Late one night in southern Nepal last month, whispers spread of an unusual wedding taking place. Inside a modest home, an 18-year-old girl was about to be wed to a Chinese national nearly twice her age.
The match was illegal. Nepal’s minimum age for marriage is 20, and the bride’s youth alarmed onlookers. Police were called and the ceremony in Bara district was swiftly brought to a halt.
But the episode shone a spotlight on the trafficking of young Nepali women into marriage with Chinese nationals, often arranged by a web of local brokers and online middlemen promising families a route out of poverty.
“The family was told they could go to China after their daughter was married and they would no longer need to struggle,” Kanchan Koirala, a child protection officer familiar with the case, told This Week in Asia.
A new frontier
Nepali women have long been trafficked to India for sex work. But with the rise of cheap smartphones and expanded migration routes, the trade has evolved from brothels to cross-border marriages that span the Middle East, Africa and increasingly China.