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An Exploration of Poverty as a Consumption Object: Voluntourist’s Stories from an Orphanage in Nepal
This paper examines the understanding of poverty emerging in voluntourists’ accounts of their first-hand experiences of poverty alleviation. Based on the ethnography of an orphanage in Nepal, the authors show that despite voluntourists’ good intentions and even (self-)criticism of the volunteer tourism approach to poverty relief, their accounts tend to consolidate rather regressive ideas about poverty. They draw on post-colonial and post-development theory to illuminate specific ways in which the old Orientalist tropes and discourses of othering are perpetuated in this novel neoliberal form…
Orphanage trafficking is a form of child trafficking, in which children are removed from their families, often under false pretences, and transferred or recruited into child care institutions where they often face various forms of exploitation for profit. When a child is trafficked in this way, their identity is frequently falsified so in documents they appear to be an orphan – a process known as ‘paper orphaning’. The exploitation of children in these circumstances ranges from sexual abuse to forced labour, begging, or being sold for illegal adoption or servitude. Some are trafficked for…
Orphanage trafficking involves the recruitment and/or transfer of children to residential care institutions for a purpose of exploitation and profit. It typically takes place in lower- and middle-income countries where child protection services systems are highly privatised, under-regulated, and primarily funded by overseas sources. In such circumstances, residential care is used prolifically and inappropriately as a response to child vulnerability, including a lack of access to education.
This study assesses and maps the legal, policy and procedural frameworks in both domestic and…
Abstract
This article compares and contrasts two humanitarian emergencies and their impact on Nepal: these are the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It explains how each emergency has impacted children without parental care or at risk of family separation, with specific reference to orphanage trafficking, voluntourism, child institutionalisation and family preservation. In relation to each emergency, the article considers the role of disaster preparedness; the roles of the Nepal government, the international community and civil society; and the significance of one…
Abstract
Literature on orphanage tourism considers the motives of Western volunteers and the problematic nature of their compulsion to ‘help’ vulnerable children in the Global South. Orphanage tourism is also increasingly adopted into ‘rescue ideologies’ (Howard, 2016) and anti-trafficking/‘modern slavery’ campaigns. The perspectives of children involved, however, are missing from these discourses. This article draws on original empirical data to explore the narratives of young Nepali adults who lived in Kathmandu orphanages as children. Through these narratives, the article explores the…
This presentation was delivered by Marinus van IJzendoorn at a 18 November 2020 meeting of the Evidence for Impact Working Group, a working group of the recently launched Transforming Children's Care Global Collaborative Platform. The aims of the presentation were to present evidence of the harmful impacts of institutionalization on children, demonstrate some of the benefits of deinstitutionalization for getting children back on track, and raise questions about gap-year volunteers working in orphanages. Click the 'Settings' icon to view this video with French or Spanish subtitles. Access the…
This briefing paper has been compiled using information included in the Out of the Shadows Index and the ECPAT Country Overview for Nepal. The brief describes Nepal's score on the Out of the Shadows Index, which measured the country’s response to child sexual exploitation and abuse, including its assessment of Nepal's overall environment, legal framework, government commitment and capacity, and the engagement of industry, civil society, and media.
The brief also highlights the response of the Nepalese travel and tourism sector to sexual exploitation and abuse…
The Trust Conference 2018, hosted by Thomson Reuters Foundation, featured a conference theme on orphanage and trafficking. In this video, Kate van Doore, International Child Rights Lawyer of Griffith University Law School, discusses her experience with opening up an orphanage in Nepal, and another in Uganda, and then discovering that the children in these homes had living parents and families and that the orphanages had been made into money-making enterprises.
She describes…
Abstract
This dissertation is composed of four papers. It builds on the postcolonial and post-development theories to provide a critical and a multifaceted approach to understand volunteer tourism as a poverty business. Using an extended case methodology, I held an ethnographic study in an orphanage in Nepal. The first paper I explain how volunteer tourism is a cooptation of the development agenda serving capitalist goals. The second paper builds on the approaches of the society of individuals to analyze the volunteer's perspective. In the third paper, I mobilize the concept of…
This policy brief from the Elevate Children Funders Group describes how private donors add to "the pull factors drawing more vulnerable children into institutional care and away from family or community care" in Nepal.