Over the past few years, we have seen great attention being devoted in Nepal to issues of child labor, including in the context of Alliance 8.7. The government has taken remarkable steps towards recognizing and addressing child labor. However, child domestic work, which is still a common phenomenon in the country’s urban centers, has remained somewhat on the margins of those efforts. One evident reason is the difficulty of identifying child domestic workers and the difficulty of knowing about their lives in the employers’ house. On this background, FTS and CWISH developed a research project that aimed to shed some light on the situation of those working children.
The project had three main objectives: document the pathways whereby children enter the domestic sector in Nepal’s cities, including the role played by traffickers, intermediaries, and employers, as well as the role of children themselves discuss those social, economic, and cultural factors that pull and push Nepalese children into the domestic sector and how they intersect with and reinforce each other; unveil the experiences of child domestic workers in Nepal’s urban areas to offer an in depth assessment of their working and living conditions. At the same time, explore the intersections of child domestic labor with other forms of child labor, which no study has addressed thus far.
To reach its research objective, the research relied on different data collection tools: interviews with 20 children who are currently employed, or were recently employed, as domestic workers in Kathmandu; participatory workshops with 10 children presently employed as domestic workers; focus group discussions with 5 employers of child domestic workers; in-depth interviews with 10 topical experts (NGO workers, schoolteachers and principals, government officials).
The research found that children who currently work in Kathmandu as domestic workers come from villages in rural areas of the country. Parents play a key role – either by actively seeking employment for their children or by accepting an offer of employment. Besides, other relatives such as aunts, uncles, older siblings, and grandparents can also play a role. Importantly, the research also illuminated the role played in the recruitment process by employers, intermediaries, and the children themselves. Many children do play an active part in the process by pursuing or accepting employment opportunities. Common push and pull factors include the lack of sufficient education in the village, poverty, alcoholism within the family, domestic violence, loss of (or abandonment by) one or both parents, multiple marriages of the parents, and gendered socio-cultural norms.
After moving to the employer’s house, children can go to school. However, they are often late for school due to domestic chores, they occasionally skip class to work, and they do not have enough time to study and do their homework. Lamentably, teachers do not always make an effort to understand the children and do not always offer them a space to talk about their situations, thus contributing to their loneliness. Similarly, most children prefer not to share about their lives with peers. Indeed, most child domestic workers do not have close friendships, since employers prohibit them from hanging out with friends. Even more dramatic is that many child domestic workers have only sporadic contact with their families of origin. Most children can only visit their parents once a year during the holiday season. Some do not even have that freedom.
Domestic work typically includes babysitting the employers’ children; going to the market and buying groceries; preparing and serving food; cleaning the dishes; washing clothes; and cleaning the house. Some children also engage in tasks that are hazardous and not appropriate to their age, such as carrying heavy weights. Significantly, there are also children who work in the house of the employer’s relatives or the business of their employer, for instance, carrying the merchandise, attending to customers, and looking after the shop. Other children work in party palaces (venues for events typically associated with the adult entertainment sector) during the night to make some money.
Based on these findings, we advance a series of recommendations to the government of Nepal, teachers of schools attended by child domestic workers, employers, children’s rights organizations, and donors.
The results of this research have been compiled into five different formats. There are three formats in English: the executive summary, the full report, and the child-friendly version. There are also two formats in Nepali: the executive summary and the child-friendly version.
