“Agents in Saudi Arab trade women from other countries; housemaids are mostly exploited,” spoke a Nepali man working in Saudi Arab for more than 10 years in a discussion program co-sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and Samanta (an NGO working for social and gender equity). Now on leave in Nepal, he added, “People generally assume that private employers did not pay their workers for several months in Saudi Arab, but the major truth is that agents who trade human beings take five or six month’s remuneration of the concerned workers. This is the main reason why employers refuse to pay illegal workers for several months.”

Women organized under a social institution Pourakhi trained by the UNIFEM and Samanta conducted the discussion program Friday in Lalitpur with special reference to foreign employment and HIV-AIDS. “Precautionary awareness is required before going abroad for employment,” said Manju Gurung, the Chairwoman of Pourakhi (a social institution working for the awareness of Nepali women going to different countries for employment). She stressed on the need to understand legal procedures regarding pre-departure, during-departure and post-departure stages. “Many are victimized as they are uninformed about the exact procedures,” she added. Referring to her own experience as a worker in Japan, she said many women sexually victimized in foreign countries do not like to expose their sufferings due to the patriarchal-conservative structure of society. “Even male workers are prone to sexual exploitation in a closed society such as Saudi Arab,” Gurung added. She blames on the Nepalis’ culture of silence for not being able to expose innumerable incidents of human rights violations against the Nepali workers in Arab and other countries. She said both male and female workers in foreign countries need to follow prescribed guidelines for safer sex and protection from the HIV-AIDS.

Another speaker in the discussion program Nirmala Bhattarai from the Pourakhi expressed her views that women compared to men are at a higher risk in foreign employment due to patriarchal mindset, state’s discriminatory laws, illiteracy and poverty. She said, “Many Nepali women departing for foreign employment do not know that they have been supplied to a sex market against a proposed normal labor market,” Bhattarai said. She referred to an estimated data that 13,000 Nepali women have been sold in Malaysia alone. She, therefore, emphasized on precautionary awareness.

Many participants in the discussion program agreed on the point that there are various women-selling channels in Nepal and it starts from the channels of women’s own relatives. Participants pointed out that most of the Nepali women are not directly flown to Arab countries but are taken through India with the help of their own relatives. In so many cases women’s relatives themselves are either victimized or are involved in illegal business themselves.

The participants of the discussion program concluded that those interested in foreign employment should have an orientation course to be familiar with the likely circumstances and possibilities in their target countries. There was consensus among the participants that people should go for foreign employment only through legal channels with all legal records so that violations of labor laws could be exposed and compensations and workers’ security sought. However, their emphasis was on having proper awareness on HIV-AIDS as a growing number of Nepali women and men are returning to Nepal with the HIV positive.