Twenty-six women—all below 30 years of age—are currently seeking shelter at Pourakhi, an NGO that works for the rights of women migrant workers. Most of these women had left for work in Kuwait in 2013 as cleaners in hospitals and salespersons in supermarkets. On reaching their destination, however, they were forced to work as domestic help in miserable conditions. After many months battling language problems and being deprived of timely payment, they returned home.

Since August 2012, the Government of Nepal has imposed a ban on women under the age of 30 from migrating to the Gulf as domestic help. This proscription came in the wake of countless stories of the widespread abuse of female migrant workers post-December 2010, when the government lifted a 12-year ban that barred women of all age groups from working in the Gulf. It was hoped that the ban would prevent women's migration to the Gulf and, as a consequence, prevent their mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of exploitative employers. But instead of preventing women from migrating to forbidden countries, the ban only forced them to resort to illegal routes. Recruiting agencies and labour agents would lure women with the prospects of a good income and take them to banned destinations via India or Bangladesh.

Women currently constitute 13.3 percent of the total 19,17,903 absentee Nepali population, according to the 2011 Census. Immigration authorities, however, are unable to verify this data due to illegal migration. For instance, in 2012, only a few hundred women had obtained permission to work in Saudi Arabia. A report by the Nepali Embassy in Saudi Arabia published the same year, however, showed that around 70,000 Nepali women work there illegally. The ban, therefore, only seems to be working in favour of unscrupulous brokers and recruiting agencies as it creates opportunities to charge more money from prospective women workers. Additionally, this has also hampered the government’s efforts to make migration safer for women through pre-departure programmes. Certificates for those programmes are reportedly sold on the black market. Thus, many women leave the country with absolutely no knowledge of the country they are headed to.

To put an end to this deplorable saga, it would do well for the government to admit the failure of its ban and consider lifting it. The prohibition not only curtails women's freedom of movement but is also in sharp contradiction to the 'Prohibition on gender discrimination' clause of the 2007 Foreign Employment Act. The concerned agencies should instead strictly monitor and prosecute the nexus of recruitment agencies, labour agents and government officials that land women in jobs different from the ones promised to them. Furthermore, the government should enter into enforceable labour agreements targeted at protecting the rights of migrant workers in major destinations like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Israel, Lebanon, Oman, Bahrain, South Korea and Hong Kong.