For Every Child, Protection
Ensure all children are protected in Nepal
Highlights
In Nepal, child protection concerns manifest themselves in many forms: violent discipline, child marriage, child labour, trafficking, violence against women and girls, unnecessary placement of children in orphanages/residential care homes and correction homes, and insufficient access to child-friendly and gender
sensitive-justice.
Nepal’s progress on child protection is mixed. On a positive note, the prevalence of child marriage has dropped from 60.3 per cent in 1996 to 39.5 in 2016. The
number of cases of violence against women being reported to the police has increased substantially from 1,800 in 2013 to 11,600 in 2017, victims of human
trafficking are being intercepted, laws and policies are more protective of children, specialised units in the justice sector are in place and data on child protection is
increasingly available.
Persistent challenges include the slowdown in the pace of decline in child marriage and child labour, which remain very high, violence against children is widespread and not being reported to the police, government-paid social welfare workforce is grossly insufficient, and the number of children living in residential care institutions, who could be cared for in a family setting, is very high.
