8° Edition

Slavery and Trafficking of Women in Nepal

Following a July 2016 call for applications, the jury, presided by Monique Villa, has chosen to give a voice to Nepalese women by selecting Lizzie Sadin’s project.

Lizzie Sadin

Chabahil district, Kathmandu, Nepal, April 2017. A “friend” in her village made Rita, 17, leave for India with promises of money and jewellery. Once she arrived, she was locked up in a brothel and forced to prostitute herself for often violent clients. The police freed her and the Shakti Samuha organisation repatriated her to Nepal.
© Lizzie Sadin for Fondation Carmignac

After a devastating earthquake that killed 9,000 people and displaced 650,000 others in 2015, the daily life of many Nepalese was shattered. Unemployment and the extremely precarious living conditions have given rise to more and more traffickers every day.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are more than 2.5 million victims of modern day slavery, and women make up the majority of this number. According to Amnesty International, women represent 80% of the victims of human trafficking, of whom nearly 50% are minors. The types of exploitation are numerous: sexual, forced labour, domestic slavery…

For three months, far from postcard visions of Hindu temples and treks in the Himalayan mountains, she documented some of the 20,000 Nepalese women exploited in the “leisure” industry. Kathmandu, capital of a country weakened by earthquakes of April 2015, is where trafficking women remains a common practice.

Duped by “friends” or members of their families, treated like objects in a misogynist society, the women who opened their hearts to her were totally distraught: “In France, the women I photographed… wanted to exist through my pictures. I spoke to them, I held their hands, I cried with them… Here they are afraid.”

Polka Magazine, October 20, 2017.

“For the photographer, organized traffic is not just a consequence of the economic situation and the lack of opportunities in Nepal. It also raises the question of women’s rights: the right to receive an education, to choose their future, to live their lives without fear of physical or psychological violence from their husbands or families.”
Olivier Laurent in Lizzie Sadin, The Trap, Trafficking of Women in Nepal, p. 13. Éditions Skira Paris / Fondation Carmignac, 2017