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Women Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) is a member of GAATW based in Lalitpur, Nepal. Vivian Cartagena from the GAATW Secretariat conducted this interview with Sunita Mainali, Executive Directo, in July 2024, to better understand the organisation’s history, current work, and context.
Vivian: Welcome, Sunita, and thank you for this conversation. I would like to know how and why WOREC was founded.
Sunita: Thank you Vivian. First of all, WOREC was established based on the experience of one of the trafficking survivors. It was founded by women's rights activists in response to the needs of a trafficked woman who had suffered extreme abuse for several years in Mumbai, India. Dr. Renu Rajbhandari, the founding Chairperson, encountered this woman in Nuwakot district while working as a doctor in Nepal. This encounter revealed to her the harsh realities of trafficking and highlighted the failure of society and state institutions to protect vulnerable women and children and dig out the root cause.
At that time, this girl was only about 19 years old, a very young lady. When she got to share her lived experience on how she was trafficked to Dr. Renu, she started questioning herself and the people around her: “what was my fault in being trafficked?”
Back home, her mother and her family were facing harsh socio-economic conditions, so she grew up with a lack of education and proper food and discrimination. Childhood was quite a strugg. When she was a teenager, one of her relatives took her to India and sold her to a brothel. So, after experiencing all of this, she asked herself: “what was my fault in being trafficked?” This question continued to disturb her for many years. She analysed the intersectional layer of discrimination and vulnerability of Fulmaya; she was dalit, poor, she was a girl, and most importantly she along with her mother went through historical discrimination based on caste, class and gender. Afterwards, she turned her life around and fund the motivation and encouragement to work on the issue of trafficking, with the focus on women and girls.
She founded WOREC Nepal and registered it in 1991. As time went by, different strategies evolved, and we expanded our work from trafficking and migration to human rights. In sum, this is how WOREC started and what triggered WOREC to continue working on trafficking.
Vivian: Oh, that’s very moving! Could you tell us more about this broadening of scope from trafficking to human rights? What is the work you are currently doing?
Sunita: Yes, there are different stages in the organisation's history. The beginning phase was more focused on providing livelihood support and shelter for trafficked women and girls.. We also support them with their cases with the aim of access to justice. Later on, we realised that trafficking is only one of the consequences of the exercise of control on a woman’s body and their mobility. After much reflection, we came to the conclusion that the root cause was that the integrity of girls’ and women’s bodies was not ensured or respected. It means they are devalued and are not treated as equal citizens. Their work is not recognised as work, they do not have their own identity, and control over their bodies. Because of this, gender-based violence and trafficking occur. We realised that we were working on the consequence and not the root cause.
We began working on the root cause. Advocacy was very important to communicate our message. We started advocating at different government and international levels, which resulted in many policy changes and in the laws of the country. Thus, we shifted to a survivor centric approach and a human rights approach and, later on, guided by feminist approach. We began to adopt a feminist approach because when we talk about the root causes of discrimination and violence, at the core is unequal distribution of power due to gender, class, caste, geography, among other things. Some people have, structurally, more power than others and, because of that women are often treated in a discriminatory manner. So, in order to fight various forms of discrimination, we have to adopt feminist values and follow a feminist approach.
If trafficking and gender-based violence are part of the consequences, there are many other issues that are emerging from exercising control over women.
Soon after, we started working on ecological justice, sustainable livelihood, bio-intensive farming, and climate related issues and climate resilience activities. We began work on safe migration and the right to mobility as well, because the right to mobility of women workers is not ensured. We believe if the right to decent work and right to mobility is ensured, the trafficking issues can be defeated easily. We all have the right to mobility, safe migration, and dignified work. But the way women’s work is perceived, trafficking is more likely to happen because all of those rights are not ensured.
Since women are at the frontline raising their voices and working for the rights of women and girls, our work on gender-based violence, its causes and consequences, the safety and security of women human rights defenders – all these are important to us. To support WHRD, we work on creating safe sharing spaces and support mechanisms, sharing capacities,and joint advocacy for their rights.
As part of our quality care, we started operating a safehouse from the initial phase onwards and it is still operational. This is meant to support gender-based violence and trafficking survivor women in their psychological and social health, access to justice processes, and safety and security related areas.
Thus, to make our work more holistic, we cannot stick only to migration issues and pretend everything is settled. There are many factors affecting the lives of women. That is why we are trying to be holistic. We also focus on economic rights and political participation. Women must reach a place where they can decide, raise their voice for the formulation and amendment of policies. We believe that men cannot just go there and create a policy that they think is good for women – women should be included.
Finally, we realised we had to adopt all these approaches if we wanted to challenge power, and dismiss and dismantle all unequal power relations.
Vivian: Your work is very broad, indeed! In sum, you are working from an intersectional feminist approach to the issues that women are facing right now. Regarding the learnings from women you work with, how do you incorporate these perspectives in the work that WOREC Nepal does?
Sunita: We work with 5000 women human rights defenders, 3000 young girls, more than 30 women-led community organisations, and more than 20 women farmers groups. There are a lot of networks at the community level with whom we work. So, whenever we plan activities or strategies, we don’t do it on our own. We do multiple consultations with these groups, so their voices, struggles, and their experiences can be reflected in our work. It makes our work more inclusive and diverse.
Our strength is that we have good connections on the ground through these network organisations. We have regular conversations and interactions with them. For example, if we plan to launch a new campaign, we don’t do it alone. We do consultations with all of these groups, and they guide us on what strategies we should follow – they tell us if we are getting hold of the right issues. So, we follow these processes to ensure that the voices on the ground are reflected in our work and we are connected with them.
As an example, some of the women human rights defenders are in a network called Women Human Rights Defenders Network and some are working independently. All of them are facing many challenges such as security threats and other issues. One day, there was an incident where some women human rights defenders faced sexual harassment in the community they were working in. We immediately had a meeting, drafted a report and submitted it to the Special Rapporteur in the UN mechanism. We also jointly planned for consultations to discuss the safety and security issues faced by women human rights defenders. I think it's more about reflecting the voices and experiences of these networks and groups in our work, our strategies, our campaigns, so we can feel that what we do is based on the needs of the community.
Vivian: It’s very interesting how you create a community with so many women's networks and groups. I was wondering how WOREC engages with the internal and local processes that communities already have? They usually have their own ways of organising, i.e. through assemblies where they have their own discussions and develop their strategies.
Sunita: These networks and organisations are autonomous and independent. They have their own discussions when there is any issue in the community. For example, if there is any gender-based violence or trafficking case, or any other human rights violations case. What they usually do is to analyse why such violations occur and what they can do at the local level. With their work being more focused on the local level, they connect with the local government for advocacy purposes.
Also, sometimes it's a two-way process. When there are issues that happen in the community and they think that those issues should be raised at the national or international level, then they come to us for collaboration. To support them, WOREC collects data and stories from different communities on the violation of human rights, and based on that, we raise those issues at the national or international level. When we start working on a certain issue and want to launch campaigns related to that, then we hold consultations with them. It's a two-way process: sometimes they approach us, and sometimes we approach them.
As WOREC, when we want to launch a campaign about women’s rights, we don’t do it alone, we like to do it as a collective effort.
Vivian: Yeah, it’s a partnership with women’s organisations and networks, a sum of forces. Could you tell me what is the current situation in Nepal? What are the main challenges that you or the women you work with face? For example, you mentioned women's political participation. Is that a challenge right now?
Sunita: Women’s political participation is a provision in the constitution of Nepal, which is very good. It was a long, hard fight and the credit for this achievement goes to the feminist and socio-political movements. The constitution requires a minimum of 33% women’s participation in all tiers of government, including the Parliament. However, in practice, there are still a lot of challenges.
It hasn’t been very long since we shifted from a feudal governance structure to a federal one, and that is why the changes are not evident. Federalism has to be part of the mindset; people still have a traditional and fundamentalist way of thinking. So, to promote women’s leadership is not easy.
Nonetheless, currently, we have women representatives in the Parliament and in the government because of the 33% representation requirement at the local, provincial and federal level. Some of them are very strong women. In the last election, at least 315 women human rights defenders were elected to different tiers of the government. It is pretty challenging for these women to present their agendas in government meetings, and to be accepted as leaders by their male counterparts. At the level of the local government, there is a provision that if the chairperson is male, then the vice chairperson shall be female, and vice-versa. In reality, however, during the elections, when the political parties nominated their candidates, most of the chair candidates were male and most of the vice-chair candidates were female. They always want the second person to be female, and that is an issue.
I think there are 20 or 22 chairpersons who are female and the rest are male. Now we have five more female chairpersons than in the last election. This increase in number is good, but the mindset remains the same – that women should not be in a leading position. In Parliament, we are very happy that now our women parliamentarians raise the issues of women and girls in a much stronger way. We consider this an achievement. Again, these women, the political and social leaders, have been challenged within their families as well. Family is the first place of surveillance. Women leaders are always observed, where they’re going, with whom they’re talking, what time they come back home, and how they’re dealing with other people – these are some ways of controlling women's lives and mobility.
To question the character of women leaders is very easy in society, even among family members.
Vivian: Would you tell me more about women’s mobility and if your organisation is facing any challenges? At the beginning you were also talking about the right to mobility of the workers, how do you incorporate the labour migration issue in your work?
Sunita: We work with returnee migrant women workers who come back from abroad. But we also work with those women who are planning to migrate. We provide them information and support them by connecting them to government services before they travel abroad.
Last time we did a Feminist Participatory Action Research with GAATW, and now we are doing it in support of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD). Many returnee migrant women are participating in this, and there are a lot of interesting findings. For example, a few years ago the Nepalese government endorsed one very simple guideline about the socio-economic reintegration of returnee migrant people, but this document doesn’t have a gender-sensitive approach. Everyone knows that issues of migrant women are specific, but the document doesn’t reflect that, not even once. That’s what we are advocating for.
Though this guideline is about the government support for returnee migrants on reintegration, financial support, andother support services, many returnee migrant women feel that they don’t have access to these provisions. Furthermore, many returnee migrant women face a lot of backlash from their families and society once they come back to their origin country. They wonder why people have this negative narrative that when women go abroad for work – which usually is for domestic work – they are being violated there. People forget the fact that women workers were experiencing abuse and violations at home, and this is not new to them. At least, when they are working abroad, they are able to explore their potential and contribute economically to the family and society, and this makes them feel good.
When they return, they usually have to face domestic violence again. The only difference now is that there are no financial earnings anymore. The abuse and mistreatment by family members continue as usual. However, the narrative persists that women are vulnerable when they are outside the country. These women workers want to change that narrative because abuse and violence before they went to work abroad existed. To help women fight this false narrative, we produce advocacy materials and regularly have dialogues with government bodies at different levels.
Also, there is a way of thinking that tends to put everything in the same basket – labour rights, trafficking, migration. This is very dangerous. If women are going abroad to work, this does not mean that they are trafficked. Due to lack of support systems, women may find themselves in dangerous situations, but it is not that they are all victims of human trafficking. They are there to work, based on choices that they have made or decisions that they have taken. That’s why I feel we should work more on this conflation, because even though the right to decent work, to mobility, and human trafficking are interrelated, they should be understood separately – going abroad to work and trafficking are not the same. For example, if I’m a sex worker and I want to go abroad to continue working as a sex worker, people can’t say, “Oh she’s so vulnerable, she’s been trafficked”. It's my choice. I know the consequences, and I love that work, so I can't be pointed out as a trafficked woman. These are some of the questions we are raising on different platforms and networks.
At the community level, we work with returnee migrant women and those who are planning to go abroad. It's about advocacy and connecting them to government policies and support systems.
Vivian: Yeah, I think that women’s agency is the most questioned aspect with regard to women migrant workers. For example, you have mentioned a very good example of sex workers abroad and how they might be conflated as victims of human trafficking. Also, you mentioned GAATW and the project you had with us regarding women migrants and returnee migrants, I would like to know what it means for WOREC to be part of GAATW. How do you feel being part of such an alliance?
Sunita: I think that the Alliance is a very strong platform that allows us to raise issues from the ground. As I mentioned before, we do advocacy at the national and, sometimes, at the regional levels. But being connected to GAATW has helped us raise our issues at the international level too, because the Alliance has that presence. That is one of the main strengths that we find in our connection with GAATW.
Also, our organisation's profile strengthens because we have a platform to share emerging issues and acquire knowledge. For us, this has been of great support because regional, national, and international issues can be shared in this space, and we can update our strategies and plans to respond to these emerging issues.
Getting this knowledge and learning is a strong part of the Alliance, and definitely, we get many opportunities through the Alliance to connect with other like-minded organisations and expand our network.
Vivian: Thank you, Sunita! I don’t have any more questions. I really appreciate this conversation and time with you.