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The Price of Youth

"I would rather hang myself and die, than go back to Bombay (Mumbai)..."

This young girl had just escaped after a year trapped in a Mumbai brothel when she spoke these words to Andrew Levine, an independent filmmaker who produced "The Price of Youth." She had been sold into prostitution by traffickers, who had arranged for her to come to India from her native Nepal.

The Himalayan kingdom of Nepal has seen a recent explosion in the trafficking of its young girls and women to work as prostitutes in neighboring India and some Arab states. Many go willingly in the hope of escaping the poverty in rural Nepal. It should be noted that these girls' and women's right to voluntary movement at all times must be protected. Others are sold by family members, or abducted or lured away by traffickers using phony marriage proposals or promises of better job opportunities.