On the 27th June 2013 the Nepali Government officially declared the abolition of the Kamlari System and this year the freed women and girls celebrated the day with a march through the city and a formal ceremony.  The Kamlari system is whereby girls (some as young as six) and women are sold by their parents into indentured servitude to richer, higher- caste buyers, generally from outside their villages.  

Free Kamlaris day 27 June 2016

This year’s celebration of Kamlari Freedom Day – a rally through Kathmandu 

The background to Kamlari Freedom Day

In January 2000, the Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), through its local partner Friends of Needy Children (FNC), launched a movement to end this form of servitude.  Starting in the Dang District. NYF developed a creative solution to the problem by compensating the parents of the bonded girls for the wages they would have earned if they had continued working. Each family that agreed to bring its daughter home or not send her off to work received a piglet, which they could then raise and sell at the end of the year for the amount they would have received for their daughter’s labour. The rescued girls and young women were placed in either a school or in vocational training  at NYF’s expense. 

In the first year, 37 girls were rescued, returned to their families and provided with educational or vocational scholarships. The movement continued to grow, and by 2013, over 12,500 girls had been rescued.

Simultaneously, a vigorous awareness campaign was conducted at the grassroots level to make local communities aware of the negative impacts of the practice. The most effective advocates to abolish the Kamlari system were of course the returned girls themselves, who were provided with training by NYF to ensure that they would assert their rights in the future. 

 In 2004, FNC filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court demanding the abolition of the Kamlari practice, establishment of a fund for the girls’ education and rehabilitation, and to ensure their rights according to the prevailing national and international child rights policies. FNC prevailed, and on September 10th, 2006, the Supreme Court ordered the Government to fulfil the demands made in the petition. However, the Government failed to comply and so FNC and NYF launched a multitude of campaigns to pressurise the Government to obey.   As a result of these campaigns, in 2009, the Government finally agreed to budget 120 million rupees (approx. £850k) to be spent on education and rehabilitation for the freed Kamlaris. Substantial allowances for these same causes have been made in every budget since.  

In 2010, with the assistance of NYF and FNC, the returned girls formed their own NGO, Freed Kamlari Development Forum (FKDF), and took over the entire anti-bonding campaign by vigorously promoting the anti Kamlari cause.  However, hundreds of girls still needed to be rescued and were being subjected to extreme forms of physical, mental and sexual abuse on a daily basis. There had also been several cases of mysterious disappearances, and suspicious deaths amongst the girls which had not been looked into by the authorities.

In March 2013, a mass protest was launched by the freed Kamlaris seeking justice for the victims, and to pressurise the Government to declare the abolition of the Kamlari system. The protest culminated in a 10 point agreement with the Government which included that compensation had to be paid to the families, that a committee had to be set up to look into the cases of mysterious disappearances and suspicious deaths, but more importantly on 27th June 2013, the Ministerial Cabinet declared the abolition of the Kamlari system.

 

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Freed Kamlaris starting their own NGO