Tre Trap : Slavery and Trafficking of Women in Nepal

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…

"The safety of Nepali journalists has sharply deteriorated. The year 2025 was marked by the death of cameraman Suresh Rajak, who was killed in March during a protest by an act of arson, and by the September attacks during which more than a dozen newsrooms — including that of the Kantipur Media group — were set on fire."

Reporters Without Borders

Today, the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report keeps Nepal at ‘Tier 2’ on its watch list, emphasizing that labor-related trafficking has become the main issue, with hundreds of thousands of workers trapped in debt bondage

Born in France in 1957, and a former member of the Rapho agency, Lizzie Sadin has devoted herself since the start of her career to documenting violence against women at a global level, especially in Madagascar and in Israel. She has explored marital abuse, kidnapping of girls, child brides, the sexual exploitation of minors and forced prostitution.

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.”

“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

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  Saatchi Gallery, London

  15 May — 15 Jun 2018

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  AntwerpPhoto, Antwerp

  05 Sep — 30 Sep 2018

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  Hôtel de l'Industrie, Paris

  20 Oct — 12 Nov 2017

The Trap, Trafficking of Women in Nepal

Editions Skira Paris

Bilingual French - English 112 pages ISBN: 978-2370740618

First edition, November 2017 Order the book

The jury was chaired by Monique Villa, EO of Thomson Reuters Foundation and Founder of Trust Women, and was composed of: Elizabeth Avedon Independent Curator specialized in photography books

Francesca Fabiani Photography Special Projects, Department for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Ministry of Culture, Italy

Thierry Grillet Chief Curator of Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF)

Olivier Laurent Photo Editor of the Washington Post

Élisabeth Quin Journalist, writer and Arte TV Presenter (28 Minutes)

Narciso Contreras Laureate of the 7th edition