Puja Thapa

Puja Thapa (NYU GSAS)| WOREC Nepal| Kathmandu, Nepal

I walked into WOREC Nepal in early June to enrich my knowledge regarding women’s labor migration in Nepal and grow my skill set, including research and nonprofit management. Reflecting on the past ten weeks, I am grateful for the fellowship and the organization for allowing me to immerse myself in the community and the field of human rights in the context of labor migration. The combination of field research, desk study, and learning from co-workers have further strengthened my commitment to the issue of human rights in labor migration. 

Along with completing tasks like grant proposal editing, technical assistance to staff, Nepali to English translation, and social media content creation, I am working on a policy brief for WOREC highlighting migrant women as economic change agents. The policy brief also highlights the lack of Nepal’s government’s recognition of “domestic work” as labor, which influences the migration ban for women migrant workers for domestic work.

Further, I am finishing up an internal assessment report on the organization’s labor migration scenario in Nepal. Some of the significant findings of my report discuss how international human rights projects play out in Nepal, the gendered reintegration of returnee migrants, the lack of meaningful representation of women in local government, and the association of sex work with immorality furthering the social stigma against women labor migrants. 

Overall, my fellowship experience in Nepal allowed me to look beyond generalized rational explanations of what is and inspired me to ask why, to dig deeper, and to get to the complexity of reasons behind human rights issues. Immersing myself in local cultures in southern Nepal was a life-changing experience that allowed me to look at human rights issues from a local perspective. My work this summer with WOREC Nepal through the Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellowship has equipped me with knowledge, experience, and network to work in the women’s labor migration field.

 

Puja Thapa (NYU GSAS)| WOREC Nepal| Kathmandu, Nepal

Two weeks into the internship, I embarked on a journey last week of June to Province 1 in Nepal, one of the two provinces where the largest shares of migrant workers are from, as stated in the Nepal Labor Migration Report. Over the past three weeks, I have been conducting fieldwork in Nepal’s Morang and Udayapur districts. I have had the opportunity to engage and learn from stakeholders such as aspirants and returnee migrant workers, government officials, and staff from different organizations and projects working for safe labor migration in Nepal.

The past three weeks have been a great eye-opening experience. As a Kathmandu native with limited knowledge about the eastern part of Nepal, I have been captivated by the geographical and cultural diversity. I have had the privilege of hearing different languages, eating unique fruits and vegetables, understanding diverse cultural practices, and gaining insight into the lives of people for whom labor migration has been an inseparable part.

I am pleasantly surprised by the increasing awareness among individuals regarding safe migration information. However, it is mainly confined to urban or accessible areas leaving remote rural communities with marginalized populations reliant on a few unlicensed local agents as their primary sources of labor migration information. While the government and various national and international organizations have implemented effective initiatives to reintegrate returnee migrants, there is still a significant lack of sustainability, according to the locals.

Applying a gender lens to my observation, I have discovered that men are generally unaware of the social stigmatization that women labor migrants and wives of men labor, migrants, endure. Carrying forward the patriarchal legacy of stigmatizing trafficking survivors, women labor migrants still face questioning and judgment, resulting in limited social support for their reintegration and silenced stories. However, this circumstance does not capture the entire picture. Throughout my journey, I have unlearned my limited understanding of female leadership in Nepal. Women Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) Nepal has played a crucial role in empowering local and indigenous women leaders to take charge and address issues that directly concern them, including the stigma surrounding women labor migrants.

While these findings are preliminary, I am eager to return to Kathmandu equipped with the knowledge I have acquired. I intend to synthesize my experiences and academic learnings from NYU into an assessment report for the organization that will contribute to a better understanding of the situation.

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. 

 

Puja Thapa (NYU College of Arts and Sciences)| Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) | Kathmandu, Nepal

I am Puja Thapa, a first-year graduate student pursuing a Master’s in International Relations at NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This summer, I will gain experience and contribute with my skills in the field of women’s labor migration in Nepal through my internship at Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) Nepal in Kathmandu, Nepal. Growing up in Nepal, labor migration has been part of many women in my life. Additionally, my professional experience in a Queens-based organization called Adhikaar, an organization dedicated to the Nepali-speaking community in New York, has furthered my interest in women and migration. Additionally, I developed an interest in learning how global movements are gendered, racialized, and politicized through my IR courses. The combination of my personal, professional, and academic experiences has led me to my summer internship at WOREC Nepal. 

WOREC is a movement-based organization with the premise of women’s rights and social justice as prerequisites for peace, social justice, and sustainable development. The organization stood out to me as it was one of the first organizations in Nepal to initiate dialogue on the concept of safe labor migration and women’s right to mobility. WOREC Nepal takes a human rights approach in working towards social change. As a summer intern, I will explore women’s work in the informal sector and women’s right to work and mobility. I will also be contributing to WOREC’s campaign, ‘Valuing the Work of Women,’ led by the WOREC women workers’ forum that carries out advocacy works to enhance the identity, value, and respect for the works of women. Further, I will be involved in collecting related data from the community, analyzing the data, and developing the policy brief and research papers in these sectors. I will additionally assist in the reintegration programs of WOREC for returnee migrant workers and the Safe Migration Program for aspirant workers.

Through my work this summer, I plan to implement the learnings from the Global Human Rights seminar class and my other IR classes and learn and unlearn from the fieldwork. The research work also will be crucial for my thesis next year. Overall, I want to contribute to creating a safe labor migration for Nepali women.