Nepal is a mountain country: ?hill? and ?mountain? regions together account for over 75% of the total land area of 147,181 km2 and 53% of the estimated total population of 22 million (in 1999) (UNEP 2001). It is primarily a rural country dotted with small, mostly poor villages. More than 85% of the population lives in rural areas. In mountain areas, access to basic infrastructure such as safe drinking water, roads, health posts, schools, electricity, and telecommunications is limited. Ranked among the poorest countries, Nepal?s economy is based on agriculture, which absorbs four-fifths of the country?s workforce. Subsistence farming is the norm. Landholdings are generally small, with average per capita agricultural landholdings of 0.13 hectare in 1999, less than 1 ha per family (CBS 1999). Owing to small size landholdings, low productivity, and the sheer drudgery of the work, the agricultural sector is in decline. The economy is undergoing a structural change ? moving away from agriculture towards manufacture and services. The out-migration of rural people to urban or semi-urban areas of the country, or further afield to India, the Gulf countries and elsewhere, financed by selling or mortgaging land and property, clearly reflects this change. After democracy was introduced in Nepal in April 1990, the single-party Panchayati system was replaced by a multi-party parliamentary system, and an absolute monarchy by a constitutional monarchy, ushering in a new political era, but one that has been marked by infighting and widespread corruption. Political stability and economic security remain a hope rather than a reality. As governments fail to bring about tangible improvements in the life of rural people, people again see out-migration or migrant work as the only viable choice.
Mountain and hill children are affected in a variety of ways: as a result of out-migration (their families?, their own, their fathers?); their need to work to survive; criminal exploitation of their need and ignorance; or simply the lack of basic opportunities resulting from economic and social marginalisation of these poorly accessible areas. In all these situations, the most important impacts are those associated with ?child labour? ? children who have to work for a large part of the day cannot study properly, and may be physically compromised. They cannot use education as a way of escaping poverty.
