Our objective within PACT is simple: we will work non-stop until every child or young person forced to endure this living hell is rescued, rehabilitated and loved and given the chance to grow into a happy, independent young person equipped to meet the challenges of a modern Nepal.

Rehabilitation
Our residential rehabilitation programme has been recognised within Nepal for its innovative approach. It has a clear focus on providing compassionate yet constructive support through a blend of education, vocational training and social activities.

Some of the girls have spent their entire childhood to date enslaved, being beaten and sexually abused. One survivor was raped so many times that she lost count. She is 13.

Our commitment is to provide therapy and social support while also exceeding the perceived standards in quality childcare. We encourage each child to find their own route to rehabilitation through our flexible programme.

Younger children are offered non-formal education until they are ready to enter school at an age-appropriate level, while older victims – some of whom are in their late teens having endured up to 15 years of abuse in the circus – are encouraged to follow a similar non-formal education programme while also being invited to enrol on our vocational art workshops to give them skills that lead directly to meaningful employment.

What We Do - Our Project work
Programme Against Child Trafficking

Rescue
Since 2004 we have rescued and rehabilitated over 300 Nepali child trafficking victims from lives of bonded labour in India’s circuses. At least 150 children still need rescuing – we are constantly coordinating new retrieval missions.

The Esther Benjamins Trust is the only charity currently carrying out these dangerous cross-border rescues between Nepal and India – our field staff regularly receive death threats from notorious circus owners desperate to preserve their income.
 
We are also leading the battle against the perpetrators of these abuses of human rights, funding expensive legal action and lobbying the Indo-Nepal authorities. Our successes include the formal recognition of circuses as a trafficking destination, and the imprisonment of some prominent trafficking agents who will now spend at least the next 25 years behind bars.

Background - Circus slavery
In 2002, The Esther Benjamins Trust identified a distressing trafficking activity inflicting abject misery on its victims – the sale of Nepalese children into India’s circus industry.

Rural Nepali families are particularly susceptible to the advances of unscrupulous trafficking agents offering unheard-of sums of money (in reality about £15) in return for a young child – usually a daughter – who will be given a ‘glamorous’ life in the Indian circus. Throw in alcohol dependency or a drug addiction that needs financing, and many parents find the offer of cash-in-hand and one less mouth to feed too tantalising to refuse.

Many parents put a thumbprint to a contract they could never read; they don’t fully appreciate that they have just sold their daughter into a decade or more of mental, physical and sexual abuse in which they are denied any freedom and are forced to work 18-hour days with no pay.
 
Basic scraps of food and a space on the tent floor alongside other trafficking victims are the only things these girls can look forward to for the next ten years of their ‘life’.