Kamlari System In Nepal

Kamlari are female bonded labourers. In the Kamlari system, adolescent girls from the Tharu community are sent by their families to work in private person's residences to clear the debts of parents or ancestors, or as payment for using the property of a land-holder. According to estimates of a Nepalese NGO, there are over 20,000 indentured domestic workers, also known as Kamlari. (Pradhan, Suman Pp. 9)

The Kamlari system originated nearly 50 years ago when poor families belonging to the Tharu community, an indigenous ethnic group in southern Nepal's Terai region, provided daughters as domestic servants in exchange for cash. The practice is still prevalent and activists have started to call it internal trafficking of girls who are sold by their parents with the help of local middlemen.Nepal has a growing problem concerning the Kamlari system; this is a method that takes young girls from rural villages in Nepal to work in cities as labourers. Girls as young as seven years of age are taken. The practice seems harsh and immoral. However, parents do this out of necessity. Much of the population in Nepal is under the poverty line; villagers make up most of the poor population in Nepal. It is these vil-lagers that are a target to the Kamlari system because they have a lot of Children and due to the lack of resources they cannot feed and care for them.

Who likes to send their children away selling their daughters is very common among the Tharu Farmers who earn $75 for every daughter they sell (May). The money earned by selling their daughters is equivalent to their annual income. In recent discussions concerning child labor and bondage, the Kamlari system has been looked at with great interest. Child labor is still being used in Nepal. On the one hand it seems that it is inhuman and cruel to force young girls to work in small tea shops or do menial work. On the other hand, parents of the Kamlaris argue that it is not cruel or harsh because they believe sending them away may make their children's life better. Due to the increase of poverty in rural Nepal it is very hard to raise a big family.

The Kamlari girls are taken away from their home with the false promise of getting a good education and a better life. The girls that are sent away are hardly ever educated. Kamlaris that are sent away are sexually and physically abused because they have no one to go to for help. Some girls never even return home. They just disappear as though they never existed. The Kamlari system should be stopped because it does not respect the values and rights of a child. It directly promotes slavery and restricts the child from living her life fully. Instead the system binds her to a life of servitude and menial labor. Though I concede that most parents of the Kamlari sell their child out of no choice; the parents should think ...