KATHMANDU, JUN 29 -

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday honoured Nepali anti-trafficking hero, Charimaya Tamang, with the 2011 Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award.

Tamang was honoured during the release of 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report at the State Department in Washington. Born into a poor family, made poorer by the death of her father, Charimaya was 16 years old when she was trafficked to India. She spent 22 months in a brothel before the Indian government rescued her along with over 200 other Nepali women in 1996. Upon her return to Nepal, Tamang was ostracised by her community.

However, she filed a case against her traffickers, becoming the first person to file personally a trafficking case at the district police. In 1997, the District Court—in a landmark decision—convicted and sentenced eight offenders involved in her case. Later in 2000, Tamang and 15 other survivors established Shakti Samuha, an anti-trafficking NGO. In that role, Tamang raised the importance of including survivors in each district-level working group. There are now five trafficking survivors serving as members at the district-level committees around the country. Releasing the report, Secretary of State Clinton recognized ten TIP Heroes from around the world for their efforts in combating human trafficking.Stating that Nepal has improved anti-human trafficking efforts despite limited resources, the report  pointed out the need to fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

“While the Government of Nepal established the Central Crime Investigation Bureau’s special unit to investigate trafficking and increased its direct financial support for protection services in Nepal and abroad, the lack of proactive victim identification was cited in the report as a persistent serious problem,” read a statement released by the US Embassy here.

The report recommended that the government improve anti-trafficking efforts. The recommendations include increased law enforcement against all kinds of trafficking, establishment of a formal procedure to identify victims and promotion of legal awareness programme among potential victims and government officials.

The US government has been supporting various initiatives to combat human trafficking in Nepal. These initiatives, among others, include a five-year project funded by USAID to strengthen protection services for TIP survivors, capacity building of the judiciary and law enforcement agencies and awareness programmes among groups that are vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking.

http://www.ekantipur.com/2011/06/29/top-story/anti-human-trafficking-award-us-honours-nepali-woman-for-heroic-act/336470.html