UN official calls for greater assistance for IDPs

A top UN official has called for greater assistance for thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nepal whose suffering remains largely overshadowed by the nine-year-old Maoist insurgency. Walter Kälin, representative of the UN Secretary-General on Human Rights, said on Friday that many of the displaced people needed protection and assistance, describing the caseload as "overlooked and neglected". The UN official was on a 10-day mission to the country during which he visited four districts, including a recent hot-spot where actions by “self-defence” groups backed by the government, and Maoist retaliation, resulted in over 40 deaths in mid-February. According to the UN news service, the UN representative found that there was a widespread pattern of conflict-induced displacement in the Asian nation, with the main causes being acts of violence or threats against the population, practices of forced recruitment and extortion by the Maoist armed group, fear of reprisals by the Royal Nepal Army for allegedly providing food or shelter to Maoists (even when this was provided under duress) and a generalised climate of insecurity. Kälin has asked the government of Nepal to condemn the emergence of self-defence or vigilante groups and to discourage them from taking the law in their own hands. Additionally, he has requested that government authorities make adequate arrangements with regard to the protection of IDPs' human rights, including their proper registration and documentation. Protecting the voting rights of IDPs was important in the context of the upcoming municipal elections, which the government planned to hold before mid-April 2006, he added. The UN official categorically asked the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to respect international humanitarian laws, “particularly the distinction between combatants and non-combatants” and publicly commit to adhere to the UN's Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Maoist violence - which began in February 1996 - and the government’s counter-insurgency operations have resulted in over 11,O00 deaths so far, with that number growing everyday. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced during the conflict, with estimates ranging from a government figure of 8,000 to up to 200,000 by others. But keeping an accurate count of IDPs remains problematic given ongoing issues of access and registration, and also because many of the displaced had moved on to India in search of livelihoods. Nepal and India share a largely unregulated 1,750-km open border and Kälin said India could be holding more displaced Nepalese than those that were in the Himilayan kingdom itself. Such a reality points to another problem. Nepal, a nation of some 27 million, does not have proper camps for the displaced. There are about 100 families at Rajena, a camp near Nepalgunj in the Midwestern region of the country. "The settlement now has small huts, but no schools for children or proper water supply," Kundan Aryal, general secretary of Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a local human rights organisation, told IRIN. "Their immediate needs are to find ways to survive, send children to school and keep the youth engaged in productive work," Aryal added. "The longer-term issues are protection of their property rights and reintegrating them in society." INSEC has also conducted a study on displacement in the east of Nepal, with early results suggesting those displaced there are either living with relatives or have found other ways to disperse in the population. But their coping mechanisms were nearing exhaustion and according to Kälin, whatever assistance had been provided to the IDPs remained “grossly insufficient”. The UN official has also called on the international community in Nepal to develop a comprehensive strategy to respond to the human rights and humanitarian needs of the IDPs and to find long-term solutions on their behalf.