Nepal: No clear way out of servitude for girls sent to work as household servants

“Domestic workers face beatings, sexual abuse, non-payment of wages and human trafficking situations. They run the gamut of physical and mental abuse used to control someone and in some households it is a slave owner mentality,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW) Deputy Director in Asia Phil Robertson. “There are enough cases of abuse that there has to be some sort of protective framework for these domestic workers.” To activists and domestic workers celebrating both in Geneva and abroad, the most groundbreaking part of the document is the acknowledgment that domestic work is, in fact, work.  Photo: David Swanson/IRIN