Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, hugs Charimaya Tamang of Nepal, a trafficking survivor herself, as she is awarded the 2011 Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award, Monday, June 27, 2011, during the release of the 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, at the State Department in Washington. Shortly before her departure for the U.S., Ambassador DeLisi welcomed Ms. Tamang to the Embassy in Kathmandu to congratulate her and wish her safe travels.


The 2011 TIP Report notes: “Born into a poor family made poorer by the passing of her father, Charimaya Tamang was 16 when she was trafficked to India. She spent 22 months enslaved in a brothel before the Indian government rescued her and more than 200 other Nepali women in 1996. Upon her return to Nepal, Ms. Tamang faced social stigma and was outcast from her own community. But she courageously filed a case against her traffickers, becoming the first person to file personally a trafficking case with the district police. In 1997, the District Court – in a landmark decision – convicted and sentenced eight offenders involved in her case.

“In 2000, Ms. Tamang and 15 other survivors established Shakti Sumaha, an anti-trafficking NGO. She received a national honor for her work in 2007 and is currently one of two trafficking survivors serving as members of the government-led National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking, which was founded in 2009. In that role, Ms. Tamang raised the importance of including survivors in each district-level working group. There are now five trafficking survivors serving as members of district-level committees around the country.”