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Happy and home

Five Nepali boys who had been feared dead have successfully been reunited with their families in Nepal - after EBT's team found them abandoned in a Delhi children's 'home'.

The retrieval mission is the culmination of a lengthy period of research which began when some of our field staff visited an Indian children's home in Delhi earlier this year. On that visit, they met six Nepali boys who longed to return home to their families - families who had no way of knowing where they were and who thought they were dead.

After the drawn-out process of tracing family members in rural Nepal and completing the necessary legal procedures, our team took some family members to Delhi last week to coordinate the reunification.

The only sadness is that one of the boys we originally identified had apparently 'run away' from the home before we could reunite him with his brother - who had made the trip with us. We will work resolutely to find and help him in any way we can.

Background

The plight of Nepali children living in Indian children’s homes first came to our attention earlier this year, when press reports suggested 500 displaced Nepali children were living in these grim 'homes'. At the age of 18, the homes' reluctant residents could expect to be discharged onto the streets: homeless and without prospects, having had very little in the way of education or mental stimulation.

EBMF research currently underway will document this situation for the first time, getting to the bottom of how the children have come to be there in the first place. The initial impression is that many are child trafficking victims who end up diverted and then become trapped in awful places that masquerade as childcare centres. There they languish, forgotten and isolated.