Sex Traffickers Target Nepal Girls After Devastating Earthquake

The earthquake in Nepal has left the nation vulnerable to sex traffickers. In the confusion and chaos surrounding the worst hit areas, human traffickers are allegedly abducting women for work in brothels.

NGOs and the United Nations are aware of the problem and are doing their best to warn communities about the criminal networks. Some of the traffickers pose as relief workers in order to lure the women away from their homes.

"This is the time when the brokers go in the name of relief to kidnap or lure women. We are distributing assistance to make people aware that someone might come to lure them," Sunita Dunawar, director of Shakti Samuha NGO, told the Guardian. "We are getting reports of [individuals] pretending to go for rescuing and looking at people," she said.

Nepal is one of the poorest nations in Asia and is commonly a target for traffickers. The UN reports that some 12,000 to 15,000 girls are trafficked from Nepal alone. They are then taken mostly to India to work in brothels, but are trafficked as far as South Korea and South Africa.

"There is nothing like an emergency when there is chaos for opportunities to … traffic more women. There is a great chance that everything that is bad happening in Nepal could scale up," an aid official stated.

The earthquake has killed over 7,000 individuals in Nepal and has left hundreds of thousands without homes. The UN estimates that at least two million people in Nepal are in need of tents, food, and shelter. Traffickers tempt the girls in Nepal with promises of jobs and work, only to take them to brothels where they are beaten and systematically raped.

A former victim by the name of Sita, 20, told the Guardian that after she was taken from her village north of Kathmandu, she was beaten and then forced to sleep with 20 to 30 men daily for one year in a brothel in India; Sita contracted the AIDS virus as a result. She was rescued last year.

"I am worried now for the other girls who might be taken away. They will need the money and be tempted if someone talks to them about a job. Then the same thing will happen to them as happened to me," she said.

Sita has been staying in an undisclosed shelter operated by the NGO Shakti Samuha after her rescue.