Every year, thousands of Nepali women traverse borders to seek jobs as the domestic and care workers in Gulf countries. Their hope to lift families from poverty is met with peril, abandonment, and, most heartbreakingly, death. While Nepal’s remittance-driven migration economy flourishes on—constituting over a quarter of national GDP—the women fueling this economy are systematically erased during life and death.

According to Foreign Employment Board, between 2008 and 2024, around 400 Nepali female migrant workers died overseas. And a total compensation payouts during this period was Rs 168m.

Take the case of Hira Bhujel, once a proud Kuwait returnee. Her first migration was legal and empowering; she bought land, built a house, and placed her family above poverty. When a government ban stopped her second migration to work as domestic labor, Bhujel turned to an irregular route. She died of ‘illness’ within months. She was left by her employer, denied medical care, and left by the state because her migration had been ‘illegal’. Her body came back in a coffin. No one helped—not the state, not the anti-trafficking networks, nor even the migration agencies built on the framework of ‘safe migration’.

Her mother says, “Because she worked abroad without a permit, the government turned its back on us. No compensation, no clear answers.” “Women like my daughter are treated as disposable labour. She was sent away without protection, forgotten when they fall ill or die.”

Bhujel’s is a far too familiar story. Nepali authorities have prohibited all women’s migration for domestic work since 2017. Although relaxed partly in 2020, the policy remains founded on restriction and gendered protectionism. In spite of such prohibitions, however, women keep migrating, often through illegal channels, by sheer necessity. But many never return.

Restrictions on women’s migration, purportedly in their interests, are in fact enhancing their vulnerability. They close off formal routes to them, push them into dangerous informal ones, and exclude them from government support when they are in need or dead, say the experts. “Even destination country embassy staff are cripplingly under-resourced, with just seven people dealing with tens of thousands of migrant cases,” experts say. “Bureaucratic hurdles prevent access to welfare budgets, and when corpses need to be repatriated, the families and local communities are often left to pay the bill.”

Kani Sherpa died in 1998 in Kuwait due to alleged abuse by her employers. This sparked public outcry and led to the ban on Nepali women working in the Gulf. The ban, however, was not effective in preventing women from seeking work in the Gulf. Instead, it pushed many to seek illegal channels, leading to further exploitation. 

The failure is structural: no legal acknowledgment, no psychosocial assistance, inadequate diplomacy, and a policy regime criminalizing women’s survival struggles. Migration bans have created a trend of invisibility and punishment, where it is simpler to overlook women’s deaths than to go out of one’s way to save their lives.

As per the report ‘Invisible in life and death: The aftermath of Nepali female migrant domestic workers’ death’ released by Brunel University of London and Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), besides financial problems, relatives of the deceased female migrant workers experience critical mental health-related problems. These comprise, but are not limited to, depression, trauma, anxiety, and social isolation. Older parents and children are specifically affected but do not receive any formal psychosocial intervention.

Sabina Oli, longing to remit money home to her sick husband and children, travelled to Kuwait through India with Rs 50,000 borrowed from relatives. She rang home, crying, telling of brutality and cruelty at the hands of her recruiter. And then the calls stopped. Oli died in her sleep due to extreme heat as per her employer. Her family had to raise funds to bring her body back home. No wages, no compensation, no government support followed. Worse, the community ostracized the family for their undocumented migration and withdrew all support.

Similar to Oli, poverty pushed Sanjita Dangi to Saudi Arabia, where she died of alleged suicide. Her body was bruised and scarred, suggesting violence. And yet, no inquiry ensued. Her already indebted husband was socially boycotted. Neighbors who had been standing by the family turned their backs. “My wife would tell me that hard times are only temporary and good days will come. But when I heard about her death, I was devastated,” her husband says.

Nanimaya Nepali too passed away alone in Kuwait. Having endured torture and isolation, she was finally preparing to return home. She was shown her burial through video call—no death certificate, no paperwork, not even a grave marker. The employer claimed that she had tested positive for Covid-19 but there was no official medical report. Her death shattered her family and drove her children into the very same cycle of migration that had taken her life. “We borrowed money hoping to have a better life, and when she died, loans were still here, even the house was locked by the moneylender,” her sister says.

These women are not isolated cases. There are more than 60,000 Nepali women working in the Gulf as domestic workers, estimated in the report, with 48,000 of them working in Kuwait alone. They are largely undocumented, absent from official data, unshielded by bilateral labour agreements, and beneath the radar in public discourse. When they die, their bodies do not return. Their deaths are unrecorded, and their families mourn in secret.

Even when they travel legally, tragedy befalls. Megha Sunar, a legally migrant worker in Oman, had to escape to Kuwait as her employer died and the company said it can’t provide salary anymore. She died in her sleep. There were no further explanations. And because she traveled across borders illegally, the government refused to help with repatriation. Her body came back only when family members and neighbors pooled money. Her husband, who stayed behind to raise two sons, now lives in a day-to-day economic and emotional struggle.

Some, like Manisha Bhandari, faced violence not from employers, but from her husband. He was working abroad in Malaysia. Though their relationship was not healthy, she too migrated to Malaysia for a data entry job. Though she and her husband lived in different cities, they occasionally met, but their relationship was beyond repair. Ten months later, he invited her into his room and murdered her. Her decomposed body was found wrapped in plastic. Her parents, now raising her daughter, received only an insurance payout. There was no mental health support, no institutional care.

Namita Dangol, burdened by her family debt and hopes for her daughter’s future, defied her family’s instructions and emigrated to Cyprus. She sent remittances and stayed in touch initially, but subsequently showed signs of distress, which she concealed from everyone but herself. When she died, legally certified as a suicide, her family was denied closure. Her coffin was sealed, and her death hangs on a cloud of questions. Following her death, a vicious court struggle broke out over the compensation funds. Her husband seized all the power, marrying again within a year and pushing Dangol’s family and daughter aside.

Radha Giri left as a domestic servant to Kuwait, put by an area agent with the assurance of insurance and clearances. A report arrived after just three months that she had passed away. Her battered neck indicated probable strangulation but no inquiry or clarification followed later. The family was given a paltry Rs 50,000 for burial costs by the agent, who was not held responsible. Giri’s husband struggles to cope with grief, turning to daily labor and sometimes alcohol, while their children live apart under relatives’ care. The family received no legal advice, counselling, or government help.

The story of Amrita Sarki illustrates the risks of clandestine migration. Having proceeded to Kuwait without a labor certificate, she worked in domestic service and then ran a small beauty parlour. Two years later, a fellow worker reported her dead. While the authorities ruled her death as a suicide, her family suspect it was a case of murder. With no official help on offer because she was undocumented, her body took months to be brought home through community efforts. Sarki’s death devastated her family’s financial and social standing, bringing stigma and isolation.

Even sanctioned legal migration proved no guarantee of safety for Asmita Kunwar, a victim of sexual harassment and physical abuse at the hands of Kuwait bosses. When she was found dead by hanging, officially an ‘illegal migrant’ since a job change, neither government departments nor embassies helped. Her family had to wait months and pay huge sums to repatriate her body with no benefits or compensation.

A friend recounts the horrible experience of Shreya Nepali, a single mother, who was pestered with constant abuse and sexual harassment. They both were first taken to Saudi Arabia and then to Kuwait to work as domestic workers where their passports were immediately confiscated. Her life there was a nightmare, says her friend. She endured relentless work during the day and suffered sexual abuse from her employer at night. Refusal brought starvation, sometimes lasting days.

“I did not see her for several days. When I inquired, the employer told me she had taken her own life. I was shocked. I strongly believe she was killed for resisting abuse,” her friend says. Her mother too migrated to India and never returned.The family was left in debt and desperation, without assistance or justice as stigma and silence ostracized them from society.

Susmita Thapa, 22, had left Nepal legally from Kathmandu airport to work in Jordan. She was reserved and reliable and aspired to lift her family out of poverty. The initial signs had been encouraging with remittances back home from her domestic work. But life took a dramatic turn for her family in 2018 when they heard about Thapa’s death. The official report was that of suicide, but Sanu Thapa, her mother, simply couldn’t accept it. The body arrived with company representatives and a postmortem report but without a follow-up investigation. Overwhelmed and ill-equipped, the family cremated Thapa’s body without explanation.

The report says that the death of migrant women workers often results in economic devastation due to unrepaid migration loans and lost income. As a result, different members of the family are forced to sell their houses, property and assets and migrate to other locations. The majority of the families fall into debt cycles with exorbitant interest rates, with female-headed households suffering the most. The families face social stigma and blame from their society for having pushed their women through irregular channels while marginalized castes face further exclusion, and the children are likely to be shunned at school.

The specialists suggest eliminating the ban on internal labor migration and having open legal migration routes. “Unconditionally, recognize, register and protect all undocumented migrants in embassies,” they say.

Sushil Acharya, director of the Foreign Employment Board Secretariat, stated that budget constraints have halted the functioning of valuable programs. He stated that the budget received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is utilized primarily in running the repatriation of deceased migrant workers and in providing compensation, but the Ministry of Finance has not made additional budget available.

Acharya also committed to accepting the suggestions that flowed through the discussion in a positive manner and proceeded towards their implementation. “Political will is the only way the ban on female migrant workers will be lifted,” he says. “Trade unions also want the ban to be lifted, but they need to pressure their political leaders to act.”

It is clear to everyone, except perhaps for some policymakers who continue to chant the mantra of ‘protecting women’ by restricting their mobility, migration bans on domestic work have not protected women at all. Instead, they have pushed women into using irregular and unsafe routes, easy targets to exploitation. They are thus compelled to either be at the mercy of agents who control their destiny, be voiceless when faced with abuse, or their untimely deaths are dismissed as natural and not subjected to inquiry.

Names of the victims in this story are changed for privacy