Social Issue

Poverty and socio-cultural components in Nepal force many children to be imprisoned with their mothers and although this is recommended until the age of three years, the UN and UNICEF urge that these children should not remain in prison after that age. This is not being complied with in Nepal and many children aged 6,  8, 10 or 12 years remain in prison with their mothers serving their sentences without them having committed any crime and lacking food, adequate medical care, and schooling necessary for their psychosocial development. Their time in prison turns the child into a young person without opportunities who may resort to delinquency as a means of subsistence.

Our Response

Dream Nepal Association has been operating in Nepal since 2016, rescuing children from prison. Dream Nepal’s focus is to create and run foster homes (MalaHome Project) to take custody of the children, with the blessing of their mothers during the remainder of their sentence, and to provide holistic support, offering a caring home, schooling, medical and psychological support, but always facilitating a regular contact to maintain the bond with their mothers.

Dream Nepal works in close partnership with the NGO, Prisoner’s Assistance Nepal (PA Nepal) which runs various programs related to assisting people in penitentiaries. PA Nepal identifies children who require to be removed from prison and coordinates this process with the relevant government bodies. 

The children are taken to MalaHome housing facilities that are managed directly by Dream Nepal.  The Netri Foundation is supporting Dream Nepal in financing the running of  Mala Homes. Currently, they have 3 foster homes with a capacity for 54 children.

Expected Social Impact

Children who are removed from prison and who enter foster homes often have many challenges to adapt to their new environment. There is also a stigma that they have to live with from having been in prison and having a mother who is a criminal. In many cases, and for this reason, they are pushed away by their families and sometimes even by their own fathers. Another long-term issue associated with having lived in prison is the tendency of the children to commit crimes, partly because being in prison is the only life they know well and they feel protected.

Dream Nepal’s intervention aims to avoid the multiple problems associated with the incarceration of children and hopes to achieve the following outcomes: In the short term, provide the opportunity for these children to live in a caring and supportive environment and to have a chance to go to school. In the mid-term, it is hoped that the project will eradicate the presence of children older than 3 in Nepalese prisons. In the long term, it aims for the full social integration of these children and for them to grow up to live productive lives, free of crime. 

There have been 66 children that have resided in the Mala Homes, 13 of which have left because their mothers were released from prison.