Social media sparks a rise in human trafficking
Activists warned last week that most women in Nepal are still denied basic rights. Vicky Spratt reports from the country where social media prevalence has seen a 500% rise in people trafficking in the last five years
It all began with a friend request. ‘ There was a man who used to chat with my sister online,’ Chandani* explains. ‘He started messaging me, and said he could get me a well-paid job in Iraq. I never met him. One day, he sent his “brother” to my house with a visa and passport.’
Just over a year ago, Chandani, now 35, became one of the women trafficked every single hour from Nepal, one of the worst places for people-trafficking in the world.
Social media stands accused of helping people smugglers – known as ‘didis’ or ‘dalals’ in Nepali – target those they know are in desperate situations. Online grooming and the rise of mobile phones are acknowledged as a growing problem since traffickers no longer have to go to rural villages to find girls. In fact, mobile phones are now so popular in Nepal that the number of subscriptions (27.85m) outnumbers the population (26.49m).
Today, Chandani is in a safe house in Kathmandu run by non-profit organisation Shakti-samuha. Outside, yellow dust and low cloud means you can barely see the Himalayas. My translator, Sujata Singh, explains that the dust is from construction work to rebuild the city post-earthquake. The after-effects of 2015’s catastrophic 7.8 and 7.3 magnitude earthquakes are still visible. At the time, NGOS predicted a humanitarian disaster in the making. Natural disasters are good for the peopletrafficking industry because they leave people vulnerable, separated from their families and in need of work.
According to a recent report by borderguarding force Sashastra Seema Bal, the number of trafficking victims has risen by 500% since 2013, while Plan International UK estimates more than 8,000 women and girls are trafficked in Nepal every year. With the use of social media as a tool for targeting people, Nepal’s earthquakes created the perfect operating conditions for traffickers.
Leaving the country for work is not unusual in Nepal but, for young women, it’s risky. Chandani’s situation is a case in point. Like many young women who grow up in rural Nepal, she had long been frustrated by her lack of options when opportunity arrived via her Instagram messenger. ‘Everyone in my family works on the farm. It is hard and I don’t enjoy it.’ And she has good reason to feel dissatisfied with her lot. Despite the fact that the legal age for marriage is 20, 37% of Nepalese women marry before the age of 18 and 10% are married at 15. Chandani didn’t want to be one of them. ‘I don’t see many women doing well in married life,’ she says. ‘I see men cheating.’
The job offer arrived shortly after the earthquakes had left her family living in a temporary shelter. While she’d never met the agent, she already had a vague connection, since he’d been messaging her sister about ‘work opportunities abroad’ for a while.
After a few months of messaging, the agent arranged for her to be escorted to Delhi by his ‘ brother’ who, it turned out, was a dalal. Once there, instead of boarding a flight to the Middle East, she was locked in a hotel room with 18 other girls for several weeks.
Chandani looks away when I press her on the details but says she knew she was about to be sold because tales of trafficking are rife in Nepal. She says she eventually convinced another girl to lend her her phone and contacted a friend in Kathmandu; he then alerted Shakti-samuha. When I ask about her rescue, she remains silent, clearly not wanting to relive the experience.
Still, despite her horrific experience, Chandani remains determined to leave Nepal – but on her own terms. ‘I will go anywhere I can make good money,’ she says defiantly. To read Vicky’s full report and see her short film from Nepal, visit graziadaily.co.uk
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