six have been handed over to higher caste landlords and brokers,
committed to years of menial labour and subjected to a wide range of cruelties.
"Child labourers can't get to sleep at
night, they can't play, their hands are rough from work and they have no love.
It's a really scary situation for them," Chaudhary told a recent UNICEF
conference to mark World Day Against Child Labour.
A century ago the Tharu, said to be
descendants of Buddha, owned their farms and lived in relative isolation,
enjoying a natural resistance to malaria common to the Terai plains that the
higher castes lacked.
But when the disease was eradicated in
1960, the illiterate tribes were displaced by higher-caste hordes streaming
down from the hills and became serfs in their own land.
Now, destitute families saddled by debt
lease their daughters for as little as $30 a year, the equivalent of around 10
percent of their annual income.
The Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation
says it has encountered kamlaris working for high-ranking Communist Party
leaders, lawyers, journalists and even the police.
Chaudhary was brought up in Dang district,
a dry, subsistence-farming region where thatch-roofed mud huts have no
electricity and feeding the family is a daily struggle.
Her parents, who had nine children, were
landless and couldn't find work, and so agreed to take 6,600 rupees ($75) a
year from a high-caste landlord for Chaudhary.
She was set to work, beginning household
chores at 4:00 am and often finishing as late as 11:00 pm, surviving on a diet
of wild corn collected from a nearby forest and frequently beaten.
"I had to work so much my hands were
never dry. My entire childhood, my adolescence, even my motherhood, were all
spent as a kamlari," she said.
But Chaudhary, now a composed 32-year-old
with a winning smile that masks the torment of her childhood years, was able to
break out of her servitude and is helping other trapped girls.
She was freed by a 2006 Supreme Court
ruling outlawing the kamlari system, and led a land rights movement that
reached
In
Initially derided by colleagues for being
illiterate, Chaudhary learned to read and write and was put in charge of the
influential parliamentary committee on natural resources.
"Even in the homes of government
officials and people working in human rights fields there is child
labour," Chaudhary said. "And as long as we don't raid those homes
this problem is not going to be solved."
A decade ago, an estimated 14,000 girls
were locked in the kamlari system, but thanks to activists like Chaudhary the
tide is turning and charity groups have rescued thousands.
Nevertheless, the US-based Nepal Youth
Foundation says around 1,000 Tharu girls remain indentured, most in remote
villages or with powerful families in the capital.
"These children face severe violations
of their rights. It is children's right to be children, to be able to grow,
study, have fun, in a protective environment," said Will Parks, UNICEF's
deputy representative in Nepal.
The International Labor Organization is
working with the
Gauri Pradhan, of the National Human Rights
Commission, believes the impoverished country has made some progress but is
still a long way from eliminating the problem.
"The numbers of working children under
the age of 14 in the country has reduced dramatically but at the same time the
number of children aged 15 to 17 working in the worst forms of child labour has
gone up," he said.
"The challenge is to provide
educational opportunities to the working children deprived from going to
school, and help build up a more skilled and literate young labour force for
the future."