LONDON, United Kingdom — For thousands of girls in Nepal’s remote Humla district, having a school “nearby” can still mean a walk of hours or even days just to reach a classroom. Nepal has made great progress on education, with enrollment climbing and gender gaps narrowing at the primary level. In the country’s mountain districts, however, a quiet barrier remains largely unaddressed: for many girls, the problem was never that a school did not exist. It was that they could not reach it. That barrier sits at the heart of girls’ education and poverty in rural Nepal.
Challenges in Humla
Humla sits in Karnali Province, the poorest region in Nepal. Thirty-nine and a half percent of the people in Karnali are multidimensionally poor, more than five times the rate in Bagmati Province, home to Kathmandu. The country’s poorest provinces are also the ones farthest from paved roads and electricity, and years of schooling loss remains one of the largest single contributors to multidimensional poverty nationally. In Humla, poverty and geographical distance from services reinforce each other, and a girl’s education is often the first casualty when they collide.
Ask what “far” means here and the numbers are hard to picture. “The distance from different villages varies from three hours to three days walking distance from home to our project site,” said Sushma Thapa of Himalayan Children Society (HCS), which has worked in Humla for two decades. “Because there is no means of transportation from one village to another, the children have to walk a long distance, at least 45 minutes to two hours, to attend the school. Primary schools are located nearby, but secondary schools are located far, either they have to take a rented room or stay with their relatives’ home, which is again not so safe, especially for girls.”
A Barrier the Statistics Do Not Show
Nepal’s national enrollment numbers look like a success story. They tell a different one the moment a girl in Humla finishes grade five. “There were so many girls who did not attend school because of the long distance,” Thapa said. “They attended school until the primary level, then dropped out and never attended the school for higher education, because there was no school at their village that could provide schooling until grade 10 or 12.” That drop-off has consequences that show up clearly in the data, and it is one reason girls’ education and poverty in rural Nepal are so closely linked.
Nationally, 72% of Nepali girls with no schooling marry before 18, compared with just 18% of those who complete secondary education. Furthermore, Karnali Province has one of the highest child marriage rates in the country, with 48% of women aged 20-24 married before 18. Thapa sees that pattern in her own community: “Because of this, early child marriage is a big social problem in Humla and remote districts of Nepal.”
Child Trafficking
Two decades ago, that same distance pushed some Humla families to send children away entirely. “When we started our project about 20 years ago, Humla was facing political instability and very limited educational opportunities,” Thapa said. “Many villages did not have proper schools, enough teachers, or basic infrastructure. Because of this, many parents were worried about their children’s education and believed that sending them to Kathmandu or other cities was the only way to provide them with a better education. Unfortunately, this situation also created a risk of child trafficking. In many cases, parents themselves agreed to send their children outside Humla because they wanted them to receive a better education.”
HCS was built to close that gap by placing hostels beside existing government schools. The first, at Yalbang, opened in August 2007 with 45 students, and 80% of the original scholarship seats were reserved for girls. Thapa believes the approach has helped protect children from trafficking: “This experience shows that providing safe accommodation and quality education within the community can play an important role in preventing child trafficking.” She said that since 2007, HCS has not heard of major cases of girls being trafficked from Humla for education, and that in 2011 several children who had previously been sent to different parts of Nepal and India returned to join its hostel. This is HCS’s own account rather than an independent evaluation, but it points to a real access barrier that the hostel model is designed to address.
Closing the Distance
The potential benefits are measurable. A 2017 World Bank/ICRW study found that each additional year of secondary schooling cuts a girl’s risk of child marriage by five percent or more, and estimated that ending child marriage in Nepal could lift women’s lifetime earnings and productivity by 12.7%. Keeping secondary schools within walking distance is therefore more than an education measure. It also bears on girls’ education and poverty in rural Nepal, particularly in its poorest province.
HCS offers a practical example of what closer access looks like. Its students, ages 7-17, now attend Shree Mahadoudha Secondary School in Yalbang, a three-to-five-minute walk from their hostel, a distance that would previously have taken days for some of them to cover. Thapa’s recommendation to donors is specific: “The government and the donor should focus on supporting the hostel facilities for the children who are located at a distance. The hostel facilities can accommodate the children from at least five villages, which would be a great help to the children of remote districts.”
A school marked on a map does little for a girl who cannot get to it. Thapa has spent two decades watching what that gap costs. “There are so many girls who did not attend and dropped out because of the lack of a higher school nearby her village.” HCS’s results so far are promising, and they suggest a direction for policy and funding: safe accommodation close to existing schools, so that girls in remote districts can stay in education beyond primary level.
– Alana Breslin
Alana is based in London, UK and focuses on Global Health and Politics for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Flickr