From Slave to The Leader of CFKF, This Woman Is Better Than Most Men
Urmila Chaudhary is a Nepalese women’s rights activist and a former domestic slave under the Kamlari system, a form of debt bondage. At the age of six, she was forced to leave her family and was sold into domestic servitude.For 11 years she was exploited, abused, and forced to work without any compensation in the house of a wealthy, well-known family in Kathmandu. Chaudhary was rescued by the Nepal Youth Foundation at 17 and began her fight for the many girls still enslaved under the Kamlari system.
Urmila says she was five years old when this man, an attorney from a respected family, came to her village of Manpur, on the Rapti River, and made an offer that ended her childhood.
It was a day in January, just after the Maghi festival had begun, one of those cold days of the year when the Tharu celebrate the New Year. It's also the time of the year when they sell their daughters.
"I can still see him coming toward us," says Urmila. He was a man from the city, wearing sunglasses and a suit. "I had never seen such clothing," she says. She was sitting at the fire pit in front of the tiny mud-and-dung house where her family of 11 lived. Pumpkins grew on the straw roof, and pigs lay in shallow pits in the ground. Urmila was sitting there with her mother and brother as the man approached.
"I knew it was my turn," Urmila says. Her sisters and her sisters-in-law had all worked as kamalari, or slave girls. One sister had told her about the beatings she endured at the hands of the landowner who purchased her and the kitchen scraps she was fed. "I begged my mother not to send me away," Urmila recounts. Her mother said that she had no say in the matter.
Instead, the man spoke with her older brother because he was the one who supported the family. The man offered the brother money -- 4,000 rupees, or about €50 ($70) -- for his little sister Urmila. The family owed money to the landowner whose fields they farmed, there wasn't enough food and the children wore shoes made of bean pods tied to their feet with pieces of rope. Four thousand rupees. It was a lot of money. Urmila's brother agreed to the deal.
After she was freed in 2007 with the help of international and local NGOs, Chaudhary was finally able to start school. She is currently attending high school in Lamahi/Dang in Nepal. As soon as she gained freedom, Chaudhary decided she had to fight for the many girls who still live in slavery under kamalari.
In December 2007, she was elected the first president of the Common Forum for Kamalari Freedom (CFKF), an organization founded by women and girls to fight for their rights. Chaudhary and a delegation of girls traveled several times to see the president, the prime minister, and other important government leaders in Nepal to seek financial support for the education of former slaves. Chaudhary organizes performances in villages to raise awareness among girls and their parents. She is a role model for the many freed girls, ranging from the ages of eight to twenty, who were unable to return to their families after being rescued from servitude.