Human trafficking is one of the most abominable crimes in human history. The traffic in persons by means of coercion and deception for commercial sex exploitation, forced labor, or slavery, is an alarming global phenomenon. It plagues a country like Nepal, where poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and the suppression of women’s rights in law and tradition, have fueled the problem. Estimates indicate that as many as ten thousand women and children are trafficked annually from Nepal to India for prostitution exploitation.
In 1996, nearly three hundred trafficked Nepali girls were rescued in a police raid in the brothels of Mumbai, India. For six months, they were kept in harsh semi-detention in Mumbai shelters since they could not be immediately repatriated. Nepal’s government refused to accept them since they were seen as “soiled” female minors, and without citizenship papers. When non-government organizations (NGOs) intervened, the girls were finally repatriated. Traumatized, stigmatized and disowned by their families, their prospects of reintegration were difficult and dim. A group of these survivors, however, bravely decided that if society and their own families had abandoned them, then they would have to take control of their lives by themselves. These fifteen survivors, ages fifteen to eighteen, banded themselves into a group they boldly called SHAKTI SAMUHA—in English, “Power Group”—with the aim of empowering trafficking survivors so that they can lead a dignified life. While the group started work right away, they could not register their organization, being minors and ‘non-citizens,’ until 2000. SHAKTI SAMUHA is the world’s first anti-trafficking NGO created and run by trafficking survivors themselves.
Surmounting difficulties with the help of partner organizations, SHAKTI SAMUHA has amazingly accomplished a great deal in helping female trafficking victims, as well as women and children at risk of being victimized. In 2004 the group established Shakti Kendra in Kathmandu, a halfway home that has since provided survivors shelter, medical care, counseling, legal aid, educational support, skills training, and start-up loans for income-generating activities. Targeting women and girls at risk, SHAKTI SAMUHA also set up an emergency shelter in Pokhara, where diverse support services are offered for street children, child laborers, and girls at risk. They have carried out awareness-raising programs in trafficking-prone districts in Kathmandu, targeting slums and establishments like dance bars, massage parlors, and carpet factories. They have also organized community-based Child Protection Committees, conducted training for groups including the police, and used such media as street theater in their campaign against trafficking and domestic violence.
Pushing the campaign to the policy level, SHAKTI SAMUHA partnered with international organizations to develop protocols for the repatriation of trafficked victims, significantly influenced the framing of Nepal’s 2007 Human Trafficking Act and the creation of an anti-trafficking unit in the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare. Represented in the National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking, they are lobbying to revise citizenship laws that are gender-discriminatory and that obstruct the reintegration of trafficked women. Now working in eleven districts, SHAKTI SAMUHA has reached fifteen thousand people in its awareness-raising activities; rehabilitated and reintegrated 678 victims of trafficking and domestic violence; and provided financial support for livelihood and education to 670 women. At the core of these achievements are the group’s founders and the five hundred trafficked women who now constitute its membership. Bonded by a common experience, they are relentless in their drive to help themselves and others like them. As one member declares, “Nowadays, I am ready to fight, to argue and debate against threats and stigmatization. We are trafficking survivors, but no less capable than others in society.”
In electing SHAKTI SAMUHA to receive the 2013 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes its founders and members for transforming their lives in service to other human trafficking survivors, for their passionate dedication towards rooting out a pernicious social evil in Nepal, and for the radiant example they have shown the world in reclaiming the human dignity that is the birthright of all abused women and children everywhere.
