Two Worlds, One Tragedy

On April 17, 2025, as diplomats in Amsterdam applauded Bangladesh’s economic rise at the "Best of Bangladesh in Europe" event, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) confirmed a shipwreck off Libya’s coast that claimed 72 lives, including four Nepalis from Sindhupalchok and Kavre districts. While their names remain undisclosed at their families’ request, their deaths mirror a systemic crisis: Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) reported 219 Nepalis dead or missing on migration routes to Europe in 2024 alone. For Sindhupalchok, where 60% of households depend on remittances, such losses are not anomalies but brutal inevitabilities .

The Illusion of Prosperity: Nepal’s Broken Promises

Nepal’s GDP growth, steady at 5% since 2022, conceals a harsher truth: 32% of its youth are unemployed, and 64% of households rely on remittances from abroad. In Kavre, farmers like 45-year-old Ram Prasad Shrestha describe villages hollowed by exodus. “Our fields are fallow, our schools closed. Every home has a son in Qatar or a daughter trapped in Kuwait’s salons,” he says .

The EU’s “Global Gateway” investments in Nepal—promising roads and hydropower—ring hollow in Dailekh, where mothers pawn heirloom jewellery to pay traffickers ₹800,000 ($6,000) for fake “visit visas” to France . “They showed us photos of Paris,” says Devi Bhandari, whose 19-year-old son disappeared en route to Italy in 2024. “Now I light a diyo at the river each evening, praying his body finds its way home.”

The Mediterranean’s Nepali Voices: Stories from the Abyss

The sea does not discriminate. In 2023, Ram Bahadur Lama, 28, of Nuwakot, drowned off Greece. His body was repatriated through the NGO Maiti Nepal, which documented 38 similar cases in 2023–2024 . His last message to his mother: “Maaf garnus, Aama. Ghar napugne hola.” (Forgive me, Mother. I may not return home.)

In 2024, The Kathmandu Post interviewed a returnee (name withheld) who survived Libyan detention: “They beat us daily. My cousin died because they refused medicine.” Survivors describe being sold “like goats” to Libyan militias, a practice the UN links to EU-funded coast guards .

On the Balkan routes, Rajesh K.C., 17, of Rupandehi, suffocated in a truck’s cargo hold in 2022. His body was returned in a casket labeled “No Identification”—one of 12 verified cases documented by Migrant Rights Network Nepal.

The Hypocrisy of Partnership: Shadows Behind the Smiles

In Kathmandu’s opulent hotels, EU delegates tout “ethical migration partnerships,” yet Nepali workers in Poland’s meatpacking plants report 18-hour shifts for €3/hour . Spain deports Nepali asylum seekers under a 2024 EU-Nepal repatriation pact, while the bloc imports €1.2 billion in Nepali textiles and carpets annually under its “GSP+” scheme—a trade lifeline denied to the workers who sustain it .

The numbers betray the rhetoric:

- Nepal received €25 million in EU “safe migration” aid since 2020, yet 78% of returnees report wage theft or abuse .

- Germany’s 2024 offer of 3,000 nursing visas excludes the 500,000 Nepalis working informally in the Gulf .

As former Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud lamented: “We are told to celebrate ‘growth,’ but what growth exists when our children vanish into the sea?”

A Flicker of Light: Nepal’s Quiet Resistance

Yet, resilience persists. In Tanahun, returnee migrants transformed abandoned farms into organic coffee cooperatives, exporting to EU markets under fair-trade labels . In Dang, mothers whose sons perished in the Mediterranean founded Aakha ko Aansu(Tears of the Sky), a grassroots group pressuring lawmakers to criminalise trafficking .

Even the arts mourn and mobilise. Folk singer Raju Pariyar’s 2025 ballad “Hami Lautne Bato Kahan Cha?” (Where Is Our Path Home?)—streamed over 2 million times on Spotify—gives voice to the disappeared . “Our songs are our protests,” he says. “Europe builds walls, but our grief will erode them.”

The Mountains Remember

The Himalayas have long witnessed exoduses—of soldiers, laborers, dreamers. But mountains also teach endurance. As Aakha ko Aansu member Sita Gurung declares: “They wanted us to drown silently. Instead, we’ll become the wave.”

The dead cannot speak, but Nepal’s rivers carry their whispers. It is time the world listened.

*Zakir Kibria is a writer and nicotine fugitive. Entrepreneur |Policy Analyst|

Chronicler of Entropy | Cognitive Dissident. “Empires decay. Pragmatism

survives. Stay sarcastic.” Email: zk@krishikaaj.com

Detailed References

1. IOM Libya Missing Migrants Report, April 2025. [IOM Data Portal](https://missingmigrants.iom.int/).
2. Nepal National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Migration Deaths: 2020–2024, 2025.
3. World Bank, Nepal Migration and Remittances Survey, 2024.
4. Maiti Nepal, Annual Trafficking Report, 2024.
5. The Kathmandu Post, “Libya’s Nepali Prisoners,” November 15, 2024.
6. Migrant Rights Network Nepal, Balkan Route Deaths, March 2023.
7. European Commission, EU-Nepal Trade Statistics, 2024.
8. Pravasi Nepali Rights Forum, Wage Theft and Abuse Survey, 2024.
9. National Planning Commission, Nepal, Economic Survey 2025.
10. Spotify, Streaming data for “Hami Lautne Bato Kahan Cha?”, 2025.