Kathmandu, December 5:

Women united to fight against gender discrimination and girl trafficking put 14 point demands to guarantee their rights in the constitution here today. Participants of national conference organised by the National Network Against Girl Trafficking (NNAGT) identified those points.

Speaking at the conference, NNAGT president Durga Ghimire said, “Girl trafficking and gender based violence is still a great challenge to us because of its changed natures in the last few years”. According to Ghimire, girl trafficking routes are turning from India to other countries in the name of foreign employment. In the last 4-5 years, human traffickers were making business of sending poor Nepalese girls to Arabian countries.

Acting Secretary of Ministry of Women and Children Ratnakaji Bajracharya stressed on the need of effective implementing mechanism to fight girl trafficking. The ministry statistics reveals that about 200,000 Nepalese girls were trafficked to India so far and annually 5,000-7,000. “ We are serious in the issue”, he said, “ The ministry is

planning to set up four additional rehabilitation centres in Jhapa, Parsa, Rupandehi and Banke districts.” Nepal government has three rehabilitation centres in Sindhupalchowk, Kathmandu and Kailali.

About 40,000 social activists are with ‘We can’ campaign against trafficking in four years, said Coordinator Sharda Pokhrel.

Cry for fangs to chew gender violence pangs:

Kathmandu: National Women’s Commission today asked the government to set up an immediate-response mechanism for the advocacy of women’s issues. NWC voiced its concern at a function organised to mark 16 days of activism to end violence against women.

Kathmandu Chief District Officer Dhurba Prasad Sharma said the government needed to appropriately punish the culprit and duly compensate the victim in order to end violence against women. He also asked the government to give NWC more teeth to fight every sort of violence against women. DSP Meera Chaudhary urged NWC to provide shelter to women victimised by violence.