PUBLIC STATEMENT
February 3, 2010
ENDING IMPUNITY, KEY TO NEPAL’S PEACE EFFORTS
February 3, 2010
- Representatives of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary
Disappearances (AFAD), a regional human rights group working directly on
the issue of enforced disappearance were in Nepal on 25-28 January, 2010
as part of their Asian lobby tour calling on Asian governments to end
the persisting culture of impunity by bringing perpetrators of enforced
disappearances and other human rights violations to justice and
providing reparations to victims and their families. The AFAD
delegation, with the accompaniment of Atty. Gabriella Citroni, member of
the Italian delegation of the then working group for the drafting and
negotiation of the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance, called on the interim government of Nepal to
enact the long-awaited anti-enforced disappearance law and to sign and
ratify the said international treaty.
Nepal is the country which submitted the largest number of cases of
disappearances to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) in 2004, thus, compelling the
latter to visit the country twice. The United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the National Human Rights
Commission had documented more than 2,000 people who have fallen victims
to enforced disappearance during the decade-long armed conflict. But
according to Advocacy Forum-Nepal, a member-organization of AFAD who has
been documenting the cases of disappearance, even after the signing of
the peace pact between the government and the Maoist rebels, the
government’s official record is just a tip of the iceberg as more cases
of disappearances are still undocumented due to fear of reprisals on the
part of the victims’ families.
In a public meeting organized by Advocacy Forum which was held in Hotel
d’ Annapurna, the calls of AFAD were supported by the head of the Nepali
Human Rights Commission, Retired Chief Justice Kedar Nath Upadhyay. The
country’s commitment to be a party to the Convention will be a
significant confident-building measure for the Nepali government to show
serious commitment to deal with human rights, a vital issue to ensure
its transition from the violent conflict to peace and democracy. Early
on, the group also had an interview in a radio program, the Voice of
Nepal to inform the public how grave the issue of disappearance is and
what are the existing efforts at the national, regional and
international level to address it.
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced on Involuntary Disappearances which was adopted by the UN
General Assembly in 2006 will be a very strong means to prevent enforced
disappearances and to ensure truth, justice, redress and the
reconstruction of the historical memory of the victims. To date, more
than 90 states have signed the treaty and 18 have ratified. Only two
more ratifications are needed for the treaty to enter into force.
The ratification of the UN Convention and the passage of
anti-disappearance law are two important measures that the Nepali
government needs to undertake in order to ensure the full implementation
of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Supreme Court ruling on
enforced disappearances in 2007. More than two years have passed but no
single perpetrator of enforced disappearance has been held accountable
for this heinous crime while victims and their families continue to
languish in the uncertainty of waiting for elusive truth, justice and
reparation to be finally served.
The AFAD mission in Nepal was culminated with a meeting with
representatives of the Committee for Social Justice Advancing the Rights
of Victims, a national organization of the victims of the decade-long
conflict in Nepal who are bent on empowering themselves to principally
take the lead in the struggle for truth and justice, to end impunity and
to ensure the realization of a just and lasting peace.
Signed:
 |
 |
|
MUGIYANTO |
MARY AILEEN D. BACALSO |
| Chairperson |
Secretary-General |
