What about a Human Rights Based Approach? - a case study of the legal situation of victims of child trafficking in Nepal

Abstract: This paper aims to establish to what extent a human rights-based approach could contribute to an improvement of the enforcement of the rights of children who are victims of trafficking in Nepal. A Minor Field Study based on interviews was conducted in Nepal in order to gather data about the structure of the current legal treatment of children who are victims of trafficking and to what extent potential problems or challenges derives from it. The empirical findings showed that the problem did not stem from the domestic anti-trafficking legislations but rather from the poor implementation of the existing provisions. The main reasons for the lack in implementing the said legislations concluded to six causes, namely; the lack of administrative coordination and efficiency, the lack of resources, the lack of authentic data, the lack of knowledge of the law enforcement personnel, the open border policy towards India and the lack of reported cases. These causes were then analyzed through an analytical framework of a human rights-based approach. Since there exist no universal definition of a human rights-based approach, the general characteristics of the framework employed in this paper was established by drawing relevant principles from existing framework into one which was specifically designed for the problem of child trafficking. The analysis showed that a human rights-based approach on the specific situation for children who are victims of trafficking in Nepal has an added value in the sense that it gives a more holistic approach on the problem of implementing anti-trafficking legislations and since it focuses on the enforcement of their rights.