Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
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…
This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Committees' recommendations on the issues relevant to children's care are highlighted, as well as other care-related concluding observations, ratification dates, and links to the Universal Periodic Review and Hague Intercountry Adoption Country Profile.
Abstract:
“This article argues that orphanage voluntourism fuels the displacement and trafficking of children from their families in Nepal and their unnecessary institutionalisation. It shows that the displacement of children from their families into institutions initially arose in response to forced conscriptions of children into the Maoist rebel army and a desire of the families for their children to have quality education. After the conflict ended, this phenomenon became more about a desire by the poor rural families to have their children educated and thus escape the poverty trap.…
The Technical Team under the Project “EDU-CARE: Social Operators Active in the Protection of the Children and in the Promotion of the Children’s Rights in Nepal” reports on the child care practices, policies, programs, and organizations currently in effect in Nepal, with a specific emphasis on children in residential care settings. Due to Nepal’s extreme poverty and social and political turmoil, there are many vulnerable children in the country. The poor child labor laws, frequent abandonment, child neglect, abuse, and malnutrition are a cause for concern and…
Child rights must be at the centre of all adoptions in Nepal, says this major study on adoption released in Kathmandu by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Terre des hommes (Tdh). The main conclusion of the 60-page report, ‘Adopting the rights of the child: a study on intercountry adoption and its influence on child protection in Nepal’, is that intercountry adoption should not be allowed to resume without appropriate safeguards being put in place at all levels. Only four out of every 100 children adopted in Nepal are adopted by a Nepali family and many children put…
This BBC 100 Women video features Indira Ranamagar, who ensures Nepali children whose mothers are incarcerated receive safe homes, care and education.
This article describes how fraudsters in Nepal persuade vulnerable families to hand over their children to the "orphanage industry." This practice has been occurring for over two decades in Nepal's remote mountain villages. As the author notes, well-dressed men promise education and a better life for children, but "behind the traffickers’ crocodile smiles lies a life of sexual slavery, forced labour, or destitution as a commodity in the huge orphanage industry."
Child trafficking became a significant problem in Nepal with the armed conflict that began in 1996. Families wishing to…