Letter from Nepal

March 8, 2007

Kellea Miller 

 

Namaste. I am writing to you from Kathmandu, where Kavita and I are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Tewa, Nepal's first and only women's fund and a grantee partner of the Global Fund for Women.

 

 

For the women's movement, protecting women's rights has become a matter of survival.  As we have seen from Colombia to Afghanistan to the Sudan, conflict breeds fundamentalism. In turn, this dramatic increase in violence against women completely disrupts a community's social, economic and cultural fabric.

 

At a convening of 15 Global Fund grantees, we heard time and time again how the conflict placed even greater burden on already strained women's groups.  Women for Human Rights spoke of a huge increase in young widows in the 38 districts where they work.  (The group's membership is now 14,000 widows between the ages of 16 and 35.)  Pingala and Ganga, Bhutanese refugees from "Voice for Change" talked about the absolute hold on movement, support and services in their refugee camp.  They themselves had to sneak out of the camp to attend our meeting. 

 

In every single gathering, we have met women and youth who have lost family members and have been forced to leave their homes.  At Nagarik Aawaz, a peace-building group primarily for youth, Rita Thapa asked those who had been displaced to raise their hands.  Of the 11 youth volunteers, 8 raised their hands. Every single group echoed a need for greater resources to work across caste, region and issue to ensure that women's rights are central as the country mends and rebuilds itself.  They also reiterated the importance of general support funding, especially as they respond to unforeseen and immediate needs. 

 

Among the devastation and lack of resources, women's rights groups are creating spaces of resistance.  Yesterday, at the first-ever National Conference for Suvivors of Trafficking (organized by GFW grantee Shakti Samuha), a young woman, no older than 18, spoke to 500 trafficking survivors, allies and members of government about her experience.  She was taken from Nepal to a brothel in Mumbai, where she was repeatedly raped, before moving to an orphanage where, again, she was beaten.  Finally she escaped back to Nepal, where she bravely stood before us and sang a song of solidarity.  She went on to proclaim, "It is only when we are isolated that they can destroy us.  When we come together, we can not be broken."

 

To understand the growth in trafficking among Nepali women, one must understand the factors that have exacerbated the poverty in rural villages across Nepal. This has created sea of migration from rural areas to cities (primarily Kathmandu) and from Nepal to India and increasingly other countries in the region. The pressure to move is especially high for illiterate women who have few or no options in their own communities.  Yet, once they are in a new environment, migrants are immediately at greater risk of coercion and exploitation, which is exploited by traffickers eager to advance their own agendas.

 

Poverty in Nepal and the problems it creates do not occur in a vacuum.  International policies, particularly those promoted by the government of the United States, directly affect the situation in Nepal.  Foreign assistance accounts for 1/3 of Nepal's budget.  Yet, that aid seems irrelevant to the realities faced by a young woman who is desperate enough to move away from everything she knows in an effort to earn something that she can send back home.  (In 2005, about 5% of Nepal's GDP came from remmitance money sent back from family members abroad.)  Aid money comes with a price tag.   Nepal must accept an entire package of neo-liberal policies that diminish state resources and force Nepal and other nations in the Global South to open their economies to international companies whose "investments" often benefit shareholders back in the West, rather than benefiting workers in the local economy.  The outcomes of these policies are growing poverty and inequality – a trademark of global capitalism – which only worsen in times of conflict, especially for women. 

 

The price paid by women was evident in our site visit to WODES (Women's Development Society), where we met Asha (Nepali for "hope") and Srijana, two beautiful teenagers in jeans and sweatshirts, who sat giggling in the back of the room.  We ceased smiling when Srijana stood up to tell us how their fathers had been killed, one by the Maoists and one by the Nepali security forces, and their families forced to moved to the city. They credited WODES with helping them to finish school and training them as peace activists.  Now, at 17, they have enough confidence to directly lobby politicians with their demands for justice and peace.

 

This confidence and hope despite desperation was evident in every encounter we have had so far.  Indeed, hand in hand with grief and loss, we have also seen determination and mobilization.  Perhaps that spirit was best shared in the many songs we heard sung by youth.  If those who have lost so much can still sing out, demand their rights at every level and teach each other, then they have much to teach all of us about true dignity and strength.

 

Today on International Women's Day, we are joining with Tewa and hundreds of others to stand in solidarity with this struggle.  Together, we march through the streets of Kathmandu and carry with us the stories, the songs and the collective power of a vision for peace.

 

Thank you for standing with us, for supporting the Global Fund for Women.  I wish that each of you could see the gratitude and resilience that we have witnessed here.  Together, we build a movement, together we remind ourselves and each other that we are not alone. 

 

In solidarity and resistance,

Kellea