In Nepal’s remote mountain villages, an insidious force has for two decades been destroying young lives and tearing families apart. The devastation visited on these villages is no natural disaster, but one of human making. It usually comes in the guise of a well-dressed man carrying a briefcase and the promise of education and a new life for the children. But these children’s new realities are far from the dreams their parents held for them: behind the traffickers’ crocodile smiles lies a life of sexual slavery, forced labour, or destitution as a commodity in the huge orphanage industry.
Chhetra was nine or ten when he was taken from his village to a children’s institution in the capital, Kathmandu: ‘I was taken from my village to get a better education. When I reached the house where I would stay, I saw many children there. At first I thought it was not bad, but after one month, it was getting worse and worse. There was not enough food or clothing for the children. After a while, the food finished and we had to go to the street to beg.’
