They are exaggerating the selling part. The fact is that lot of these village kids work for households in Kathmandu and they get some money to send home. That is not exactly 'selling'. Leave it to media to glorify and inflate non issues such as this. Vincent, there is a big difference between selling girls for prostitution and having kids work for households for a minimum pay. These kids are better off in the city anyways. Back in the village, they could be recruited forcefully by the maoist anytime. They don't have access to enough food. They don't have easy access to water. They don't have access to information. They have to do a lot of manual hard labor such at in the fields. In the city they have to work as well but they have access to better food than before. Better lifestyle than in the village. Most 'educated' families treat them well. Give them enough food and clothes and fulfill their needs. They have access to watch TV and learn more about the world. They have more opportunities in the city. They might even work for some restaurant part time. This is a classic example of bloated industrialized BS. Remember those Malaysian workers in the NIKE plant in malaysia? Same difference. The workers work because they are better off than they were before. It would have been exploitation if it was done in the US where the playing field is pretty high and of course you're talking about thousands of dollars of per capita income versus couple of hundreds. It's bull shiit to compare the standards of US or other developed countries to that of Nepal. You must be pretty americanized or westernized if you believe that the rest of the world needs to be judged by western standards. It's all about economies of scale. In the US, illegal immigrants do the manual labors and get exploited. But when you consider the socio-economic aspect, these people are better off doing that than not doing it. And that is capitalism my friend.