Charimaya Tamang

Charimaya Tamang, a victim of sex trafficking, became the first to file a complaint with the district police.

She was trafficked at the age of 16 into India. She spent 22 months in a brothel, until she was rescued in a raid conducted by the Indian government in 1996. She returned home to Nepal, but found that she was stigmatized for her own victimization. She was no longer welcome in her community. Despite the lack of support, she filed a case with the district police naming the people who had trafficked her. She was the first person to ever do this, to file a case directly with the district police about trafficking. But that decision ended up being an important one for her, and for Nepal. In 1997, the court in that district convicted the eight men who were responsible for her trafficking. She founded an NGO in 2000, along with 15 other survivors of sex trafficking. That NGO, Shakti Samuha, still operates in Nepal, and was given the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2013. In 2009, the Government started a National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking. Ms. Tamang is one of only two survivors that sits on that committee, but her advocacy has led to survivors being included in many other committees about human trafficking in the various districts of Nepal. In 2011, she was honored as a "TIP Report Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery" in recognition of her efforts to combat human trafficking.

In the 2014 TIP Report, Nepal was listed as a Tier 2 country. It is a source, destination, and transit country for both forced labor and sex trafficking. Nepali women are trafficked internally, and into the surrounding countries. Bonded labor is still utilized in some industries, similar to India. The government made some improvements, such as indicting corrupt officials, and providing new ways of prosecuting and investigating traffickers, but both victim identification and assistance need improvement.