Kathmandu, 29th January, 2015 :Â A meeting of the Social Justice and Human Rights Committee of the Legislature-Parliament today issued directive to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to provide information about the trafficking of persons to the United States of America via Latin America and about the Nepali nationals who are in jail in different countries in that connection.
Following discussions on the topic in the presence of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, among other officials of the Ministry, the committee president Sushil Kumar Shrestha urged the government to take the initiative for checking the human trafficking taking place in this manner and to provide information about the same, for it was risky and a grave type of trafficking to illegally travel to the US covering such a long distance.
Stating that Nepali nationals get arrested in course of travelling to the US, legally and illegally, via Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other Latin American countries, Minister Pandey said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs got the information only when these citizens were in difficulty.
He said work is in progress regarding developing an integrated information sharing system based on common software among the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labour and Employment to know how many people have been going for employment to which country, pointing out that even international human trafficking network was involved in this.
“The problem cannot be addressed without the coordination among the three ministries,” the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, adding they would also work towards resolving the problem based on integrated efforts with the neighbouring countries as well.
He suggested making the National Planning Commission (NPC) as a constitutional and research-oriented body rather than an advisory agency to the Prime Minister, and for stopping the exodus of youths to foreign countries and gearing up for the all-round development of the country.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs also informed that preparations were being made to send a high-level representative from Nepal to the upcoming meeting of the UN anti-human trafficking mechanism based in Vienna, Austria and putting the country’s views on this matter.
As per the statistics released by the Bolivian Immigration Department two years back, 500 Nepalis had entered America in a period of two months only. According to the US Department of Homeland, 1541 Nepali nationals are found to have illegally entered the US between 2004 and 2013. Similarly, it is said there are 6,095 Nepali refugees in the US.
The committee members, in the meeting, stressed the need of effective law enforcement for checking the human trafficking.
Committee members Nepali Ram Chandra Poudel, Ashtalaxmi Shakya, Moftab Ahamad, Gita Rana Chhetri, Kamala Kumari Ghimire, Basundhara Rokaya, Nara Bahadur Thapa and Shiva Bahadur Khadka stressed on creating job opportunities for the youths within the country so as to stop the outflow of Nepali youths on foreign employment, making the Nepali missions in the foreign countries active in checking illegal human migration and strict policy and legal measures to curb human trafficking.
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