Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights

NEPAL: A Nod to Indigenous People

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Aug 29 2006 (IPS) - Nepal’s parliament moved again to right the wrongs of the past Monday, directing the government to ratify an international law on indigenous people.

The House of Representatives instructed the government to endorse the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. If its backers maintain pressure on the government, ratification should happen in the next session of parliament in a couple of months, said parliamentarian Bijaya Subba, who piloted the recommendation through the house.

The move comes as the country’s indigenous people, about 40 percent of the population of 25 million people, grow sceptical that they will benefit from April’s “people’s movement”, three weeks of nationwide street protests that forced King Gyanendra to give up direct rule.

Since the monarch restored parliament, legislators have tried to live up to the movement’s expectations by issuing grandiose declarations, including one that vows to abolish all laws that discriminate against women and another abolishing “untouchability”, the practise of higher-caste Hindus avoiding contact with those from the lowest caste, or class.

Until this session of parliament, Nepal was the world’s only Hindu kingdom. That ended when another proclamation designated the South Asian nation a secular state.

Many people doubt the government will translate its pledges into reality. After the return of multi-party democracy following the first people’s movement in 1990, multiple governments failed to deliver much development in this impoverished nation but the period marked the launch of a Maoist uprising that has resulted in roughly 14,000 deaths.

The parties that jockeyed for power in the 1990s are the same ones now in control of parliament and leading peace talks with Maoist leaders.

Misgivings about their declared intentions were fuelled in June when the government created a six-member interim constitution drafting committee – minus women. After loud street protests that included the minister of state for women, the group was expanded to include women and other groups labelled “disadvantaged”: indigenous people and members of the lowest caste (or Dalits).

The ILO treaty, known widely as Convention 169, commits the government to consult with indigenous people when it makes decisions affecting their lives and to ensure that they participate in such decision-making.

After the government ratifies the convention, “it will be obligated to provide programmes to deliver its promises”, Subba told IPS. “Till today all governments have neglected janajati (indigenous people’s) issues although they made policies to deal with them,” he added.

Nepal recognises 59 indigenous groups, or nationalities. Although a few of them enjoy higher than average standards of living, on the whole they are the poorest of the poor. Per capita income of all janajati groups in 2004 was 15,630 rupees (211 US dollars) while the Nepal average was 20,689 rupees, according to the Nepal Living Standard Survey.

When they tossed their first homemade bombs at government offices in the western hills, a decade ago, the Maoists vowed to deliver justice for janajatis and dalits. They have since divided the country into autonomous regions based on regions’ ethnic populations.

Many indigenous activists are also advocating for autonomous regions to form the basis of the new political setup that will be designed by a future constituent assembly. But the mainstream political parties are proposing instead various forms of federalism to replace the current centralised system.

Last weekend, outspoken janajati activist Krishna Bhattachan said it is time for indigenous people to create their own political party. Indigenous people fight for their rights “but the political parties never grant them”, he told janajati students in Kathmandu, reported ‘The Himalayan Times’ newspaper.

If such a party is not formed, indigenous people might decide en masse to back one political party that best represents their interests, another janajati leader, Balkrishna Mabuhang Limbu, told IPS. “Right now, people think that party is the Maoists,” he added.

Convention 169 “is a development tool, not a political one”, said Saloman Rajbanshi of the ILO’s Nepal office. “What (it) does provide for is self-management and the right of indigenous and tribal peoples to decide their own priorities,” he added in an email interview.

“It does not mean that the lives of Nepal’s indigenous people will change overnight for the better,” Rajbanshi added. “But it provides a legal framework that advocates their participation and consultation in development activities.”

Activist Shankar Subba believes the government will have to abide by that framework. “If there is a mechanism to force the government to consult I’m very much sure that it cannot deny that right,” the secretary of the Lawyers Association for the Human Rights of Nepali People told IPS.