Childrens

Nepal has made significant progress in reducing MPI. In terms of poverty trends, the incidence of multidimensional poverty nationally fell from 30.1 percent in 2014 to 17.4 percent in 2019 according to UNICEF’s Nepal’s multidimensional poverty index 2021. It is still lower MPI values than the MPI’ value for all South Asian countries except the Maldives. Nepal’s 2019 MPI value of 0.074 is below Bangladesh’s 2019 MPI of 0.104.

15% of the population of Nepal lives below the poverty line and cannot fulfill their families’ needs. Life for these people deteriorates daily in the face of unrest in the streets, inflation, etc.

Projected programs either government initiatives or organized sector like NGO’s activities seemed not so effectively reached most needy and vulnerable section of people. Poverty is one of major causes that children are not adequately given care and treatment (education, health facilities, fun faire, skills, counselling, creative involvement activities) for all aspect of their creative development.

The Nepalese health care systemhas a serious lack of appropriate materials and competent workers. Health indicators reflect this: more than in 2021, child mortality rate for Nepal was 27.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. Between 1972 and 2021, child mortality rate of Nepal was declining at a moderating rate to shrink from 254.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1972 to 27.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2021.Children’s health is particularly vulnerable, and they tend to suffer from malnutritionand diabetes. The Ministry of Health, supported by many other organizations, has set up awareness programs, principally directed at mothers, to teach them to recognize the symptoms of childhood illnesses. Though the real situation might be very far from these formal data’s. Children are living with unsound health and lack of neonatal health care and up to 5 years of age children used to be raising without or less care because of parents attends their manual job in the field or else where. Many thousands children have becomes disable within this period of age in Nepali communities.

Education in Nepal is free and mandatory between the ages of 6 and 11. This is not enforced, however, and many children leave school before their 11^th birthday. Because of this, only 84% of Nepalese children attend school. Many of community’s children are not going to school because of parental care are not adequately reached behind it, for this  there used to be many factors of people’s livelihood.

Large gaps exist between the attendance of girls and boys, due to traditions which dictate the early marriage of young girls and the favoring of boys’ education. Many school’s toilets were also become cause of hindrances for the girl’s continuation in school. Monthly periods become an anxiety and shameful to disclosed it, schools have no environment to support and easy to girls needs.

The educational system is also in a poor state. Factors such as mediocre teachers and a lack of buildings, materials, and personnel, all hinder the chances of attending school.

The Constitution of Nepal guarantees free and compulsory education up to the upper basic level and free education through secondary school. There is a need to understand why attendance rates decrease after lower basic school despite government mandates and free education.

According to UNICEF’ S MICS studies;

• Average net attendance rate for early childhood education for children 36 – 59 months is 62%. Disparities are reported between boys (64%) and girls (60%); rural (55%) and urban (66%); and in the poorest (52%) and richest (87%) wealth quintiles.
• In the school year 2076 (2018/2019), net attendance rate for girls in lower basic (76%), upper basic (55%) and in secondary education (49%) is higher in comparison to boys at all levels.
• Children in rural and the poorest households are less likely to attend upper basic or secondary school. Only 33% of children fin the poorest households attend secondary school in comparison to 68% of children from the richest households.
• In Nepal, 82% of children complete lower basic schooling and 75% complete upper basic school. However, only 27% of children in Nepal complete secondary school while 15% of secondary school age children are out-of-school. These data indicate a great need to prevent children from dropping out of school as they transition into secondary school.
• School completion rate for girls is slightly higher than boys at all levels. However, disparities related to household wealth are significant. While nearly all children from the richest household complete lower basic school (96%), only 76% of children from the poorest household’s complete lower basic school. Similarly, 91% of children from rich household finish upper basic school compared to just 62% of children from the poorest households. At the secondary level, only 10% of children from the poorest household’s complete secondary school, compared to 59% of children from the richest households.
• Children are at risk for dropping out of school if they are over-age by more than two years for their grade. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of girls and 43% of boys are at risk of dropping out of lower basic school, while 39% of girls and 47% of boys are at risk for dropping out of upper basic school.

Child labor poses a serious challenge in Nepalese society, this has prevailed an un balanced development of the people of different section. Rural areas children are involving in work than in the Urban settings.

Their duties vary by the job: they could be junk dealers, sweatshop workers, housekeepers, home workers, petty shop servants, local transport cleaners, workers in pebbles crushing or weavers. They become vulnerable to many illnesses through their jobs.

Nepal has nearly 1.1 million children in child labor, accounting for 15 percent of the population of children aged 5-17 years, according to the preliminary findings of a recent ILO Nepal Child Labor Report (2021). Out of them, 222,493 are in hazardous work, exposing them to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions. The second National Master Plan on child labor has unveiled 17 different sectors with high potential of child labor. Out of these 17 sectors, occupations related to agriculture, domestic work, brick-production, entertainment, transportation, and construction are considered to be the ones with the highest prevalence of working children. A recent survey conducted by ILO in collaboration with Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) unveiled that nearly 17,000 child laborers are involved in brickmaking in the country, mostly seasonal migrant workers from different rural parts of Nepal and India.

Due to a pervasive lack of female empowerment and an acute absence of overall awareness, Nepal is facing an enormous dilemma regarding the phenomenon of `girl trafficking’, representing a major crisis in the country, especially as the threat of AIDS is spreading in the Himalayan kingdom.  Defined as the enticement or abduction of women and girls into prostitution, it generally entails their being taken out of their familiar surroundings, escorted across the border and sold to brothels, with the majority ending up in Mumbai’s red light district.

Though actual statistics are hard to determine, the number of girls taken to foreign brothels may range between 40,000 and 172,000, with about 20 % under the age of eighteen or twenty.  About five to seven thousand are said to be trafficked to India every year.  In Mumbai, Nepalese sex workers are believed to make up half the city’s entire brothel population, estimated to total 100,000.  70% are thought to belong to indigenous ethnic groups like Tamang in the majority, but also Gurung, Magar and Sherpa.  The reasons concern the clients’ preference for Mongolian features and the impoverished village backgrounds of members of these groups whose menfolk (particularly Tamangs) make up the majority of Nepal’s backbreaking mountain porteringgroups.The largest number come from the districts of Makwanpur, Kavre, Sindhupalchowk and Nuwakot.

Child traffickingis altogether too present in Nepal, mostly because there is not yet a law against pedophilia. Many girls are torn from their families by traffickers because of this. Some will even decide to seek out traffickers themselves, looking for a better life.Once they arrive in cities, the girls are sent to brothels. Some may be as young as seven. Many girls work in urban entertainment sector also trappedsex trafficking ultimately. This sexual treatmentof young girls has hugely negative consequences on their future. Trauma, illness, and psychological disorders become their fate, due to the abuse they have suffered.

Traditionally, in many communities of Nepal, it is common for children to be promised to one another without any say in their own union. Though there has been changed during the course of time decades. There are also some rites of marriage that can traumatize young girls, which many communities still perform. Under age marriage has impacted overall personality of girls’ education, health, carrier development raising children and ultimately as a whole family.

The legal age of marriage is 20 for girls and 21 for boys. However, this law is not always respected, it is estimated 51% of girls are married before that age. The social movement called “BihebariBisBarsapari” has been aware people in many ways of walk. Though it is truth that there used to be certain circumstances in the lives of people that puts people for early marriage.

In rural areas, 43% of girls marry before 18 and 1.6 million children are out of school across the country. In addition, school enrolment for girl’s decreases at secondary school and children with disabilities lack affordable health services.

The ministry of women, Children and Senior Citizens; National Child rights Council has published a report on The status of Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Impact Upon girls(CEFM) August 2021 as follows below…

The number of incidences observed in 268 local levels in FY 2020/21 is lesser by 1486 than of FY 2019/20 that is 6142.The FY 2020/21 is marked with the decreasing of 24% cases of CEFM in comparison to FY 2019/20. It is found that all the provinces are marked with decreasing trend except Gandaki province.

The research finds that the most of cases of CEFM goes under reported. Survey with local levels shows that out of 4656 cases of CEFM incidence observed in FY 2020/21, only 382 (8%) cases are reported to concern agencies for legal actions. The incidences of CEFM are under reported because of social ignorance, avoidance of social conflict, less practice of punitive action, limited knowledge among law enforcement agencies about their roles and responsibilities, family members themselves are engaged in committing the offense and thus are liable to punishment and girls are generally unwilling to seek legal remedies.

Children issues were not of the greater importance to Nepalese Government till 1980s. Children as a development concern was only included for the first time in the seventh Plan (1985-90). Nepalese children are facing various difficulties due to social beliefs, persistence of poverty,gender discrimination, and illiteracy relating to their development.

Gender discrimination among children can be seen glaringly in Nepalese society from the time

immemorial. This is true for most ethnic groups in Nepal are ethnic communities with their own language this has been very difficult for their children to understand medium of school language.

In distant rural regions, primary schooling is usually given in Nepali, which many children cannot understand. This prevents them from attending school at either the primary or the secondary level.

Gender discrimination is still persisting, causes girls doubly disadvantaged as family faces difficulties arising from economic hardships and related problems such as poverty, disability, homelessness etc. Their specific needs, wants and aspirations are normally always ignored even face the risk of being exploited.

Nepali society too has experiencing uprising complexities in relationship in terms couple life and of family organization. Day by day children are coming up without visible identity. There has been different reason behind this. Nepal, whether a country or a conglomeration of multiple communities, does not yet have an effective government or judicial system. More than 30% of children, for example, are not officially registered with Nepalese authorities. This loophole causes serious problems for their lives. These children are invisibleto society’s eyes, and they cannot take advantage of their rights, including education and health care.