KATHMANDU, APR 06 -
The government has yet to take a call on the future of the United Nations’ human rights body, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Nepal, whose term expires on June 9.

Chief Secretary Madhav Ghimire had to convene a meeting to advise the Prime Minister. “However, the meeting has been put off thrice,” said an official at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

After the PMO and OHCHR exchanged a draft mandate of the new agreement, the UN body was not happy over its exit strategy as Nepal suggested a reduced mandate with only a six-month extension. The bureaucratic establishment has now left it to the political level to take a call on the future of OHCHR here. 

The Foreign Ministry on March 10 had forwarded a  proposal for extending the term by another six months with a reduced mandate to the PMO. The PMO and the Ministry had also sought perspectives from the Geneva-based Nepal’s UN mission, which suggested scaling down the mandate. “No political party, not even the UCPN (Maoist), are willing to upgrade the current mandate. This has led the Prime Minister himself to be ambiguous,” the official said.

OHCHR’s revised mandate, according to the draft prepared by the PMO, stressed that it would only be granted an advisory role to the National Human Rights Commission.

Posted on: 2010-04-07 07:15

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