Pushing for change in Nepal and India

The regional office in Nepal, under the General Agreement with the Nepal government, spent much of its time this fall on preparing project proposals for the strategic period of 2017-2019. A total of 7 project proposals were prepared to effectively address various alarming facets of commercial sex exploitation on children in Nepal and India, namely,

• child trafficking ;
• early child marriage ;
• sexual exploitation of child online ;
• child prostitution ; and
• sexual exploitation of children in adult entertainment and tourism sector.

The strength of these proposals lie on the ownership and inclusive participation of potential implementing partners and key stakeholders in project conception and design.

This August the NGO has signed a three year project agreement with the Nepal Government to implement a project focused on prevention, protection, advocacy for policy, capacity building and research in Nepal. The project aims to provide a holistic response to sexual exploitation of children online (SECO) covering. The actions target a wide range of actors to ensure that responses are identified and developed in consultation with these actors at every level of intervention.

Furthermore the NGO is implementing an anti-child trafficking project, named MUKTI, in India. MUKTI means freedom and the objective is to fight against the trafficking of children for sexual purposes in the source states of Assam, Manipur and West Bengal and in the tourist and travel destination state of Goa. Change comes with capacity building and empowerment of persons. Different activities were hold at the local communities and district administration levels and they focused on strengthening communication, coordination and organisation. Within the first six months of project implementation, a total of 48 children were rescued from exploitative situations, 32 perpetrators were prosecuted and 2,735 children and 672 community members were reached with prevention and awareness education on child trafficking !

After the massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in 2015, ECPAT Luxembourg stood side by side with the Nepal government in its call to strengthen child protection mechanisms in 5 of 14 most affected districts, some with high incidence of trafficking where the NGO intervenes regularly. The project established 8 Emergency Protection Centers and two Child Friendly Desks and reached out to 5,825 children. Community mediums and infrastructures were used to spread awareness on trafficking and child sexual abuse, to strengthen existing child focused networks such as child clubs, peer groups and child protection committees, to provide educational and emergency support to most affected children, to help law enforcement establish better monitoring mechanisms at the district border points, and to work closely with all post disaster actors to ensure that children were not left vulnerable to trafficking.

Communiqué par ECPAT