Nepal – one of the most beautiful and diverse countries in this world. It is the home of Mount Everest and some of the highest peaks on earth. Moreover, it is a country where traditional stories are rooted in its day-to-day life, representing tales of love, affection and battles, or demons and ghosts, which are often expressed through dance and music during the festivals.

While Nepal is a very rich country in terms of culture and nature, it does poorly from the economic development standpoint. Nepal has undergone a complex and prolonged political transition, from being a kingdom to its current democratic structure. According to the Human Development Index, Nepal is one of the least developed countries, giving its citizens not many employment opportunities. Migration for foreign employment has, therefore, become a major source of income for many Nepali households. More than 3.8 million permits to working abroad were issued by the Government between 1994 and 2015, which represents almost 14 percent of the current population. Malaysia is the number one destination country for Nepali migrant workers closely followed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait.

Remittances have ever since become a main contribution factor for increasing household income and growth in national GDP, leading to greater economic development in Nepal. But while so many Nepali go abroad, most of those migrant workers have low levels of literacy, are often unskilled and lack accurate information’s regarding labour migration. These factors combine to heighten vulnerability, and Nepal is considered as a country of origin for human trafficking for labour, sexual and other forms of exploitation.  In addition, Nepal’s open border agreement with India is leading to further uncontrolled migration and trafficking, making it difficult for both the governments to combat those crimes.

This is where we at CMIR get active. Our main aim is it to protect the rights of migrant workers and their families coming from Nepal. By providing legal and paralegal support, we want to make sure labour rights are respected, guaranteed, and fulfilled. Since our establishment in 2014, we were able to make a difference for a significant number of people. Throughout the brief but prolific history of CMIR, we have supported around 600 people in 2015 and further 564 people in 2016, in different ways. For instance, there are countless bureaucratic processes that have to be dealt with before the dead body of a migrant worker can be sent back to Nepal. Most of the time, the families of these people do not have the education background to effectively face the legal obstacles that stop them from grieving on the lifeless bodies of their loved ones. Therefore, CMIR steps in supporting and pace the process.

What many people forget, is the impact labour migration has on the children left behind. Especially in those cases, where the hope for a better life through foreign employment was crushed by the reality of dreadful working conditions that most of the times terminated in the death of the breadwinner of the family. Once a parent is unable to work or dies while working abroad, their children have to cut short the education in order to support their family financially. Child labour is way too common in Nepal – and it takes away the opportunity for children to overcome the poverty cycle. A cycle, where the interplay of unskilled labour, lack of information and high debts people that take on to go abroad, often ends up in exploitation and human trafficking. Resulting in even worse living conditions for the people left back home, leaving their children trapped in this poverty cycle, not able to improve their situation compared to their parents ones.

During our work at CMIR, we are confronted with these cases on a daily basis, why we established a scholarship fund to support those children in need. By paying their education fees for one year, we prevent at least some children from dropping out of school. But only an organization like CMIR can do so much, thus we need support to carry on with this righteous cause. Through a crowdfunding campaign, we did last year, we were able to support 15 children. This year we aim to continue their scholarship for another year and support even more children.

There is a Sanskrit phrase as our leitmotif for this year’s crowdfunding campaign, vasudhaiva kutumbakam, which translates as:

The world is a family

One is a relative, the other stranger,

say the small minded.

The entire world is a family,

live the magnanimous.

—Maha Upanishad 6.71–75

We at CMIR believe that everybody should have equal opportunities in life. We are citizens of the world, we all are one family.

By investing in education, we invest in a better future – for everybody! We know that it is impossible to help every person in need, but this is a good place to start. Every contribution matters and all donations will go into our scholarship fund. If you want to become part of our mission, please support us through our crowdfunding campaign.

Thank you!

The last factor is arguably the most important reason underlying their decision to refer to local brokers. Do people know what the risks are of working in a foreign country without being provided the appropriate information by recruitment agencies? There are several instances of aspiring migrants, like Rajesh Khatri, who were misinformed and expected to be settled with a position that paid an adequate wage, but soon found themselves working in completely different areas, in unspeakable conditions. Other examples see people who were oblivious to the risks of working abroad due to the lack of information available to them before arriving to the destination country.

Rajesh’s story, like many others, are often neglected by the media, and remain untold. These people have survived dreadful health and safety conditions but luckily found their way home and shared their experiences.  It is of vital importance to safeguard the rights of migrant workers by making them aware of the issues they might be facing once they travel abroad. Towards this goal, effort has been made by NGOs like CMIR. Cooperating with other institutions, counselling services have been established, as well as legal aid, immediate rescue, transit home[6]. The organisation alone supported 600 migrant workers and their families in 2015 and addressed 564 cases in 2016. Although, as often happens, aspiring migrants do not know where to search for information. Perhaps, because Internet usage is on an exponential rise, around 11 million users in 2015[7], a way to promote information offered by NGOs would be through videos or communications on social media or through advertisements on the most downloaded apps of the country. It would be an effective way to reach out to potentially more than one third of the Nepalese population. In fact, despite the clear improvements that have been made, migrant workers are still too often victimised by the system and by employers and this is attributable to their lack of information concerning their rights and expectations as migrant workers. Therefore, more effort has to be made to inform people in order to eradicate the problem at its roots. Following from Nelson Mandela’s renowned statement: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

Author, Luca Polizzi

At the airport, what I first noticed was groups of migrant workers, in blue caps, listening carefully to their agent’s explanations while holding passports, working permits and boarding passes. However, unlike other travellers, they did not look excited and eager; rather, most of them were nervous and confused. They then queued up at the departure gate, which was only for ‘passengers with working visa’. Having taken videos of them, I made my way to the arrival gate, where two coffins were moved out on four luggage carts.

The dead migrant worker’s body that I had been waiting for was 20-year-old Jitendra Nepali from Parbat, a hilly area in Nepal’s Western Development Region. He died in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after working there for seven months. The official cause of his death was ruled a suicide. A month after his death, his body was sent back to Nepal. Jitendra’s body was one among the three migrant workers’ bodies that arrived at the airport on the same day.

Nearly ten men were lifting the coffin to the truck. It was strangely calm and silent, perhaps everyone was trying to suppress their emotions. When the coffin was on the truck, two men put flower wreaths on it and one of them bent down and wept in silence. This was a heartbreaking scene.



I was told that Jitendra’s body would then be delivered to his home, and a funeral would take a total of 13 days. After that, his family members would come to our office in Kathmandu for further assistance.

Almost every day, the Tribhuvan International Airport receives the remains of three or four Nepali workers who have left to work in the Middle East and Malaysia. And in the year 2014/15, a total number of 1,004 migrant workers died while working abroad. Nepali migrants leave in good health and return in a casket - this is a sight all too common.

Author,  Marco Kuan Long Lam