Friday, April 11, 2014

Research on Nepal, India and Human Trafficking

Through my research on Nepal I found that Nepal is roughly equal to the size of Iowa. Nepal is home to many ethnic groups and most descend from various Tibeto-Burmese groups that have traveled into Nepal. The official Language is Nepali and around 48% of the population of Nepal speaks it to some degree. Nepali is an Indo-Aryan dialect that is related to Hindi. English is becoming more popular in Nepal; many private schools have adopted the language to teach in school making it so that to speak English is associated with having a better education and having a higher social status. Nepalese are Religious, family oriented and modest people. Physical purity, spiritual refinement and humility rank as their most cherished principles. Many believe in Karma. Family takes priority over the individual and it is considered strange to want to be alone. Broken families are frowned upon in the Nepalese culture and Boys are preferred over daughters. The father is the head of the household and children are to respect and obey their fathers. While it is frowned upon to make any public display of affection, many members of the same sex will publicly express their friendships by linking arms or walking hand in hand. An interesting fact that I found was that one’s feet never are to be pointed at another person. If one’s foot touches someone the person is to apologize immediately.

India is around 1/3 the size of the U.S. and has the worlds largest population. India is also known to be one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Indian culture is split along four main groups: rural-urban, male-female, wealthy-poor, and the various castes. Differences among groups of people are usually shown in relation of social freedoms as well as in access to educational and economic opportunities. Around 41% of the population speaks Hindi, the country's most widely spoken language. There are twenty-two languages that have official statuses in Indian culture. (Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.) The languages spoken vary by region however, Indian law claims English as a “subsidiary official language.” It is used in government, business, education, and national communication.
People who do not share a common first language generally communicate in either Hindi or English. It seemed to me that people of India were much like the people of Nepal where their values were quite similar. The average Indian has deep respect the nation's founder, Mahatma Gandhi, as well as his ideas and practices which included humility, nonviolence, self-denial, and religious harmony. Sadly Indians are aware that Gandhi’s ideas are not being met. There are tensions between Hindus and Muslims, social classes, rural and urban areas, and traditional and modern values which make it difficult for India's people to seek common ground amid their diversity. To try to fix this citizens of India are pursuing to find a balance amongst it’s countries continual social change.

Human trafficking is most commonly done for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor, or commercial sexual exploitation as well as for the use of extracting organs for trade. The term trafficking is sometimes confused because human trafficking does not necessarily have to do with travel. The trafficking can occur within a victim’s country or within a trans-nationality. Victims of human trafficking are usually held against their will through acts of force and required to provide services at their trackers request. Arrangements of human trafficking may be contracted but with little or no payment or on terms that are very exploitive, they may be structured as debt bondages for the victim but they are structured so that the victim will never be able to pay off their debt.
Traffickers involved with children often take advantage of the parents’ extreme poverty. Parents sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income. Sometimes parents are deceived thinking that the scenarios will provide training and a better life for their children. Parents also may sell their children into labor, sex trafficking, or illegal adoptions. Sex trafficking victims are generally found in terrible circumstances and are easily targeted by traffickers.


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