Located in Dang, Far Western Nepal, BASE works to empower and mobilise kamaiya* bonded labourers by raising their awareness and giving them the confidence to assert their rights.

It works in six western districts of Nepal, where it provides human rights education, skills training, literacy and small business support, and organises bonded labourers.

The organisation was key in forming a coalition of organisations that filed a case against the Government of Nepal challenging the legality of bonded labour. This, combined with its mobilising bonded labourers to demonstrate against this slavery, played a significant role in pressurising the Government finally to declare the Kamaiya system of bonded labour illegal in July 2000.

Despite this positive move, the Government's failure to develop a legal and social framework meant there was no protection for bonded labourers when landlords threw them off the land following the proclamation. BASE provided vital support for thousands of kamaiya families left homeless and exposed to hunger and disease. It set up makeshift camps and food distribution while continuing to press the Government to develop a law against bonded labour.

In February 2002, a law was passed outlawing kamaiya bonded labour. BASE lobbies the Government to distribute land to former bonded labourers and works to ensure the new law is effectively implemented. It estimates 60 per cent of former kamaiya have yet to be registered and given land.

BASE is a membership-based organisation with over 30,000 individual members drawn from some of the poorest and most marginalised people in Nepal.

*Tharu agricultural workers

Dilli Chaudhary

Dilli Chaudhary is the founder and director of Backward Society Education (BASE). The son of a bonded labourer, he founded BASE in 1984 when he was 14 years old; the organisation was formally launched in 1991, a year after democracy was established in Nepal. A grassroots membership organisation, BASE is committed to fighting against poverty, bonded labour and the exploitation of the indigenous Tharu minority in western Nepal.