Orphanages are a common child protection response to humanitarian crises spurred on by media and NGO depictions of the disaster orphan. Yet, decades of research attests to the harm that orphanage care can cause. Driven by aid funding, orphanages are often sustained long after the recovery phase. In recent years, research has highlighted the links between orphanages, exploitation and modern slavery, particularly orphanage trafficking. This paper examines how the perpetuation of the disaster narrative sustains orphanage care post-disaster which heightens the risk, and exposure, of children to modern slavery, and makes suggestions for strengthening humanitarian crises responses to protect children.

Various studies have been published on the occurrence of orphanage trafficking in Nepal. These studies have focused on how orphanage trafficking occurs but have not investigated how orphanage trafficking is responded to from a legal perspective. This article analyses the legal framework for prosecuting orphanage trafficking in Nepal. It considers the available legislative frameworks for pursuing prosecution and makes recommendations for Nepal to reform their anti-trafficking law to include orphanage trafficking and to align with international law.

This article examines the intersections of orphanage trafficking, a form of child trafficking and modern slavery, and the sale and sexual exploitation of children with reference to the Sustainable Development Goals. It outlines the contextual challenges of these intersections highlighting the special protection needs of children residing in institutions and outlines how orphanage tourism and funding undermine care reform efforts of national authorities. To address these issues, we make recommendations to address both the in-country and external causal factors that drive and enable orphanage trafficking suggesting that governments of host and sending countries should work in tandem, under the framework of international cooperation, to implement practical measures to combat orphanage trafficking.