Accelerate Anti-Human Trafficking Action

The government has recently approved the National Policy against Human Trafficking, 2025, in line with the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. The Protocol was adopted in 2000 with the sacrosanct objective of preventing, suppressing, and punishing human traffickers as a supplement to the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The Policy focuses on legislative reforms and implementation to deter human trafficking, centring on amending the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act (HTTCA), 2007, in alignment with international standards such as the Palermo Protocol – a key UN treaty designed to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons. 

The Policy is aimed at addressing cyber-related trafficking, boosting protection of victims, improving law enforcement, enhancing data collection, and involving non-governmental organisations and other partners to make anti-trafficking action more effective and efficient. Anti-trafficking laws should be victim-friendly with a focus on discouraging re-victimisation. In this online age, there are lures galore on social media and other online platforms. Innocent people, women, and children included, are easily ensnared by shrewd human traffickers with attractive job offers. The Policy is designed to discourage such lures.

Inhuman conditions

The Policy also seeks to enforce labour recruitment regulations effectively. There are reports of migrant workers sent abroad for foreign employment by manpower agencies ending up in inhuman conditions, such as slavery or prostitution. Victims of trafficking should also be accommodated in decent shelters until they are reintegrated into society. The Policy also pays heed to this aspect. Further, the Policy tries to improve coordination between national, provincial, and local governments so that concerted efforts can be made against human trafficking. For this, the Policy stresses efforts to activate local coordination committees and develop standard operating procedures (SOPs).

One of the positive aspects of the Policy is that it has a provision of criminalising all forms of trafficking, including labour and sexual exploitation, in line with the Palermo Protocol and deterring cyber-related trafficking. These provisions were absent in the HTTCA. However, the HTTCA criminalised some forms of sex and labour trafficking. The definition of trafficking was, however, inconsistent with the international definition of trafficking. Although the definition included the purchase and sale of persons and forced prostitution, it did not include force, fraud or coercion as essential parts of the trafficking crime. The HTTPA defined human transportation as taking persons from their homes or places of residence through force, fraud or coercion for prostitution, enslavement or bonded labour. The penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, along with a fine in the case of sex trafficking, was commensurate with other grave crimes such as rape. 

The Policy envisages the victim-centric law for easy access to justice, better reintegration into society, and specialised protection for girls and women, as well as boys, men and foreign nationals. The Policy also accentuates data collection using international standards such as IC-TIP (International Classification for Administrative Data on Trafficking in Persons) to improve evidence-based responses in a sophisticated manner. 

Human trafficking affects almost all communities, not least vulnerable or marginalised communities. Men, women, and children are subjected to forced labour, working in circuses, sex trafficking and debt bondage. Children are often forced into the worst form of child labour. Caste-based discrimination, child sexual abuse, violence against girls and women, poverty, lack of employment opportunities, displacement due to natural disasters and suchlike factors are the breeding ground for human traffickers to indulge in nefarious activities. Human traffickers usually target poor, unemployed or innocent people. 

Labour traffickers not only exploit men, women and children in the country itself but also whisk them off to India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and East Asia to work as beggars, house servants, construction workers, factory workers, kiln workers and circus clowns. It is estimated that there are 1.5 million Nepalis in the Middle East, with most working in construction in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the 

Undocumented Nepalis, Bhutanese and Tibetans are also the victims of human trafficking. Some Nepalis have not been able to get citizenship certificates. There are still Bhutanese refugees languishing in eastern Nepal. Likewise, not all Tibetan refugees have been assimilated into the citizenry of Nepal. Such people are like stateless people. They are frustrated, and so human traffickers take advantage of their frustration and traffic them to foreign countries. 

Many migrant workers are not familiar with their rights and labour laws. It is reported that their passports are retained by the companies they are working for or they do not get their pay for months. This is a form of labour exploitation. Back home, they may have loans. Such loans are often taken from loan sharks owing to difficult or complicated banking processes. Migrant workers have to work under oppressive conditions, which results in ill health. Migrant workers returning to the country in coffins is a usual phenomenon. 

Victims 

Human traffickers also lure women with attractive work in the entertainment industry in Malaysia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Naïve Nepalis are taken to Southeast Asia and the Philippines, where they are forced to engage in online scam operations. Nepali victims are also carried to Australia and Europe on tourist, work, student or marriage visas. It is reported that as many as 4,000 Nepalis have been taken to Russia for recruitment in the Russian Army, and 300 of them have died in the Russia-Ukraine war.      

The Nepal Police and the Office of the Attorney General are active in anti-trafficking activities in the country.  During the 2023-24 fiscal year, the Nepal Police carried out 392 investigations involving 818 suspects in 177 sex trafficking cases and in 215 forced labour cases. Seventeen child trafficking cases were also registered during the period. The Nepal Police is working in collaboration with foreign countries such as India, Malaysia, and Interpol. As human trafficking is transnational in nature, more cooperation with different foreign countries is a must to curb human trafficking. Therefore, the government should take proactive steps to nip human trafficking in the bud.

(Maharjan has been regularly writing on contemporary issues for this daily since 2000.)