Puja Thapa (NYU College of Arts and Sciences)| Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) | Kathmandu, Nepal
My Global Human Rights Fellowship started at the Dubai International Airport during my transit between the United States and Nepal. While dragging my bags anxiously to make it to the next plane on time, I saw, heard, and interacted with Nepali workers at the airport. The short time at the airport gave me a glance at the migration industry in the Gulf, where estimated hundreds of thousands of Nepali migrant workers work. This experience made me even more eager to work and learn in this field.
I started my work at Women Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) Nepal on June 12, and it has been great so far, understanding the scale of its reach and work throughout the nation. The organization has around 30+ staff, primarily women, who have made it a welcoming space for me. The organization is busy with training and projects, including the UNICEF refugee program. Sharing my office with two case officers, I have learned about WOREC’s substantial impact on women’s lives through legal assistance and the staff’s commitment to their work. Talking about my work so far, I have been busy studying the organization’s annual reports to grasp better what WOREC does. I will be shortly traveling to Udayapur and Morang districts in Nepal, where I will be able to understand community engagement and local women’s networks. I look forward to the field trip, as it will be crucial to my internship responsibilities of preparing an assessment report, research article, and policy brief. Additionally, it will benefit my independent research for my thesis next year.
Overall, through my involvement with WOREC and my assessment of Nepal after four years of visits, I have understood how internal and international migration has been an inseparable part of the daily lives of Nepal. News outlets and community members verify that there has been a massive surge of migration abroad and migration from rural to urban places in Nepal, especially after the COVID pandemic. I cannot wait to immerse myself more in the community to reveal more findings regarding migration, especially women’s labor migration.