LET US COME TOGETHER AND JOIN OUR HANDS

Read more »

REAL FACTS NEPAL

Welcome To The Real Nepal!
Briefs On Real Nepal
Poorest of the poorest people with the most magnificent smiles on the planet, dustiest streets of the city yet breath-taking snow-capped mountains and lush green valleys in the horizon, politicians of the poor in a national dress driving in a luxurious car and sleeping in a bungalow, and the poor after the plough and a simple hut, and a city girl in all possible flashy modern outfits and make-ups, and a poor village girl in a tattered clothes with a huge bundle on her back and a sickle in her hand, and the poor little children with dirty little feet wearing beautiful smiles to touch your heart. Welcome to Nepal! Colorful Nepal! Crazy Nepal! Remember, the more you know about Nepal, the more you want to know. Nepal is a magnet. It will attract you to explore its wonders and teach you many lessons of life. There is nothing that can stop you from experiencing Nepal. So visit Nepal this year, will you please?
Why Nepal is Poor ?
A not for profit organization Rural Poverty Portal, a division of International Fund for Agriculture, claims that Nepalese are poor because of lack of development of agriculture infrastructure which includes lack of roads reaching farmers backyard.
Discover some REAL facts on Nepal and the life of Nepalese. Click from the menu options on the left.
What to Expect ?
Like all most poor to developing countries, expect the same in population, pollution, human rights and other basic needs of the people. Most travelers find Nepalese to be bit different, rather warm and friendly and hospitable by birth. Those who have traveled beyond the city limits, will tell you, that often Nepal surprises people more than what it is typically labeled - the poor nation.

Read more »

NEPALI WOMEN AND RIGHTS

Nepali Women's Don't have Equal Rights
Nepali Women's Life
Nepalese women are said to be doing all the house works, feeding kids, cleaning the house, taking care of the live stocks and domestic animals, washing dishes, and doing laundry. Men don't do dishes and don't do laundry. She also takes care of husband's mother, brothers and sisters. In many cases her works are never rewarded, everyone complains, the kids, husband, and the husband's mothers and sisters. While life's all decisions are made by Nepali man, she goes about her daily monotonous life, in her home and backyard, she works harder then men and she dies earlier. Did you know that Nepal is the only country in the world where Women's life expectancy is shorter than men?
Work and Education
Girls in Nepal work twice as much then Boys. Women's literacy is about 27% while men's literacy is 63%. The median age at marriage is 16.1 years for the women and rural women getting married one year earlier than the urban ones. The median age at first birth is about 20 years and one in five adolescent women age 15-19 are already mothers or pregnant with their first child.

Nepali Women's Rights
Nepali Girl Trafficking
"The process of illegally recruiting, coercing, or moving a migrant or prohibited substances across national or state borders. Traffickers are the people who transport people and/or drugs and who profit economically or otherwise from their relocation. " by fairus.org Every Year hundreds of Nepali girls as young as 11 years are trafficked to India and other countries. Every year upto 7,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked into the red light districts in Indian cities. (Soma Wadhwa, "For sale childhood," Outlook, 1998). From villages innocent girls are lured into believing that they would be offered a job in cities like Kathmandu, then they eventually end up locked in brothels where they get locked up and she is used until she gets sick or has diseases like HIV, then she is dumped out of the brothels with no where to go. Most commit suicide, while some return back to Nepal to get help from some social organizations, while some go hidden in prostitution.
Girl's early marriage
Many of Nepalese girls are the victim of early marriage as early as 8 years old mostly in villages and in rural areas where parents give less education to daughters than sons and that they believe that girls are supposed to be doing household works. Early marriage is done so parents don't have to take care of their daughter and also do not have to spend money.
Dowry
Simply put, Dowry means wife's family gives money or assets to husbands' family during or before marriage. In Nepali dowry means daijo. Husband may get a car or a bike or a house or a land or money or any other assets as a daijo from wife's family. Wife may get a TV, washing machine, cooking utensils, money or just about any assets. Daijo is the assets brought by wife to the husband's family. It may be given to her or to him. In rural areas dowry thrives while in cities its presence can still be felt in a lesser magnitude. Lots of poor families without their own financial assets get pulled in the holes of loans just to give dowry. Many commit suicide from financial burdens. Dowry in poor countries like Nepal means of acquiring high status. Often families paying hefty dowry gets a boost in his or her status. Education can wash away dusts of a society. Today, thousands of marriages takes place without dowry. One of the most popular marriage in Nepal is called temple marriage or a 'love marriage', where a couple appear before a holy temple and in front of a priest they get married and start a new life with nothing.
Women's Facts
* When It comes to getting into school and colleges, Nepalese women don't get same opportunity as that of males. Women's Literacy rate is 34%, which is about half of that of male.
* Since 1990, many Nepali women have been able to uplift their social life through efforts by the Government as well as many not for profit organizations working in the country. Since then, Nepal is able to setup and administer a separate Ministry that looks after Women's Development, Rights and Education - The Ministry is Called Ministry of Women Children and Social Welfare
* Nepal has certain school grades free with an aim to bring more children to school. However, extreme rural location of school and lack of basic infrastructure such as roads and bridges still remain problem for many children.
* In 1990, Nepalese women increased their role in village councils. Government thus allocated 20% seats for female at village ward level and continues to do so in other Government offices, party levels and so on.

Useful Resource(s)
* They Fought But For What - Nepal gave up believing in Kings, but then what has happened for the rest ? It's worth asking. A photo and links could say it all
* Ministry of Women - The responsible body for Women's Rights and Education in Nepal

Read more »

LITERACY FACTS IN NEPAL

Nepal's literacy is 45.2%. Nepal is the world's 15th illiterate country. More than half the total population of Nepal can not read and write. Female literacy is less than the half of the literacy of males (Female - 28%, Male - 65%)
Nepal Literacy Facts
* There are 26277 government schools in Nepal with 6018806 students
* On average a school has about 230 students
* On average a school has about 5 teachers, a teacher has 50 students
* About 200,000 students are studying in 473 colleges in Nepal

Read more »

EMPLOYMENT IN NEPAL

Half the Nepalese don't have a job!
Nearly half the population of Nepal lives without a job. So what happens when people don't have jobs? Because there are no opportunities, many go for overseas employments particular in countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Malaysia, Thailand Singapore, Hong Kong, UK, USA, Australia, NewZealand and other countries. Those without jobs are also the easy pray of Maoist Gorilla's recruitments, many unemployed get into crimes, and some of the young women and girls may have to resort to prostitution.
In cities unemployed are everywhere scattered, pondering all day of life's twist. If you don't have a job, you don't have a job. There is no public services for unemployed people. There is no such thing as "Unemployment benefits" If you don't have a job or if you lose a job, you are doomed, unlike in rich countries where you are secured by the Government until you find a job. Getting a job through merit is after getting a job through bribery.
Finding Government jobs are also hard. One has to through ridiculously prepared hard tests so called "Lok Sewa" where irrelevant test papers are prepared by government officials, often such tests do not get the qualified candidates!
Productivity of the most public servants is so low that once they are fired they have difficulties getting jobs in private companies. Most of the public services are over staffed and have overlapping procedures which are all very complicated. For example, to achieve a simple task, you might have to carry your documents from office to office, officer to officer, just to get a few signatures of persons who are obviously feed by Nepalese tax money!
Jobs from private companies are also hard to obtain as family owned private companies selection methods are biased, often they tend to select relatives or people from their friendship circle. There is no minimum wage standard here, anybody can be paid at any rate for any job. There is no such thing as vacation, medical insurance paid leaves except for a few. Some private company's human resource polices are so tight that humans are treated like possessions, so many people work under a bond such as for 3 years, 5 years, and if one wishes to quit earlier, he/she is punished by means of deductions in salary or provident funds.
Jobs are said to be for specific class of people. For example, a person with a Bachelor's Degree won't do any other job such as a waiter, but will keep searching for jobs empty stomach- some are just too pompous, only a few will do just about thing to make money!
Nepal Employment Facts
* Nepal's unemployment figure is about 50%
* About 150,000 Nepalese work in Qatar - source (Gorkhapatra, Nepal June 2005)
* Nearly half of Nepal's Journalists are without a job after the King's Take over
* Due to ongoing war in the country and due to lack of employment opportunities, Nepal is slowly losing its people (source - BBC News

Read more »

CHILD LABOUR AND NEPAL

Nepalese law says: A child is a person who has not completed 16 years of age. Law says, to work in Nepal as a child, you must be at least 14 years old, and that you can work for no more than six hours, and you must not work during 6 p.m. to 6.a.m. hours, you must get a break of 30 minutes after 3 hours of work, and nobody should pressure you to work. The above law is only written in pages but never enforced. Millions of Nepali kids are employed by their moms and dads for household works to help them all day long instead of attending a school and getting education. Nepal does not punish parents if they fail to send their kids to school starting from a certain age. For example, in the U.S. parents can go to jail if they don't send their kids to school from as early as five years of age. Many kids work in factories such as carpet factories, coal mines, in stone quarries, in house and road constructions, as an assistant to bus driver and/or bus conductor, as a dishwasher in restaurants, and also as a servant in thousands of mid class to rich class Nepalese homes. Of all the kids working in Nepal most of them are as young as 11 years old, by the law, it means they shouldn't be working at all. First of all, Nepali Kids don't have the rights to live and grow in a peaceful environment as the county's a decade old war continues. Official records indicate that about 500 innocent kids have died in the war conflict and millions are affected by the war. Many have lost their parents or someone in the family, or have parents unable to make ends meet. Extreme hardship life pushes the Nepali kids into labor. Child Labour Facts : * Nepal's Economic activity by boys and girls aged 10 to 14 is 42.07%. Nepal is the world's 6th child labour country. * About 3 million Nepali children are working under the extreme hardship * Of all the child labors, nearly 60% are girls * Half of the country's children have no access to primary school * About 5000 kids work and sleep on the streets * Nearly half the kids in Nepal work * Girls work longer hours than boys * More than 10,000 girls are trafficked every year * 20% of the sex workers in Nepal are under age of 16 * 1.7 million children in Nepal are engaged in economic activity * More kids work in the mountains than in any other * More than 30,000 child laborers work in 1,600 stone quarries in Nepalis * More than one mil

Read more »