Nepal Civil War Forces Children Into Cities To Work

by Damakant Jayshi

(IPS) KATHMANDU -- Dipak Budhamagar wants to be a farmer like his father, who was killed by Maoist insurgents during the Tihar festival last November for fleeing a rebel work camp after a month's forced labor.

But this barely 14-year-old, diminutive boy from a village in Rolpa district, a Maoist stronghold, instead ended up a 'khalasi' (helper) in Kathmandu, shouting at the top of his lungs to attract would-be passengers into a three-wheeler 'tempo.'

During his three-month stint on the tempo (a job he did previously when he came to Kathmandu to search for his mother, who left their family to marry another man), Dipak received one meal and 70 rupees (less than one U.S. dollar) as daily wages for nearly 15 hours of hard labor.

Then the boy was taken in by Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Center (CWIN), the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) for children in Nepal. Now he stays in one of their shelters and also attends school, where he studies in Grade 4. At his age, most children in cities are in at least Grade 8, just a year away from completing secondary-level education.

"I want to go to my village and till our land," Dipak told IPS. "We have a big piece of farmland." But he cannot go back to his village for he is a hunted boy.

After seeing his father stabbed and killed by cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Dipak hurled a stone during a Maoist meeting a few weeks later, injuring one rebel. He then fled.

But the rebels soon caught him, struck him on the head with a sickle (the injury mark is still visible) and took him to a hospital in neighboring Dang district. Dipak escaped two days later and Royal Nepalese Army personnel took him to the capital Kathmandu and gave him 200 rupees to fend for himself.

That was when he started his second stint on the tempo.

Dipak is far from alone as a child who fled his home and is now forced to work to survive.

Girls fare worse than boys, and are more prone to sexual exploitation, according to experts. Some girls shared their experiences at an interaction program-cum-group birthday celebration on Friday organized by the Underprivileged Children's Education Program.

Many said they were forced to leave their villages due to threats from Maoists. Today they work in restaurants and carpet factories, among others, facing hardships that range from low wages to sexual abuse.

Most of the children who flee home or are sent away by their parents to prevent their forced recruitment by the Maoists end up in Nepal's urban areas, either as domestic help, 'khalasi' like Dipak, or child laborers in carpet factories, stone quarries or brick kilns.

An April 30 CWIN report (based on data collated from its own surveys and others by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), among others, shows that around 40,000 children have been displaced by conflict since 1996, when the now-outlawed Maoist party launched its armed uprising.

More than 12,000 people have already been killed, among them 361 children.

"The situation has turned from bad to worse," says CWIN President Gauri Pradhan. "The child labor problem has increased due to the armed conflict."

Frequent school closures caused by the Maoists' general and educational strikes, forced indoctrination and clashes between security forces and insurgents have compelled many children to leave their village and seek refuge in urban areas, he added in an interview.

Some children are fleeing the Maoists ranks, and so are hunted by both the security forces and the insurgents.

Many go to neighboring India as well. A study conducted by Save the Children Alliance at four transit points near the western city of Nepalgunj, from June to August 2004, found some 17,000 children crossing over to India seeking jobs and shelter.

"Based on trend analysis and observation and appeals for help received by the CWIN Helpline, we know that the problem has worsened in the past three years," Pradhan says.

The increasingly deadly conflict has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the last three years alone. With the monarchy, political parties and the Maoists locked in a three-way fierce struggle for supremacy, the violence could easily get worse and with it, the problem of child labor.

The desperate children who are forced to leave their homes and schools take up any job, however hazardous, giving rise not only to exploitation but also risking their lives.

About 32,000 Nepali children are currently working in 1,600 stone quarries, with only 30 percent of those registered with the government, found a study conducted by another NGO, Concern for Children and Environment-Nepal (CONCERN).

The ILO, however, says more than 10,000 children work in stone quarries, coal, sand, and red soil mines in Nepal, the majority of them aged 11 to 13. Most are young girls.

According to the ILO's International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), 127,000 children in Nepal are working in mining and other hazardous situations it calls "the worst form of labor."

Sunday Jun. 12 is the ILO's World Day Against Child Labor.

The conflict has led to an increase in child domestic workers, said Pracha Vasuprast, deputy project manager at the ILO-IPEC Nepal office, speaking at a program on child domestic workers in Kathmandu on Friday.

"In my country Thailand, you have to be very rich to have a child domestic help." In the Hindu kingdom's urban areas, children work in homes for as little as 400 rupees a month (plus meals) and toil from 5AM to 11PM in some households.

"Lack of awareness is contributing to the increase," Vasuprast says.

The result of all these factors is that the number of child laborers in Nepal, ages 5-14 now stands at 2.6 million, according to CWIN.

Another problem is that the armed conflict has severely affected the outreach programs of ILO-IPEC and its partners, resulting in the rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs), says Yadav Amatya, a senior advisor with IPEC.

"Inaccessibility is yet another problem and we face difficulties in locating families of child laborers," he told IPS.

CWIN's Pradhan warns that with child traffickers on the prowl for vulnerable children, the situation could go out of hand. Sexual exploitation is increasing, CWIN data shows.

As a first step to minimize such problems, Amatya suggests the government must take move to protect vulnerable children. All sides to the conflict must also recognize schools as zones of peace, and donors should provide programs and other support. "We need generous foreign aid to address the problem," he added.

In the meantime, children in Nepal will continue to slog it out day after day to provide a living for themselves and their families.