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DEC 06 -


While there has been much discussion about whether the government is going to extend the term of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights in Nepal (OHCHR-N), there hasn’t been sufficient discussion on the ability of Nepal’s own National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). This is regrettable. It is inevitable that the UN body is eventually going to shut down its office and leave, just like the United Nations Mission in Nepal was closed at a certain stage in the peace process. But will the national body be sufficiently capable and empowered by then to safeguard human rights?

There needs to be a deep soul-searching on what made the establishment of OHCHR-N in 2005 necessary in the first place.  In the preceding years, cases of abuse of human rights and humanitarian law were rampant, most of them committed by the the security forces but a significant number also committed by the Maoists. In 2003 and 2004, the number of disappeared in Nepal was the highest for any country in the world, an ignoble record by any count. The establishment of OHCHR-N was the result of intense lobbying by human rights activists to draw the world’s attention to this grave crisis. The efforts bore fruits; the number of disappearances and other rights violations plummeted in the following years.

It is true that Nepal is no longer in the midst of an armed conflict. But it is also true that “not a single perpetrator has been successfully prosecuted for serious abuses in a civilian court,” according to joint report released by Advocacy Forum and Human Rights Watch on December 1. This is worrisome given that five years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which was committed to establish a Truth and Reconciliation as well as the Commission for the Investigation of the Disappeared. The bills to establish these important post-conflict mechanisms are languishing in the Constituent Assembly due to insufficient political willpower from the parties. This delay makes it evident that there are a lot of people in the parties who are afraid of the truth about what happened during the conflict. The governing motto, as articulated by Prime Minister Baburam Bhattrai seems to be “forgive and forget.” This blanket policy misses a crucial point, forgive what? International experience from South Africa, for example, shows that it is essential to establish truth about the crimes before the process of forgiveness begins. Who do you forgive without knowing what happened?

It is at this crucial juncture, when the establishment TRC and the disappeared commission are tantalisingly close, that the OHCHR can play a crucial role by mobilising the UN system to pressure Nepal’s government to follow international norms of transitional justice. Despite what those who wield power believe, Nepal’s transition into a just society is not possible merely by forgetting the crimes of the past. Toward that end, OHCHR-N can perhaps play a role in strengthening NHRC, a body currenly hopelessly divided and dysfunctional.


Posted on: 2011-12-07 12:52

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