KATHMANDU, JUNE 29
Migration ban on female Nepali citizens legitimises several anti-migration activities resulting in multiple human rights violations, show key findings of a study conducted by the UK-based Durham University, and others.
According to the report of 'The Impact of Migration Bans on Female Nepali Citizens', the migration bans strengthen and proliferate interventions concerning mobility and labour in Nepal. For community members, safe migration awareness generation activities are seldom coupled with sustainable employment opportunities, discourage their mobility and encourage their confinement.
For them, these safe migration programmes are anti-migration awareness generation activities which has created a sense of stigma, distrust, and fear among female citizens whose livelihood depends on labour migration. Such anti-migration activities discourage people from discussing their mobility plans with anyone.
"Further, migration bans allow several organisations to raise funds for surveillance and policing along national highways and Indo-Nepal border. These restrictive interventions and interceptions along Indo-Nepal 'open' border legitimise human rights violations, often perpetrated by anti-trafficking NGOs, on female citizens of Nepal," it says.
Participant observation along these sites reveals the presence of more than five NGOs along these borders. Intercepted women face severe anxieties, traumas and mental health issues during multiple interactions with the anti-traffickers of Nepal. The rehabilitation centres/transit homes act as emigration detention centres, where women are intercepted, detained and deported on a regular basis, thereby causing stigma to them and their villages. As a result, migration bans enable a range of restrictive migration policies which harms Nepali citizens' rights and dignity.
The report said migration bans confined several female Nepali citizens within the territory without their consent thereby worsening the existing socio-structural constraints.
Migration bans are insensitive to the poor agricultural productivity and lack of sustainable employment opportunities in the Mountain regions of Nepal.
They confine female citizens from these regions within their territories. As a result, many participants feel that these restrictive policies impose production and reproduction duties on them, especially when male family members migrate for employment abroad.
"Migration bans force Nepali citizens to undertake unauthorised labour migration journeys, thereby increasing their vulnerability. While migration bans in domestic work proliferated several restrictive measures in Nepal, most of the respondents of bans find it difficult to address the problem of widespread poverty and sustainable employment.
As a result, the ban forces several citizens of Nepal to take unauthorised migration routes.
In order to avoid interception, detention, and deportation conducted by anti-migration actors, citizens of Nepal take recourse to invisible spaces to actualise their migration projects," it warned.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 30, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
