THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN IN NEPAL: Exhibition by Lizzie Sadin, Laureate of the 2017 8th Carmignac Photojournalism Award

 Photograph by Lizzie Sadin

Photograph by Lizzie Sadin

Photograph by Lizzie Sadin

 Photograph by Lizzie Sadin

Lizzie Sadin won the 8th Carmignac Photojournalism Award devoted to "Modern Day Slavery Among Women.” I was extremely honored to be on the jury.

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Following a July 2016 call for applications by the Fondation Carmignac, the jury, presided over by Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Founder of Trust Women, chose to give a voice to Nepalese women by selecting Lizzie Sadin’s project. After four months of reporting in the field between February and May 2017, the photojournalist has brought back a deeply moving testimony on gender-based human trafficking and how rooted it is in Nepalese society. An exhibition of this work opened October 20, 2017 at the Hôtel de l’Industrie, 4 place Saint-Germain-des-Près -75006 Paris, with an accompanying monograph.

After a devastating earthquake that killed 9,000 people and displaced 650,000 others in 2015, the daily life of many Nepalese was shattered. Unemployment and the extremely precarious living conditions have given rise to more and more traffickers every day.

To Lizzie Sadin, this trafficking, based on the sale and forced prostitution of women and girls by “friends” or even family members, is carried out not just for economic reasons, but also for cultural reasons. It affects a woman’s fundamental rights: the right to get a proper education, the right to control her own destiny, the right to live without fear of acts of physical or psychological violence inflicted by her own husband, the right not to be sold …An entire belief system that needs reversing: one that, in Nepal, defines women as being inferior to men.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are more than 2.5 million victims of modern day slavery, and women make up the majority of this number. According to Amnesty International, women represent 80% of the victims of human trafficking, of whom nearly 50% are minors. The types of exploitation are numerous: sexual, forced labour, domestic slavery…

Women are all the more vulnerable in situations where they have little protection. The countries of South and South-East Asia as well as those of Central Europe and the ex-USSR are the principal purveyors of these modernday slaves. Although abduction is the most common route into slavery, women are also sold by their own families or entrapped into joining the networks of traffickers.

Armed conflicts exacerbate discriminatory and violent behaviour towards women. In Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, numerous camps of Syrian refugees have emerged. These refugees provide easy prey for networks on the lookout for ‘merchandise’. In Nigeria, in the Darfur region of western Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of Congo,  women and girls are subject to abductions carried out to provide their kidnappers with sexual or domestic slaves.

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Many thanks to Edouard Carmignac, President of The Fondation Carmignac; as well as to Emeric Glayse, Director of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award at Fondation Carmignac. The jury, chaired by Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Founder of Trust Women, comprised of Elizabeth Avedon, independent curator specialized in photography • Francesca Fabiani, Photography Special Projects, Department for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Ministry of Culture, Italy • Thierry Grillet, Chief Curator of Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) • Olivier Laurent, Editor-in-chief of Time Lightbox (now at the Washington Post) • Elisabeth Quin, journalist, writer and Arte TV Presenter (28 Minutes) • Narciso Contreras, laureate of the 7th edition of the Carmignac Award'

LIZZIE SADIN : EXHIBITION
The Trafficking of Women in Nepal
Laureate of the 8th Carmignac Photojournalism Award
October 20, 2017 to  November 12, 2017
Hôtel de l’Industrie, Paris
with an accompanying Monograph

Text courtesy of The Fondation Carmignac