US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday honoured Nepali anti-trafficking hero, Charimaya Tamang, with the 2011 Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award.

Tamang was honoured during the release of 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report at the State Department in Washington.

 Born into a poor family, made poorer by the death of her father, Charimaya was 16 years old when she was trafficked to India.

She spent 22 months in a brothel before the Indian government rescued her along with over 200 other Nepali women in 1996. Upon her return to Nepal, Tamang was ostracised by her community.

However, she filed a case against her traffickers, becoming the first person to file personally a trafficking case at the

district police. In 1997, the District Court—in a landmark decision—convicted and sentenced eight offenders involved in her case.

Later in 2000, Tamang and 15 other survivors established Shakti Samuha, an anti-trafficking NGO.

 In that role, Tamang raised the importance of including survivors in each district-level working group.

There are now five trafficking survivors serving as members at the district-level committees around the country. Releasing the report, Secretary of State Clinton recognized ten TIP Heroes from around the world for their efforts in combating human trafficking.