UN human rights monitoring brings new hope

Local human rights groups in Nepal have welcomed Kathmandu’s decision on Monday to allow UN human rights monitoring in the country. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Nepali government signed an agreement on 11 April to establish a monitoring operation in the country to assess human rights abuses at the hands of security forces, as well as Maoist rebels. The Maoists have been waging an armed campaign against the state since 1996. More than 11,000 Nepalis have been killed in a conflict that shows not signs of ending. The agreement means that the UN will be allowed not just to monitor human rights abuses but also to conduct investigations and submit reports to the OHCHR, the UN General Assembly and the Secretary-General’s office. “The agreement between the UN and government will mostly benefit civilians. The UN monitors will help to deliver people from the terrifying atmosphere that they have been living in,” Subodh Pyakhurel, president of the prominent independent local rights group, INSEC, told IRIN. The rights activists added that the agreement had also pleased Maoist rebels as they had been asking for independent human rights monitoring for a long time. According to the statement by the UN, the agreement will be implemented immediately and the deployment of human rights monitoring officers will start soon. “This will also help to automatically monitor Maoist atrocities. Gradually, this will also pave the way for creating an environment for negotiations between the Maoists and the state,” Pyakhure added, optimistically. Activists say that the agreement has come at the right time, especially after press freedom and other fundamental rights have been under attack in the Himalayan kingdom since 1 February when King Gyanendra assumed direct rule and declared a state of emergency. “In the absence of democracy, UN human rights monitoring will help in many ways, especially at a time when the flow of information has been controlled by the state and journalists are not allowed to report freely even on Maoist atrocities,” Purosattam Dahal, president of Human Rights Peace and Society (HURPES), a local rights monitoring group, told IRIN. Activists hope that the government will ease restrictions on press censorship and allow more access to detention centres. Recently, former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was barred by the security forces from visiting a senior communist leader, Bharat Mohan Adhikary, in detention since the royal takeover of power. Last week, the government freed Nepali Congress leader Girija Prasad Koirala and over 250 political detainees but more than 1,000 activists are still reported to be in detention since 1 February. Human rights groups are also asking the government to lift the state of emergency and withdraw security forces from civil administration. “This is the only way to prove the commitment of the government that has promised to allow impartiality, transparency and independence in monitoring,” explained Pyakhurel. The state of emergency has imposed restrictions on several human rights workers, preventing them from travelling around the country. Well-known activist Nath Dhugana, for example, has been prohibited from travelling outside Kathmandu. To make the rights monitoring effective, INSEC and other groups with similar objectives have set up a human rights committee and are planning to set up a media centre immediately to ensure their monitoring activities are publicised. “This is a good chance for human rights defenders to do their work effectively and under norms of human rights law. We view this move by the government as a positive step,” Tarak Dhital, a human rights activist from the Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN) NGO, told IRIN.