Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-NEPAL: Under Democracy, Activists Want More From UN

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, May 9 2006 (IPS) - Justice will be done for those killed and injured in April’s revolution, pledged Nepal’s new government last Friday, taking a radical step towards ending the impunity that has long cloaked human rights abusers in this violence-wracked nation.

“It is already clear who issued shooting orders in … Kathmandu and other parts of the country where at least 19 were killed and dozens have gone missing,” recalled member of Parliament Ishwor Pokharel, speaking on May 4 in the revived House of Representatives. Later, a motion to create a judicial commission to bring the abusers to book was unanimously passed, ‘The Kathmandu Post’ reported.

More than 6,000 people were injured, dozens shot with rubber bullets and thousands brutally thrashed by cane-wielding police, in the three weeks of protests that swelled until hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of the capital and forced King Gyanendra to reinstate parliament, dissolved by a previous government in 2002.

On hand to monitor many of the hundreds of protests and demonstrations that erupted across this South Asian country were staff from the Nepal office of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Like many of its moves during its first year of operation, the agency’s work during the “people’s movement” has been both praised and criticised.

“I don’t think that they had enough people to monitor all those demonstrations, beatings and killings. And even if there were more, people also say that they were just observers, they couldn’t intervene,” said Padma Ratna Tuladhar a long-time human rights activist and a civil society leader, in an interview.

But, says OHCHR’s Nepal chief Ian Martin, “We were constantly intervening in the sense of having our human rights officers trying to address on the spot the senior officers responsible for policing those demonstrations and reminding them of their obligations. It’s not the role of the UN to intervene physically as a peacekeeping force,” he added in an interview in his office, a few minutes drive from congested central Kathmandu.

Lawyer Mandira Sharma believes the monitors’ presence “had some effect in reducing the extent of the violations”, although she noted to IPS that it took the human rights watchdog almost a full year to get fully set up and staffed.

The OHCHR’s country office is in the capital Kathmandu, and four regional offices are situated across the small nation sandwiched between India and China. OHCHR Nepal’s total budget for 2006-2007 is 14.1 million U.S. dollars, a large chunk of which comes from western governments.

The office was established when King Gyanendra’s government cut a last-minute deal at the UN Human Rights Commission in April 2005, just two months after seizing power in a bloodless coup and imposing a state of emergency. Many in the human rights community wanted stronger action, such as sanctions, against the regime.

But less than two weeks after “people power” toppled the monarch, a political spring is in bloom here. Multi-party democracy has returned and the powerful Maoist rebels have declared a ceasefire, declaring they are ready for serious talks on peace and a republican political system. Parliament has reciprocated the ceasefire and pledged to hold elections to a constituent assembly that should draft a new constitution and decide the monarchy’s fate.

The OHCHR is equipped to work in the new environment, said Martin, who arrived in Nepal on May 7, 2005. “Our existing mandate covers a very significant proportion of what needs to be monitored during a ceasefire so I think the office has a very important role in doing everything it can to sustain that ceasefire.”

The office can bring certain “assets” to the job, he adds, such as “an established communication with the Maoists…our relations with the security forces I think are a relationship of respect”, and, he adds laughing, “I guess we’ve seen most of the political party leaders in detention the last few weeks so they’ve got to know us too”.

Amnesty International chief Irene Khan praised the unit’s work in a March article in ‘Himal Southasian’ magazine. “There is widespread feeling that the presence of the UN human rights monitors has been beneficial. The mandate of the monitoring mission must be extended and its capacity expanded.”

Nepal’s new government has not made any official statement about the office, whose term is set to expire in April 2007. But Prime Minister Girija Koirala’s Nepali Congress (NC) party believes “the office is very necessary until human rights are secured”, said NC Acting Chief Secretary Shobhakar Parajuli.

“When we called to report human rights violations, they responded well,” he told IPS.

Sharma, executive director of the NGO Advocacy Forum, which monitors prison conditions and detainees, said the OHCHR’s presence in the past year boosted the confidence of local human rights workers: “We started feeling that they were there (to help) in case something happened to us.”

She also thinks the office can play a part in monitoring a ceasefire and elections. But Sharma believes the OHCHR’s mandate is fundamentally flawed because the findings of its investigations are not automatically passed to local prosecutors. “There should be a procedure to see that all the cases that the office investigates are brought to trial. After all, we fought long and hard for the office to have that mandate to investigate,” argues Sharma.

Martin admits that his office has made little headway in establishing the accountability that civil society has been demanding. “We’ve been quite frustrated with how unsatisfactory the process of investigation and prosecution of members of the security forces for serious human rights violations has been.”

On May 2, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, who visited Nepal in September 2005, told human rights officials in Geneva, “Torture was conducted on a systematic basis” in the country, by both government forces and Maoists.

Illegal detention and forced disappearances by security forces are also major problems, although Martin pointed out that disappearances have all but ended since his office arrived. The OHCHR chief has repeatedly recommended giving the civilian justice system powers to investigate and prosecute abuses against civilians by security forces to curb the impunity that perpetuates those rights violations.

Tuladhar says many people still want Martin’s office itself “to be more active, more influential”. But, he adds, “They did accomplish something: they have been able to draw the attention of the Nepali people and the international community to violations, which also caused the government to not repeat them.”

OHCHR in Nepal (http://nepal.ohchr.org/) UN Committee Against Torture (http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/)

 
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