Stop women trafficking!

KATHMANDU, July 27: Imagine this – the one who took you to a foreign land promising to give shape to your dreams abandoned you, and all you experience is abuses from strangers; your cries are unheard and you feel that being alive is a curse in itself. Scary, right?



But many of our Nepali sisters, who’ve been trafficked into flesh trade, are forced to live that miserable life. Few of them are able to escape and some get rescued, but even back home, their woes remain a constant burden to them. Most of them are despised by their own family and community. [break]



Organizations such as Maiti Nepal and Ramon Magsaysay Award receiver, Shakti Samuha, have been working for empowering these women and doing their best to check women trafficking. Though their works are commendable, eradicating human trafficking won’t be possible without each and every individual working together hand in hand against it.



28-year-old Mathematics teacher Arjun Paudel opines, “First and foremost, it’s high time we stopped perceiving women as the source of entertainment,” insisting that such conservative thinking would create further demand of women for sexual pleasure and thus, encourage the traffickers. He further added, “Governmental and non-governmental organizations should strictly monitor the process of sending women workers abroad.”



Likewise, asserting that financial independence of a woman would discourage her to work abroad, Ekta Mishra says, “Organizations should focus on empowering the women in rural areas and help them become financially independent.”



Also, despite many awareness campaigns run by the government and other organizations at various levels, there are many cases of girls getting trafficked due to a complete lack of awareness. Ken Subedi, literature student at K&K College, New Baneshwar, says, “It is really essential that awareness programs are conducted for the public in general and not centralized in big cities only. One of such awareness programs could be exhibition of documentaries related to women trafficking. On a larger scale, a film festival focused on the issues of women trafficking should be organized.”



Similarly, Aashish Bhattarai believes that parents should make their children aware about such incidents and the government should impose strict rules and regulations to discourage the traffickers.



It is true that bad intentions linger in every society and to some extent, they are inevitable too. But, if the country regulates the rules very strictly, and the society becomes cautious and works collectively towards eradicating this modern day slavery, human trafficking can definitely be brought under control.

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