Girls In Nepal Are Being Banished To A Shed When They Have Their Periods And It's Killing Them

Roshani Tiruwa was found dead on the floor of her family’s chhaupadi hut on Sunday morning. According to local police, the high school student most likely suffocated while attempting to light a fire to stay warm during the night.

The belief is that women become impure during their menstruation cycle and cannot be allowed around the rest of the family. They are forbidden from touching things like kitchen utensils and public water sources, attending school, or sleeping inside the family home. In the remote villages of western Nepal, this belief takes a more extreme form: banishing women on their periods to chhaupadi huts.

A typical chhaupadi hut is fairly small. The sheds or outbuildings often don’t have proper windows or doors. The huts are poorly protected from the elements and littered with hay and livestock dung. Staying in these sheds also exposes women to snake bites, freezing weather, and wild animal attacks.

They aren't allowed to prepare food and are often forced into doing more demanding physical labor, like collecting firewood or farm labor. Chhaupadi also entails restrictions on the women's diets. They typically are forbidden from eating meat or other nutritious fruits and vegetables — they are instead given dry food, bread, or beaten rice. The women aren't allowed to drink milk or eat any dairy products either because locals believe it would make their cows and buffaloes sick.

"If we touch men or anything in the house, cook, or use public water tanks and wells, our god, Debti, will punish us. Our hands and legs will be twisted, our eyes plucked out," a Nepali woman told Al Jazeera in 2014.

According to a UN report, there's no official number of how many women a year die chhaupadi-related deaths. But the most common cause of death is what happened this week to Tiruwa. The huts aren't properly ventilated and during winter months, women try to light a fire to stay warm, and they either accidentally set the hut on fire or suffocate.

There are other risks involved with chhaupadi. Due to the restricted diets forced upon women, they usually lack much-needed nutrients during their periods. They also risk being attacked by wild animals because many chhaupadi sheds don't have doors. The practice also perpetuates intense psychological harm, creating feelings of guilt and humiliation.

Yagraj Bhul's 15-year-old daughter Sarmila died in 2013 while practicing chhaupadi. Sarmila's cause of death was never determined as there was no post-mortem. There weren't any doctors in the village to perform it either. Bhul told reporters in 2014, however, that after his daughter's death, none of the women in his family practice chhaupadi anymore.

Dambara Upadhyay was living with her in-laws while her husband worked in India. She was found dead the morning after her last night of menstrual seclusion.

The news of her death made national headlines and the prime minister of Nepal even launched an investigation. The cause of Upadhyay's death was never determined, but she was found with blood coming out of her nose. The door was locked from the inside, so foul play wasn't suspected. It's believed she suffered a heart attack.

But the government hasn't taken any concrete steps yet. "We have now requested local organizations and women groups to destroy all chhaupadi sheds," Bishnu Prasad Lamsal at the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare told BuzzFeed News.

Chhaupadi was officially banned in 2005 by Nepal's Supreme Court. In major cities like Kathmandu, it's virtually unheard of, but in the far-western districts of Nepal, it's still deeply ingrained in the culture.

“It is really difficult dealing with the older people in communities that follow [these] norms — myths related to menstrual-hygiene management that have been practised from generation to generation,” Sandhya Chaulagain of WaterAid Nepal told The Guardian in April. “So we are focusing our program on youth, as they are the change-makers and future elders.”