By Pragati Shahi
NEPAL – Inside a one-bedroom rented apartment in the heart of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, Prati (not her real name) is busy poring over notes from the Japanese language class she joined in the second week of January this year.
The 24-year-old dreams of going to Japan for work, which she hopes will help her stand on her own feet. Then, she plans to seek custody of her two children, who live with her estranged husband.
Just a year ago, this vision of a better future seemed impossible. Prati was forced to marry a man over 10 years older than her at the age of 16, became a mother at 17, and was subjected to physical and mental violence for years.
“She was withdrawn, quiet, and hopeless,” said Junu Shrestha, a counselor at Opportunity Village Nepal (OVN), a non-governmental organization run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Pokhara, in western Nepal.
Prati was sheltered for a year at an OVN safe house after she was rescued from the Nepal-India border by the Kaski district police in December 2023.
“It was only after a couple of weeks of counseling that she began sharing her traumatic past,” Shrestha said. Even then, she spoke very little, letting her emotions flow on paper.
It is illegal for girls under the age of 18 to marry in Nepal. However, the practice continues due to patriarchy and poverty.
After nearly a year of counseling and training as a beautician and jewelry designer, Prati returned to her parental home on Dec 28 last year. Within a few weeks, she was moved to Kathmandu to take Japanese language classes as part of the rehabilitation process.
The trauma began at her home in Syangja district, some 548 kilometers (155 miles) west of Kathmandu.
Prati had just sat for her 10th-grade final exams when her father told her she would marry a laborer working in Qatar.
“I begged my father not to marry me off as I wanted to study, but he refused to listen,” she told UCA News.
Prati’s father, himself a migrant laborer in Malaysia, instead threatened to kick the eldest of his three children out of the house if she rejected the marriage proposal.
“I felt like my parents abandoned me. I had become a burden on them, an extra mouth to feed,” she said
Devastated and feeling alone, she tried unsuccessfully to run away from home and even considered taking poison as the marriage date approached.
After her marriage, she was forced to discontinue her studies, and within a year, she became pregnant.
“Giving birth to a girl while myself being a child was the saddest experience of my life,” Prati said.
Four years later, she gave birth to a son.
When she pleaded with her husband to avoid having more children, he would taunt her, “asking if I was having an affair.”
Her life had reached its lowest point, and a desperate Prati contacted a boy from her school working in India. He offered to help her find a job there.
In October 2023, she landed in India only to realize that she’d become a trafficking victim.
“I was penniless, and there was no support from the husband to care for the children,” she said.
Prati was rescued within a couple of months, but her tragedy is proof of the devastating consequences of child marriage, a practice still prevalent in Nepal.
According to a 2020 UN report, one in three girls in Nepal is married off before the age of 18. The country ranks 16th globally and third in South Asia for child marriage prevalence.
Law enforcement remains weak despite laws setting the minimum marriage age at 20 (18 with parental consent).
According to UNICEF, Nepal has 5.3 million child brides, of whom 1.2 million are married before the age of 15.
Rajesh Sharma, a child rights activist, said the widespread patriarchal notion that girls are inferior to boys, as well as the poor economic situation lots of families are in, pushes many young girls into early marriages.
However, unlike in the past, where most cases were “either arranged or forced by parents,” there is a worrying trend of consensual or self-initiated relationships that often lead to marriages between underage children in rural areas,” he said.
A lack of quality education, family abuse, and not much awareness about reproductive health are also to blame, Sharma added.
Kriti (not her real name) was barely 18 when she was brought to OVN in July last year after she eloped with a 21-year-old man from Hemja in Kaski district.
They had connected through social media. Her mother filed a child marriage complaint and the police took her to a safe shelter.
“My father drank and abused my mother. He used to verbally abuse me, so I wanted to get away from home,” Kriti told UCA News.
She realizes now that it was a misstep and is preparing to sit her 12th-grade exams in April while working for a catering business.
“When parents don’t offer love and care, the children feel neglected and they try to seek love outside which often results in early marriages,” said Sister Sahawa Jency, project coordinator at the OVN safe shelter in Pokhara.
The facility has taken in 552 girls and reintegrated 507 into their families and society so far, safeguarding them from risks of trafficking, exploitation, and abuse.
In 2014, Nepal pledged to end child marriage by 2020 as one of its sustainable development goals. Two years later, it reset the target year to 2030.
To achieve the goal, the government, in collaboration with civil society, launched the National Campaign for a Child Marriage-Free Nepal on Dec 31, 2024.
“It is high time we put in concerted efforts,” said Deepak Dhakal, under-secretary at the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens.
The focus is on increasing public awareness, ensuring prevention, protection, prosecution, and rehabilitation, he said.
But for survivors like Prati and Kriti, the road ahead is long and winding. Their resilience will be tested in the years to come.
Prati, armed with new skills and a renewed sense of purpose, is determined to rewrite her story.
Kirti also wants to forget the past and make a fresh start. – UCA News
