Donna MacAllister

Kathmandu, January 31:

A leading child rights group has warned of dark days ahead for many of Nepal’s children as they are forced to earn their living instead of going to school from the age of five.

The organisation, ‘Child Workers In Nepal (CWIN)’, blamed the warring parties and the conflict for the worsening plight of the children.

“This country has lost years in child rights development,” said CWIN’s project coordinator Madhav Pradhan. While key concerns for child education and labour were addressed in 1990 with the government’s endorsement of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the CWIN estimates that two-and-a-half million children still represent about 20 per cent of Nepal’s economically active workforce with many suffering the worst forms of child labour in the gruelling industries of agriculture, stone crushing, garbage collecting, carpet wool spinning and, in the very worst cases, the commercial sex industry.

Pradhan said the CWIN offers some hope. “Our helpline receives around 12 calls every day from children in distress.” “The most recent call came from a girl who worked as a domestic servant. She told us she was suffering unbearable abuse at the hands of the householder. When we got there, the employer became very distressed.”

Pleading with us not to prosecute, she gave the girl 150,000 rupees — her salary which had not been paid for seven years. However, he said that regular rescue missions were not the end of CWIN’s work. “Psychological counselling is a crucial stage. We need to ease the child’s pain and get them to talk about how they have suffered because without this information we have no legal case.”

Education also plays a key role. “We do our best to get the younger children reintegrated into the school and teach the older ones vocational skills. With 30 different training courses, we basically find out what they want and we get it for them”.

Exploiting children through paid or unpaid employment is a crime punishable by six-month imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 rupees.