Flooding and mudslides kill 80 people in South Asia

The yearly monsoon rains are necessary for the South Asian rice crops. However, too much of the downpours at once can have deadly consequences. Nepal and India are now the site of the latest humanitarian crisis as monsoon rains have proved to be too much for their land. 80 people have been killed by monsoon triggered floods and landslides. Over 200,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.

From Reuters AlertNet, writer Biswajyoti Das gives us the details.

South Asia experiences monsoon rains from June to September, which are vital for its agriculture. But the rains frequently affect millions of people in countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal - devastating crops, destroying homes and sparking outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhoea and dysentery.

Officials in India's northeast oil- and tea-rich state of Assam described the situation as "alarming". Two days of incessant rains have inundated hundreds of villages and forced residents to seek refuge on higher ground. Hundreds also remain stranded.

"Our priority now is to rescue marooned people. The situation is really bad and if the rain continues, people in affected areas will have a tough time," said a senior government official in Guwahati, Assam's main city.

The official, who declined to be named, said four people had died in Assam and around 200,000 had been displaced after more than 200 villages in the state's Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts were submerged. Thousands of hectares of paddy crops are estimated to have been damaged.

Across the border in Nepal, officials said at least 73 people had been killed by landslides and floods, and another 25 were missing, since the start of the monsoon season last month. Around 750 people have been evacuated due to the threat of more landslides in Rukum district in the west of the Himalayan nation.

"Some of them are housed in tented camps and in schools while some people are staying with their relatives because of the danger to their houses from landslides," said home ministry official Bal Krishna Panthi.

Relief and rescue workers in Nepal said they were on alert and had started planting red flags along parts of the Kosi river to warn villagers of the potential flood threat.

The Kosi river in eastern Nepal remains a key concern for both India and Nepal after it broke its banks in 2008 and changed its course, submerging swathes of land and affecting more than two million people in the east Indian state of Bihar.

Sex workers organize for rights in Nepal

Sex workers in Nepal are beginning to organize to demand new rights. They hope that they will be recognized as an official occupation in the soon to be ratified constitution. This will give sex workers protection so they are no longer treated as criminals for doing their work. Most of the time the Nepalese women will go into such an occupation because they have no where else to turn.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Sudeshna Sarkar describes the effort.

Every time Bijaya Dhakal goes out to meet people and tell them what she does for a living, the simple task becomes an act of courage requiring nerves of steel. Dhakal is the founder of Nepal’s first and only organisation of women sex workers now trying to make the state and society listen to a community long hushed by poverty and discrimination.

A widow who had not completed school, the 35-year-old mother of two became a sex worker after struggling to raise her family on the meagre wages she earned in a factory. For almost eight years, she led a double life, working in the capital Kathmandu and returning to her village sporadically, with her family believing she worked for a non-government organisation.

"Sex workers suffer at the hands of the police and, at times, their customers who beat them up or rob them. Yet they can’t complain because the moment people learn what they do, a change comes over them," Dhakal says.

"Landlords throw them out, and even doctors and nurses at the hospitals loathe touching them for fear of contracting some disease. I began to wonder one day, how long can we stay hidden? If we continue to hide, how will our needs and demands be met?"

Six years ago, Nepal’s growing gay rights movement inspired Dhakal to cast aside the veil of anonymity and start Jagriti Mahila Sangh. Jagriti means awakening, and Dhakal hopes it will catalyse sex workers hidden in the 75 districts of Nepal to unite for a change in their lives.

"I saw all these male sex workers, transgenders, and people living with HIV/AIDS declaring their status in public and demanding their right to be treated like any other citizen," she says, sitting in Jagriti’s office in Kathmandu, a three-room apartment that did not have a single stick of furniture when it opened with seven registered members.

"They gave me courage. Besides, I was tired of speaking through intermediaries who often failed to convey correctly to the state authorities and donors what we wanted," she added.

Today, Jagriti Mahila Sangh has grown into Jagriti Mahila Mahasangh, a federation with 26 associates spanning 23 districts, mostly in eastern Nepal and the southern Terai plains bordering India. Its major donors are the U.N. Development Programme, the British government’s Department for International Development, and Save the Children.

Dhakal feels even the donors are uneasy. "They prefer working with the HIV/AIDS community over us," she says. "They think, being uneducated, we won’t be able to manage our projects and also, what we do for a living puts them off."

Kamlari; the practice of turning daughters into slaves

The practice of kamlari can earn a Nepalesse family $25 to 50 dollars a year. To participate, the family has to sell off a daughter so she can become a bonded servant. Activists are negotiating with families to make them stop the practice and bring their daughters back home. They often bargain with the families by providing them animals that they can use for food or cash. Still the girls who return home have many scars that need healing from the forced servitude.

From this Los Angeles Times article that we found at The Sacramento Bee, writer Mark Magnier describes kamlari to us.

For generations, ethnic Tharu girls as young as 6 have been handed over to landlords and brokers under a bondage system known as kamlari. The legacy of crushing poverty, caste and intergenerational debt has left many of the young victims scarred by sexual and emotional abuse.

"The landlord's son beat me many times," said Bishnu Kumari, 17, who was rescued a few years ago. "I felt dirty, unlucky to be born a girl. I was a slave."

These days, however, former kamlari victims are fighting back with notable success, the result of changing laws, activist pressure and nascent democracy in Nepal.

Charity groups have rescued thousands of girls in the last year, generally during the brief period when the annual agreements are renewed, by convincing parents that the practice is unjust, a daughter's education is worthwhile and that there are far less exploitative ways to earn family income.

Since most deals have traditionally been struck during the winter Maghe Sankranti holiday, rescued girls assisted by aid groups are staging street dramas, anti-exploitation marches and musicals. They also mount rescue missions in which parents and landlords are confronted and embarrassed into releasing the girls during the annual festival and other high-profile events.

The approach has proved so successful that the U.S.-based Nepal Youth Foundation estimates that 1,000 Tharu girls remain indentured, most in remote villages or with powerful families in the capital, Katmandu, compared with about 14,000 a decade ago.

Former victims Sunita Chaudhary, 17, and Anita Chaudhary, 18, who aren't related, sing, act and write scripts for the street plays put on here in this rural part of south-central Nepal, drawing on their experience of dire poverty, alcoholic fathers, exploitative landlords and low female social status.

At the end of the drama about girls forced into bondage, the troupe asks audiences who is to blame and how the play should end, sparking spirited debate. Many villagers are illiterate, have never seen a play and forget that it's not real. "People grab me and threaten to beat me up," said Hom Roka, 23, who plays the landlord.

These are complemented by "girls clubs," composed of former victims who urge new kamlari recruits to resist, backed up by adults in the community who have agreed to help fight the practice.

"Sometimes the landlords try to hit us," said Manjita Chaudhary, 21, Sunita's sister and a former indentured servant. "They lie, saying they educate and help the girls. But we usually wear them down."


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/03/3295572/activists-in-nepal-make-inroads.html#ixzz19yv5aFzN

Overnight links for December 23rd

The government in Bangladesh is raising more questions about the operations of the Grameen Bank. From BD News 24 we find out what the new complaint is about. 

China already has a fifth of the world's population and is able to manage feeding them all fairly well. A story in the Guardian says that commodity food price shocks might make it harder for China in the future. Writer Jonathan Watts recorded the comments of a U.N. expert on the subject.

Nepal's education system still faces one stiff challenge, continuing the classes during natural disasters. From the IPS writer Damakant Jayshi talks about the eduction system efforts to become secure during tragedy.    

Overnight links for December 16th

The Guardian has this video on solutions to improve the water supply in Haiti. The lack of clean water in the country is really helping to spread the cholera outbreak.  

Inter Press Service writer Damakant Jayshi has this story about door to door efforts to improve maternal health in Nepal.  

Soutik Biswas of the BBC is in Andhra Pradesh to take a look at the micro-credit caused suicides in India.


Finally this audio roundup of the headlines provided by Reuters Alert Net's AudioBoo channel.

A look at NGOs working a border city of India to stop human trafficking

From IRIN, a look at how anti-human trafficking NGOs work a border city of India to stop people being trafficked in from Nepal.

The daily flow of Nepalis over the border to India is relentless, as they come by car, motorcycle, rickshaw and horse-drawn carriage, but mostly on foot, through the main gate at the border city of Nepalganj.

Not all the migrants are legitimate, however, and there are lookouts to prevent traffickers’ false promises from being realized. Waiting by the side of the road, Puspa Rana and Bimala Shrestha blend in with the rickshaw drivers, food vendors and resting travellers.

The two women with Saathi, a local anti-trafficking NGO, notice a young woman walking briskly with a young man, and pull the two aside for questioning.

But the couple's story checks out; they are going to India to work as potato farmers.

Just a few minutes later, two workers with the NGO International Nepal Fellowship (INF) hand over to Saathi a young couple whose behaviour, they say, is suspicious.

“When we asked them where they are going, the girl started weeping and the man tried to run away,” said Hem Bahadur Thapa of INF.

The girl said she was 14 and that she had married the man, who appeared at least several years older, a month previously.

Twice she changed her explanation for the trip: first it was for work, then for a medical check-up, and lastly, to visit her sister.

“We think he could be a broker, but we have don’t have any clear evidence yet,” said Puspa Rana of Saathi, referring to the man.

The NGO workers then escorted the couple to local police, who are supposed to open an investigation.

Looking for a better life

Nepal’s per capita GDP is just US$467 and often substantially lower in rural areas.

Such poverty compels some 1.5 million Nepalis every year to work abroad, mostly in neighbouring India but, increasingly, in other countries in Asia and in the Gulf, according to the government's Central Bureau of Statistics.

Many find work across the border on their own; others are enticed. Traffickers offer poorly educated rural Nepali women jobs as domestic workers or factory staff that promise steady pay.

However, the deals can be a ruse, say anti-trafficking NGOs.

Once out of their country, some trafficked Nepali females are sold into bonded labour as domestic or sex workers with no pay and no way out unless their families pay for their return, or the women are rescued or flee, say rights groups.

According to researchers from the UK-based University of Southampton in the most recent and comprehensive study on this topic, released in 2005, most trafficked females are between the ages of 13 and 18, unmarried, illiterate and born into the Mongoloid or Dalit “untouchable” castes - which while no longer legal are still widely observed.

The report, based on interviews with victims of trafficking at NGO shelters, estimated some 7,000 Nepali women and girls are trafficked annually, through deception or abduction, into India for forced sex work.

NGOs say the report’s findings remain true today.

On the lookout

Saathi and fellow anti-trafficking NGO Maiti Nepal say that in the first 10 months of 2010 at the Nepalganj checkpoint, they counselled more than 16,000 border crossers, sent back 106 and were contacted by the families of 99 missing persons.

“First, we look at their behaviour. Do they look concerned?” said Bharat Singh Rathaur, the police officer in charge of the border outpost.

“Second, we see who they are with. Are they on their own – which makes us concerned – or with friends and family?”

Since police and NGOs have stepped up their surveillance at major transit points in recent years, traffickers are using more isolated routes along the open 1,880km border between Nepal and India, said Rathaur.

Nepali women were banned by their government from working in the Gulf in 1998 because of safety concerns, leading traffickers increasingly to circumvent the ban by transiting to third countries through India, said Navaraj Joshi, head of Saathi in Nepalganj.

A call for land reform in Nepal

From IRIN, a story on another call for land reform in Nepal.

"Drastic" land reforms that give more rights to poor families who labour on others' land are needed in Nepal to stave off hunger among the poorest and boost agricultural production, say analysts.

"No matter what technology you bring, agricultural problems will always persist if we don't address the land reform issue seriously," said Bishnu Upreti, from the South Asia office of the international NGO, Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North-South (NCCR).

He added that a culture of feudalism, poorly enforced land distribution and an informal caste system have exploited landless tenants. The problem is most apparent in the Terai region below the Himalayas, populated mostly by Dalits, one of Nepal's poorest ethnic groups.

Landless in Terai

According to the most recent government census 1.3 million out of 4.2 million families in Nepal did not own land in 2001. With an estimated four members per family, the estimated landless population was 5.5 million people - out of a population of 21 million, or 26 percent - mostly members of the Dalit and other Terai communities.

According to local NGO Dalit Welfare Organization, 15 percent of Dalits living in the western hills of Nepal and 44 percent of those in Terai were landless, out of six million Dalits nationwide in 2009.

Almost all these families depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and there is an "urgent" need to reform land laws, said Kailash Pyakhurel with the local NGO Consortium for Land Research and Policy Dialogue (COLARP) .

Small farmers, tenants, sharecroppers, and landless workers are the most vulnerable to hunger and poverty, according to COLARP. "The cost of not having land reform is very high. The agricultural productivity is not increasing," said Pyakhurel.

Until now most land decisions have been made on an ad-hoc basis with no registration, he added.

The country's first Land Act was introduced in 1964. Even after six rounds of amendments, it continues to favour landlords and does little to protect the rights of tenants, said Pyakhurel.

There is a need to replace the current land tenure system with one that constitutionally guarantees land reform - and gives the traditionally landless a chance to own the land they work; land management continues to remain highly centralized and even local government has little power to change the system, noted COLARP.

Failed distribution

Since the introduction of a land tenure system in Nepal in 1951, laws have afforded tenants scant protection other than for those with money, according to a 2009 study funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Under current land codes, tenant farmers should be able to purchase land they cultivate through cash and collateral, but owners have been able to thwart the system to hang on to land, wrote the author's report, Liz Alden Wily, a land tenure specialist based in Nairobi.

"This is not an experience unique to Nepal; although there have been successes, on the whole redistributive farmland reform has failed [in Nepal]," she said.

Successful redistribution could change the decades-old dynamics of land ownership.

"The most important difference it makes is to shift landless tenants and workers into a situation where they are shareholders in the farming economy, not just casual pawns or beneficiaries," explained Wily.

China, Vietnam, Taiwan and South Korea have undertaken successful land reforms in Asia, she noted, and change is overdue in Nepal. "This is an insult to the tenants and workers who have been working the same land for decades," Wily concluded.

According to the local NGO,Federation of Nepal, most of the country's land is controlled by the Nepalese elite. As absentee landlords, most do not even live in the villages where they legally own land, yet they reap most of the income.

With no legal claim to the land, or registration that even recognizes them as tenant farmers, instead of receiving a 50 percent share of the harvest, labourers get at most one-third and, more often, one-tenth of earnings.

Tuberculosis success in Nepal

Nepal has one of the most successful tuberculosis fighting programs in the under-developed world. In 1990, only 45 percent of people were cured of TB, now it up to 90 percent. In addition, Nepal has also seen improvements in other health factors such as malaria, maternal health, and AIDS.

Nepal achieves this health success through a centrally located strategy from its government. Instead of having several NGOs run their own programs within the country, Nepal asks for them to instead donate the money to their own health program.The Doctors in charge of the program also demand constant improvement in health results.

From the Guardian, writer John Donnelly is traveling with the World Health Organization to report on Nepal's progress.

Here, however, the government announced just last month that it would be working with donors in a new way – with three groups, DfID, the World Bank, and the GAVI Alliance – funneling money directly into a pooling arrangement for better maternal and child health. The hope is that the arrangement will reduce duplication and lead to better health outcomes. (And the government could even improve its performance: In the past year around 30 health ministry workers, including senior leaders, have attended workshops put on by the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health on how to better negotiate with donors).

In TB control, the government has cooperated closely with partners for several decades. But it wasn't until 1996 that things started to work well. That's when Nepal became one of the first countries in Asia to introduce the DOTS strategy, which calls for health workers to observe patients take their TB medicine every day for at least six months. It wasn't easy in a country as poor with so many remote villages, but strong central leadership at the time from the energetic Dr Dirgha Singh Bam and Dr Ian Smith, who later became WHO's first medical officer in Nepal – helped to build a national programme.

In the early 1990s, just 45% of TB patients were cured; today, that figure has doubled to 90%. Twenty years ago, a couple of hundred health facilities oversaw TB treatment; today, more than 4,000 sites, including tiny health posts in the mountains, administer the anti-TB drugs.

That's all positive, but health leaders remain concerned about new problems. There's HIV-TB co-infection; an estimated 40,000 people each year contract TB, which isn't much less than 15 years ago; and those with multiple-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) types of TB can't go to isolation wards because there are none.

So patients with MDR and XDR-TB walk into centres every day, and then go back into the community. Authorities wouldn't allow that to happen in London, or in many places around the world.

11 countries suspend adoption from Nepal, leaving children without a home

11 different countries have suspended adoption programs for Nepal. The suspension is due to allegations of corruption and not knowing where the adoption fees are spent. The suspension leaves many Nepali children without a loving home until the suspension is lifted.

From IPS, writer Bhuwan Sharma talks about the allegations that led to the suspension.

"Children will now have to remain in grim orphanages or may risk a worse fate by staying with families that don’t want them," says Philip Holmes, the adoptive father of two Nepali children and country director of Esther Benjamins Trust-Nepal, a U.K.-registered charity engaged in childcare and child protection and fighting child trafficking in Nepal.
...

Problems ranging from fake documents, lack of transparency in handling funds and corruption in the adoption process, which have been reported over the years, have led to the latest round of adoption suspensions.

Following similar allegations by recipient countries, the Nepali government suspended inter-country adoptions in May 2007, before lifting the self- imposed ban in January 2009. Intra-country adoptions were allowed to continue although local response to calls for adoption had always been very poor.

Even after the 2007 suspension and its eventual lifting, adoption problems continued to plague the tiny kingdom in the eastern Himalayas. In February, The Hague Conference on Private International Law, an inter-governmental organisation, released a report roundly criticising Nepal’s adoption system, citing gross irregularities.

In 2008, Nepal came up with the "Terms and Conditions and Process for Granting Approval for Adoption of Nepali Child by an Alien." These, however, were "not adequate as a legal framework to conduct inter-country adoptions," said the Hague Report. It added that Nepal’s refurbished laws still "fall short of Hague Convention standards."

The report recommended "better regulations of children’s homes" and elimination of "financial gain from inter-country adoption."

On Aug. 6, the U.S. government slapped a ban on inter-country adoptions from Nepal, citing the need "to protect the rights and interests of certain Nepali children and their families, and of U.S. prospective adoptive parents." Ten other countries – Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Britain – had previously taken similar actions following the release of The Hague report.

"A few bad apples are besmirching the image of the entire sector," says Sher Jung Karki, undersecretary of the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare.

Low food security for western Nepal

From IRIN, a story on food being in short supply for 600,000 people in the western hills of Nepal.

Food security for more than 600,000 people in the western hills of Nepal is set to deteriorate, aid agencies warn.

With already low agricultural production in the more food-insecure areas, inflation is exacerbating matters further.

“A lot of villagers are opting for more desperate coping mechanisms,” Richard Ragan, country representative for the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN in Kathmandu.

Many villagers are already reducing the number of meals they eat each day, cutting portions, or migrating to urban areas or India for work, he said.

“In a desperate attempt to buy food, families are even selling their livestock and household assets and the out-migration [to Nepali cities and India] has increased already by 40 percent,” Ragan said.

Typifying that reality is Chattra Bahadur Chettri, a farmer from the western district of Bajura working in the Nepalese capital.

“I came here with my children to avoid any more hardship,” the 50-year-old said.

Food inflation

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the cost of staple food items such as rice, pulses and wheat is as high or even higher than at the peak of the international food crisis in August 2008.

Rice, a staple part of the Nepalese diet, has increased from US$0.34 per kg in 2008 to over $0.50 this year, local traders say.

With no increase in income and unemployment on the rise, even a slight increase in price has a knock-on effect on people’s purchasing power, WFP notes.

Food inflation is already up by 20 percent, the Federation of Nepal Chamber of Commerce and Industries reported, leaving food increasingly unaffordable for poorer families, many of whom live on less than $1 a day.

As one of the poorest nations in the world, 31 percent of the country’s 28 million inhabitants live below the national poverty line with each person surviving on less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank.

More than 80 percent of the people living in rural areas depend mostly on subsistence farming for their livelihoods, according to the FAO.

Worst areas

Bajura, nearly 500km northwest of the capital, is regarded as the most food-insecure district, according to the Nepal Food Security Monitoring System (NeKSAP) initiated by government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and WFP.

The district was badly affected by drought in 2009 when there was no rain for six months from August to January.

NeKSAP frequently analyses information on household food security, markets and nutrition in more remote regions through its district networks.

“If I don’t find any work here, we will go to India after selling my goats and house,” said Chettri, who explained that many villagers like him were now intent on leaving their homes and moving to other districts where food was more readily available.

Already 87 percent of Bajura’s population (nearly 125,000) is food-insecure.

In Humla, another remote hill district, 700km northwest of the capital, nearly 85 percent of its population (almost 50,000) is suffering from food insecurity, NeKSAP estimates.

Other vulnerable districts include Mugu, Kalikot, Jumla, Dailekh, Accham, Doti, Bajhang, Darchula and Baitadi.

“These are the areas which already suffer from very low agricultural production and the situation has been made worse by food inflation,” Narendra Khadga Chettri, director of Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, said.

With monsoon rains expected in June and lasting until September, there is now concern about the risks of landslides and floods - more external shocks in what is already a precarious food situation, according to the FAO.

Guest voices: Small steps effect big changes for children in Nepal

Continuing our series of guest posts from Concern Worldwide, a story about their educational efforts in Nepal. According to Cecial Adhikari small improvements to the lives of the children can go a long way.

“I enjoy staying in the classroom where I can concentrate on studying,” fifth-grader Lalit Khatri told me when I spoke to him at the Pashupati Primary School in Dashera village, which is located in the Jajarkot District of Nepal.

Through its local partner, Nepal Water for Health, Concern recently implemented a program to improve water and sanitation facilities at Lalit’s school in an effort to promote basic health for the students of this rural region. I was back to visit with the children and teachers and see how the project was impacting their lives.

Nepal has the poorest drinking water and sanitation coverage for its population in South Asia and a correspondingly high rate of waterborne diseases. In the area in which Concern works, the most prevalent diseases are: dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, hepatitis and cholera. The cholera outbreak in 2009 claimed over 200 lives in Jajarkot District.

Lalit explained what had changed at his school since the project was implemented: ”Now the school is clean and free of bad odors because of new toilets. And because of a new water tap, we have clean water, and have learnt about the need to wash our hands.”

The situation here was very different four months ago when Concern first became aware of the problem: the area around the school was filthy, smelly, and dangerous. In the absence of toilets, younger students used the areas around the school, exposing themselves and other children to the transmission of waterborne illnesses, all highly preventable diseases which are too often fatal in this remote region of Nepal.

Lalit Khatri
At Lalit’s school, students at higher grades, particularly girls, and female teachers, would walk long distances in search of isolated and open spaces so they could have privacy. Similarly, when the children needed clean drinking water, they were forced to travel to nearby houses, which hindered their attendance of class.
When Concern’s team in Nepal learned of the situation at the school, it became immediately clear to us about the urgency to begin a water and sanitation project.
Improved hygiene behavior, which was taught in the school as a component of the project, has now been passed down by the children to their families – something that has proven in the past to bring about positive change at the community level.
Apart from the obvious improvements in health and hygiene practice, the children’s teacher credits Concern with contributing to her students sense of dignity and self-respect: ”The water, sanitation and hygiene program in our school has not only provided us with services and facilties but we have now moved from shame to dignity. Before we did not feel safe or secure and often felt humiliated.”

Recent surveys show that 59 percent of public and community schools across the country do not have any toilet facilities, a factor which has contributed to the increasing rate of girl dropouts per year. Concern has been working to improve the situation so that girls are encouraged to return to school and continue with their studies.

According to the United Nations Human Development Index, in Nepal, more than 60 percent of women over 15 are illiterate; and nearly 10 percent of all female children are currently not enrolled in school.

Keeping Nepalese children in school

From IRIN a story about keeping children in enrolled in Nepal's schools. Aid workers say that enrolling the children and scholarships are not enough, because parents will pull them out of school to help provide for their families.

Millions of children from marginalized ethnic families in Nepal are drifting out of education because not enough is being done to keep them in school, aid workers warn.

“Enrolling them in school and simply providing scholarships is not enough to ensure they continue going to school,” said Bhaya Ram Yadav from the Jana Jagran Yuba Club, an NGO that works with disadvantaged children in Bara District, 200km south of the capital Kathmandu.

Bara has one of the worst literacy rates in the Himalayan nation, with only 27 percent female and 53 percent male literacy, well below the national averages of 44 and 68 percent respectively, according to the Department of Education.

All over Nepal, marginalized families cannot afford to keep their children in school and most students from disadvantaged backgrounds will drop out before grade two.

A generation in need

There are more than 100 ethnic groups in Nepal, half of which are indigenous and regarded as marginalized, while 22 are classified as “extremely disadvantaged”.

They make up about 40 percent of the country’s 29.3 million inhabitants, while almost one-third of all Nepalese live below the poverty line on less than US$1 a day.

“These groups also have the lowest number of children in schools,” said education specialist Helen Sherpa from World Education, an international NGO working with disadvantaged children.

World Education has supported more than 150,000 children by rescuing them from exploitative work conditions, providing scholarships and helping parents find income-generating activities.

“They all come from the most exploited communities who are impoverished, suffer from social inequalities and most children have dropped out of school to work in risky situations,” Sherpa said.

More than one million children in Nepal work as domestic servants, porters, carpet weavers, bricklayers and miners, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), which estimates there are about 55,000 children working as domestic servants and more than 16,000 in adult establishments, such as massage parlours and dance restaurants.

Nepal has 7.3 million students in the school system at primary, secondary and high-school level, according to the Department of Education, but only 116,000 are from marginalised backgrounds.

Incentives not enough

To combat the problem, the government has a programme of community schooling, whereby local communities take over management responsibilities at schools; 60 percent of the funding comes from the government and the rest from the communities.

But observers are not convinced the initiative is having the desired effect.

“This is a good idea, but it does not solve the problem of equality issues in diverse communities in Nepal, as not all communities are capable of managing schools, especially in low-literacy areas," said education specialist Sumon Tuladhar from the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF).

These low-literacy areas cover about two-thirds of the country.

The government has provided 2.4 million scholarships over the past 10 years for students up to grade eight, but NGOs say the impact has been minimal because the scholarships are only $5 per child annually.

“That amount does not even cover the school fees in most public schools,” said Prakash Adhikari, executive president of the Innovative Forum for Community Development.

A comprehensive, integrated humanitarian approach, including food aid, nutritional support and economic aid to families, is needed to help these children, he said.

“The reality is that unless we start a special integrated package, the problem of children leaving the school system will always be there. We admit that the government needs a different approach,” said Hari Lamsal, deputy director of the Department of Education’s planning division.

Although Lamsal’s department has a limited mandate, he said he has been raising the issue of an integrated package with other ministries, especially the Ministry of Local Development.

“We definitely need a special integrated package that should include agricultural and income-generating activities for parents.”

Freeing young girls from sexual slavery in Nepal

From IRIN, freeing young girls in Nepal from sexual slavery and human trafficking.

When Shardha Chaudhary was 11 years old, her impoverished parents rented her out for US$17 a year. For the next two years, she endured physical and mental abuse, one of thousands of girls forced to work in slave-like conditions as indentured labourers in Nepal.

Shardha was rescued five months ago in Kathmandu by local NGO Friends of Nepal (FNC) and is slowly recovering.

“Shardha was so malnourished, weighing barely 13kg because of neglect and abuse. She survived extreme inhumanity at the hands of her owners in Kathmandu,” said Manoj Silwal, programme director of the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF), an international organization working with FNC.

The practice of selling daughters for indentured servitude - “kamlari” - is done through a middleman, traditionally in western Nepal’s indigenous Tharu community.

Thousands of kamlari girls around Nepal have suffered starvation, rape and other forms of sexual abuse, being burnt and stabbed by their “owners”, according to investigations by NYOF.

Education funding

Raju Dhamala, executive director of FNC, told IRIN that Nepal’s kamlari girls are “safer now as most of them have been rescued, and the parents who were unaware of such abuses are no longer practising this tradition”.

Since 2000, the two NGOs have rescued close to 10,000 kamlaris, though estimates suggest there are 20,000 around the country. Almost 7,000 were younger than 14, and some as young as eight, all working for middle-class and elite families in urban areas. This year, 3,595 girls have been rescued, and the organizations have sent warnings to the households holding the remaining 1,000 kamlaris.

Both FNC and NYOF claim the government fails to support the rehabilitation of rescued girls although government officials say funding has been made available and it is taking steps to be more actively involved in the process.

So far, $1.5 million has been allocated for educational support, but it is barely enough to meet the needs of the rescued girls.

“The government has to address the root problems and educational support covers only the tip of the iceberg,” said Dhamala.

Poverty pressure

With many Nepalese families landless, jobless and hungry, opportunities to make a little extra cash are few and far between, while almost one-third of the country’s 28 million people live below the poverty line on less than $1 a day.

Dhamala said that only the Ministry of Education was involved in the rehabilitation, and the government should mobilize other ministries and come up with a far-reaching economic programme.

“Unless the families get more humanitarian aid and poverty-alleviation support, the risks of the kamlari system resuming are always there,” said Silwal from NYOF.

The government gives reunited families $25 a year towards the education of rescued kamlari girls, but this barely covers school expenses, according to NYOF.

“For the time being, they are not sending off their daughters to work as kamlaris due to social pressure, but for how long they will do that is our concern as most have lost their financial support and were dependent on their children to meet even their basic needs,” said Silwal.

Shanta Chaudhary, 28, a lawmaker who was herself a kamlari at 10, urged the government “to keep its promises to provide humanitarian assistance as part of their rehabilitation, and take measures to protect them from further risks”.

Water crisis in Nepal intensifies

From IRIN, a story on the water crisis in Nepal which is now effecting half of the country.

Access to safe drinking water is deteriorating across parts of Nepal, activists say, despite the prevailing monsoon season from May until September.

According to the Federation of Drinking Water and Sanitation Users Nepal, a national network advocating water and sanitation rights, half the country now faces drinking water shortages.

Although a study has yet to be conducted on the current scenario, water experts claim more than 20 districts in both the hills and Terai areas of the country have been badly affected.

“This situation could affect a large number of families who have already been reeling under the immense water shortage situation over the last many years,” Ajaya Dixit, director of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation told IRIN.

According to government statistics, more than 4.4 million people in the Himalayan nation do not have regular access to safe drinking water in rural and urban areas, be it via piped water, wells, rainwater or bottled water.

“With water sources drying up, erratic rainfall and poor management of water resources, the problems are worsening every year,” said Prakash Amatya from the NGO Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation.

Public health concerns are increasing as a result. Already, more than 10,500 children die before their fifth birthday from diarrhoea, mainly due to inadequate access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, according to WaterAid. More than 80 percent of diseases are the result of unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation, according to its 2009 report, End Water Poverty campaign journey in Nepal.

Worsening water crisis

Villagers in remote districts such as Dadeldhura, Doti, Surkhet and dozens of others in western Nepal, all more than 500km from the capital, are already suffering, social workers say.

“A lot of people are taking desperate measures by spending more than five hours every day to fetch water from far-off rivers,” said Anju Karki, a healthcare volunteer in Doti.

The government has more than 50,000 healthcare volunteers who work closely with the rural communities and are also a major source of information for NGOs, media and government where there is limited access.

Food shortages in western Nepal

From IRIN, the story of food shortages in the western hills of Nepal.

Food security for more than 600,000 people in the western hills of Nepal is set to deteriorate, aid agencies warn.

With already low agricultural production in the more food-insecure areas, inflation is exacerbating matters further.

“A lot of villagers are opting for more desperate coping mechanisms,” Richard Ragan, country representative for the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN in Kathmandu.

Many villagers are already reducing the number of meals they eat each day, cutting portions, or migrating to urban areas or India for work, he said.

“In a desperate attempt to buy food, families are even selling their livestock and household assets and the out-migration [to Nepali cities and India] has increased already by 40 percent,” Ragan said.

Typifying that reality is Chattra Bahadur Chettri, a farmer from the western district of Bajura working in the Nepalese capital.

“I came here with my children to avoid any more hardship,” the 50-year-old said.

Food inflation

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the cost of staple food items such as rice, pulses and wheat is as high or even higher than at the peak of the international food crisis in August 2008.

Rice, a staple part of the Nepalese diet, has increased from US$0.34 per kg in 2008 to over $0.50 this year, local traders say.

With no increase in income and unemployment on the rise, even a slight increase in price has a knock-on effect on people’s purchasing power, WFP notes.

Food inflation is already up by 20 percent, the Federation of Nepal Chamber of Commerce and Industries reported, leaving food increasingly unaffordable for poorer families, many of whom live on less than $1 a day.

As one of the poorest nations in the world, 31 percent of the country’s 28 million inhabitants live below the national poverty line with each person surviving on less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank.

More than 80 percent of the people living in rural areas depend mostly on subsistence farming for their livelihoods, according to the FAO.

Worst areas

Bajura, nearly 500km northwest of the capital, is regarded as the most food-insecure district, according to the Nepal Food Security Monitoring System (NeKSAP) initiated by government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and WFP.

The district was badly affected by drought in 2009 when there was no rain for six months from August to January.

NeKSAP frequently analyses information on household food security, markets and nutrition in more remote regions through its district networks.

“If I don’t find any work here, we will go to India after selling my goats and house,” said Chettri, who explained that many villagers like him were now intent on leaving their homes and moving to other districts where food was more readily available.

Already 87 percent of Bajura’s population (nearly 125,000) is food-insecure.

In Humla, another remote hill district, 700km northwest of the capital, nearly 85 percent of its population (almost 50,000) is suffering from food insecurity, NeKSAP estimates.

Other vulnerable districts include Mugu, Kalikot, Jumla, Dailekh, Accham, Doti, Bajhang, Darchula and Baitadi.

“These are the areas which already suffer from very low agricultural production and the situation has been made worse by food inflation,” Narendra Khadga Chettri, director of Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, said.

With monsoon rains expected in June and lasting until September, there is now concern about the risks of landslides and floods - more external shocks in what is already a precarious food situation, according to the FAO.

The Bamboo Schools of Nepal

Many parents in Nepal do not want to send their children to public schools because of their poor reputation. However, for many parents the costs of private schools are out of reach.

An article from Inter Press Service today profiles the Bamboo Schools of Nepal. The Bamboo Schools strive to keep the costs of education affordable, for qualifying families it's the same price as a clove of garlic.

From IPS, writer Damakant Jayshi describes why they are called Bamboo schools.

The Samata schools, also called ‘bamboo schools’ because their structures are made mainly of bamboo, now make up the largest chain of non-public educational institutions with more than 18,000 students in 10 districts in Nepal.

Eight more are in the offing in eight districts in central and eastern Tarai, Nepal’s southern plains, with each school expected to have at least 3,000 students. The foundation-laying ceremonies in the eight districts are scheduled for Feb. 22-24. "My goal is to open at least one Samata school in each of the 75 districts in the country," Sanjel added.

Samata’s growing number of students is in stark contrast with the nationwide dropout rate among students as they reach higher grades.

According to Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics data for 1997-2006, the number of students enrolled during the decade was 4.5 million at the primary level, 1.3 million at the lower secondary level and 679,445 at the secondary level. These figures indicate that as students move upwards in the school system, not many continue with their education.

The Samata schools do not spend much on infrastructure because they cannot afford to. The classrooms and other structures, like teachers’ rooms and hostel, are made of bamboo, with cement plaster from inside to lend strength. The floors are rough and uneven, with bricks missing from the floor in nearly all the classrooms.

Being made of bamboo is not the only unique thing about the Samata schools. The medium of instruction is English – considered a passport to success – because parents and guardians in Nepal prefer private English- medium schools over Nepali or other vernacular language schools.

The school fee is merely 100 Nepali rupees (1.35 U.S. dollars) for students in all the grades, this amount being a little less than the per-kilogramme price of garlic. There is a one-time admission fee of 150 rupees (2 dollars), which can be waived for very poor students in a country where poverty affects 31 percent of its 27 million people, going by Asian Development Bank figures.

Witch trials in Nepal

Yes, witch trials still happen in the world. In Nepal, women are accused of being witches when bad things happen in the area. The women are confined, beaten, and forced to eat excrement until they give in just so the torture can stop.

From IPS reporter Mallika Aryal gives us one example an looks into reasons why this still occurs.

In Sunsari, 650 km south-east of Kathmandu, Jabrun Khatun, 26 was dragged out of her house and beaten in the middle of the village. "They said I was a witch, that because of me a lot of children were falling sick and beat me for hours. Then they stepped on my chest and forced me to eat human excreta," said Khatun.

They imprisoned her for days until local children let her out. She was all alone in the family as her husband had recently left to work in neighbouring India. "I have come all the way to Kathmandu looking for justice," said Khatun.

In Kalilali, far west Nepal, Jugu Kumari Chaudhari was accused of practicing witch-craft when a close family member died. Chaudhari was beaten up and her husband had to come rescue her. "We went to the police station to file a complaint but they said it was a personal matter and we should resolve in the community," said Chaudhari.

Gender activists have been fighting for years to end this extreme form of violence against women, but the problem is still common in the Tarai, the southern plains of Nepal, and in areas where there's high illiteracy and poverty.

"An educated woman from higher-income family and higher caste never gets accused of practicing witchcraft," said Indu Pant, gender advisor at CARE Nepal. Urmila Bishwakarma of the Dalit media group Jagaran Media Centre has been documenting cases of Dalit women who have been accused as witches and tortured. She said that Dalit and other minority women are the most vulnerable because they are socially, culturally, financially and politically backward.

Pant says that the problem is exacerbated because the state is often missing in these regions, so the victims have nowhere to go for help. "Even when they try to seek help from the police they are often turned back because the police says it is a personal matter and must be solved in the community. This culture of impunity lets the perpetrators off the hook."

Oxfam blames poor farming yields in Nepal on climate change

The charity Oxfam says extreme food shortages in Nepal are to due to climate change. Oxfam says that weather pattern changes has effected farmers yields in the country.

The poverty fighting charity calls on government and NGO's to provide assistance to rural farmers during the upcoming planting season by introducing new crop varieties and assistance with irrigation.

From this Associated Press story hosted at Google, writer Binaj Gurubacharya details Oxfam's statement.

Changing weather patterns have dramatically affected crop production in Nepal, leaving farmers unable to properly feed themselves and pushing them into debt, Oxfam International said in a report released in Katmandu.

The British aid agency described the situation as "deeply worrying."

"Communities told us crop production is roughly half that of previous years ... Last year many could only grow enough (food) for one month's consumption," said Oxfam's Wayne Gum, adding that less precipitation has been forecast this winter, which will make the situation worse.

More extreme temperatures, drier winters and delays in summer monsoons have all compounded the situation, the report said.

More than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, and food stocks in farming communities will last only a few months, it warned.

Oxfam said Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

"The predicted impacts of climate change will heighten existing vulnerabilities, inequalities and exposure to hazards," the report said.

How the government-less state on Nepal effects aid to those in poverty

Ever since Nepal's Prime Minister quit his office earlier this month, the country has been without a government, as a coalition leadership keeps failing to form. Aid workers and NGOs in the country says this has severely effected aid to people of Nepal..

The lack of government has effected aid in at least two ways. First, money that the government had previously pledged for flood victims has yet to be released to the people. Secondly, development projects that need government permits or cooperation have been stalled.

From IRIN, we learn more about how the country without a government is effecting anti-povertyy efforts on the ground.

"There is rising concern about the impact on the most vulnerable communities, especially the victims of the Koshi flood," Vincent Omuga, humanitarian affairs officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN.

For the past nine months, thousands of people displaced by the Koshi flood have been living in the camps of Sunsari and Saptari of eastern Nepal, nearly 300km south of the capital, Kathmandu.

Before the political crisis, the government had passed a compensation package of thousands of dollars to help resettle the displaced families in their homes.

"But now the relief aid for the displaced will not be delivered because the release of funds is done only through the government," said an international aid worker, who requested anonymity.

Early recovery activities are supported by the UN and other donor agencies through the government.

"All this will be delayed now because the district level decisions by local government offices and institutions depends on the decision of the central level government, which is still lagging behind," the aid worker said.

Meanwhile, local NGO workers are also worried about the impact on their development work as most of their activities depend on their partnership with local government bodies such as the Village Development Committees and District Development Committees, none of which can make any decisions to implement aid projects without permission from central government.

"It is quite unlikely that aid services will be delivered soon until this political deadlock is over," Netra Timilsina, an aid worker and senior official of NGO Federation of Nepal, told IRIN.
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Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than 30 percent of its 28 million inhabitants living below the poverty line of less than US$1 a day.

The displaced people of Nepal

It has been a few years since the "People's War" has finished in Nepal. The war caused over 50,000 Nepalese to flee from their homes. The war finished in 2006, but many of the displaced people still haven't returned home.

The government of Nepal has been slow in developing a program to help the people without homes. The Non-Governmental Organizations who help the displaced people say their government has totally neglected them.

From the IRIN we learn about the situation from interviews with NGO's that operate in Nepal.

In a mid-2008 IDP report produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of IDPs in Nepal was estimated to be 50,000-70,000, and UN officials say these numbers will not have changed since then.

“There is virtually nothing for them to return to. They have no house or other resources to generate income,” said Geeta Gautam, an official from the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a local human rights NGO.

The Nepal Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, which is responsible for the welfare of the IDPs, is still in the process of setting up poverty alleviation, health care and employment programmes, but has been unable to make much progress due to a lack of reliable data, officials said.

Activists and experts working on the IDP issue are concerned about the growing vulnerability of women and children - the worst victims of displacement-induced poverty.

“Children’s education has been severely hampered and the women have great difficulty supporting their families,” explained Gautam.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said there was an urgent need for national IDP policy to be implemented: IDPs should be able to return to their former villages, and get reintegrated and resettled. NRC country director Phillipe Clerc said he was concerned by the apparent lack of government interest in the matter.

Even two years after the launch of the national IDP policy, a large number of women are still seeking information on civil documentation, widows’ allowances, property restitution, children's education and shelter, said Clerc.