“Reconstruction and reconciliation require finances and physical structure, but the families of the victims of the conflict first and foremost need their integrity protected. Physical and financial compensation mean little without justice,” wrote Suman Adhikari nearly 11 years ago, during a ceasefire in Nepal’s Maoist insurgency.

The conflict ended later that year, leaving 17,000 dead over a decade, including Adhikari’s father. A teacher and headmaster in Lamjung district, he and his fellow teachers in January 2002 refused Maoist demands to hand over 25 percent of their salaries. Days later, cadres seized him as he was teaching a Grade 10 class, bound his hands and legs, and dragged the man out of the school to a forest, where he was stabbed in the stomach and shot in the head. His body was left tied to a tree.“Many victims have been unable to get on with their lives. They are frustrated and suffer from psychological trauma." --Suman Adhikari

Soon after, Suman returned to the capital Kathmandu, where he began talking to other conflict victims about their own horrible experiences. They met with civil society organisations and political leaders, created an organisation and submitted their demands to political leaders then crafting the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Today, as chairperson of the Conflict Victims Common Platform, Suman finds himself repeating many of the same requests.

One of the Common Platform’s main demands is that the government provide needs-based compensation to victims. The state has paid most of them Rs 500,000 (4,834 US dollars) as interim relief since the conflict ended but Adhikari says one-off payments can’t replace many of the breadwinners who families lost; without them, many are still struggling to find sufficient work or pay school fees.

“Many victims have been unable to get on with their lives. They are frustrated and suffer from psychological trauma,” he says.

Suman Adhikari, chairperson of Nepal’s Conflict Victims Common Platform, holding a photo of his father. Credit: Marty Logan/IPS

While society moves on, with, for example, the political leader who was prime minister three times during the insurgency taking over as PM again last week from former Maoist supremo Prachanda, victims are being forgotten, Suman says. “They still haven’t had the chance to speak of their pain properly, from the heart.”

A recent report found that victims have diverse demands for ‘truth’. Prepared by the Nepal office of the International Centre for Transitional Justice and local think-tank Martin Chautari from recent interviews with victims, it noted that many people needed closure and an end to their ambiguous losses. “Our people will come home today or tomorrow. We watch the roads,” said one woman in Bardiya, the district that had the most disappearances during the conflict.

Recognition is also a common wish, Aileen Thomson, head of ICTJ Nepal, told IPS. “They feel that the violation happened because of their membership in certain communities … a lot of times violations perpetrated by the State were because of perceived associations with the Maoists, which was really tied to identity and community and where you lived.”

The survivors want society to know that their kin were innocent victims, caught in the crossfire, adds the report.

Just as victims’ demands varied, civil society also had different ideas about what transitional justice should achieve, says Mandira Sharma, co-founder of Advocacy Forum, an NGO that filed numerous court cases for conflict-era crimes. But those theoretical discussions were shelved when it became apparent that political leaders from both sides were hoping to use the process to avoid prosecutions, adds Sharma, who is now doing a PhD in human rights and law.

“We went to see the prime minister at that time, Girija Prasad Koirala, and he was very open and honest. He said ‘Look, I had concerns raised by the military, I had concerns raised by the Maoists, and I have assured them that nothing will happen to them… We have to turn now to development, and we have to forget what happened’.”

Instead, Advocacy Forum and other groups continued to take cases to court. After victims received their interim relief, “You could have closed the chapter forcing victims to be quiet with that, but that would have been temporary: this deep sense of injustice would have remained,” Sharma says.

“In that past that’s what we did (using commissions formed after earlier political milestones like Nepal’s return to democracy in 1990). That hasn’t helped us to heal, that hasn’t helped us to improve the justice system, to correct the sense that certain people are always above the law. And there’s a very deep sense of inequality in our system because of this. We identified this as something we had to fix.”

Today though, transitional justice appears at a near standstill. The government created truth and disappearances commissions in 2014, but the legislation was severely criticised on several fronts. The Supreme Court later struck down a provision that grants amnesty for serious human rights violations.

Human Rights lawyer Raju Chapagain says that while the laws creating the bodies must be amended, the truth commission could be making efforts to advance transitional justice, which would also help to diminish a strong sense of scepticism about the body. “Nothing is preventing them inquiring into human rights violations. Commissions have powers equivalent to courts; they have adequate powers in terms of inquiries,” he says.

By taking action the commission could overcome its “credibility gap,” Chapagain adds, but it has failed to date, in part because it hasn’t engaged with victims.

The truth commission opened its office in Pokhara, west of Kathmandu, this week, one of seven regional centres, but Adhikari says the body still refuses to engage with victims. “The commissions are not good, the appointments are political, the commissioners are new to this: they should at least have a willingness to learn and to collaborate – but they don’t listen to us.”

The post Time Stands Still for Nepal’s Conflict Victims appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Just weeks after giving up her post, the former president of the parliament of Norway&#39s indigenous Sami people has lambasted Sami journalists for shoving aside their culture in the rush to get a &#39scoop&#39.

Aili Keskitalo told an international conference organised by Sami media organisations that reporters had "violated" personal limits during her tenure, including when she was hospitalised with a brain stroke and when it was rumoured that she was pregnant. "This leads me to the question: is this Sami journalism or a bad copy (of mainstream journalism)," asked the former president, who delivered the critique with a smile as keynote speaker at the opening of the conference &#39Same Voice, But Different&#39 in northern Norway, Sami territory.

"My experience is that Sami media want to publish the most juicy and dramatic details, maybe to impress the Norwegian media," added Keskitalo, who was speaking to about 40 indigenous journalists from around the world in Alta, a town of 20,000 people above the Arctic Circle. She resigned as the first Sami woman president, after serving just two years of a four-year term, reportedly because of protracted disputes with her vice-president.

The Sami, Europe&#39s only indigenous people, are native to what are now Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia. Best known as reindeer herders, about half of today&#39s Sami population of 80,000 lives in Norway.

Some journalists at the conference readily admitted that they often find themselves agonising over whether to publicise some news or shelve it to protect their community. "You have a vested interest in the future of your own people …the information that you uniquely have access to as a tribal member, you have to weigh" (whether or not to publicise it), said Ronnie Washines from Yakama Nation Multimedia Services in Washington State in the United States.

A member of the Native American Journalist Association, Washines added that leaders of indigenous communities are notorious for trying to limit freedom of indigenous media. But today they "are beginning to understand that trying to keep secrets is no way for the tribe to advance. If that means being open to everyone, then that&#39s a risk worth taking."

The indigenous media conference, which ended Sunday, brought together journalists from the Nordic countries and other European nations, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Many participants said the organisations they represent are hoping to boost the sharing of indigenous peoples stories from around the world. "We already have collaboration with Sami broadcasting, Maori broadcasting (from New Zealand) and the Aboriginal Peoples TV Network, in Canada," said Pia Christensen, head of news at Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa in Greenland, adding, "we want it to be more regular."

Like other indigenous media organisations, Christensen&#39s has been limited by resources. "On our side most of the problems (with collaboration) have been technical – our equipment was never really updated. But in May we went digital, so it&#39s much easier now," she said in an interview.

In her speech, former president Keskitalo also asked if Sami journalists "always choose the easy way out?" For example, instead of approaching members of the Norwegian parliament with tough questions about the importance they give to Sami issues, reporters constantly go after Sami parliamentarians – who have less decision-making power – with those questions, she suggested.

Norway&#39s Sami Parliament, which sat for the first time in 1989, acts mainly as an adviser on issues to the Norwegian Parliament: it also administers some of the money provided for Sami affairs by the Norwegian state. Sweden and Finland have also established Sami parliaments.

Sami journalists appeared to accept at least some of the ex-president&#39s criticism. The president "was very correct. We have been following her. I was the first one who reported that she was pregnant – but I contacted her first to confirm it; she was happy I did that," said Liv Inger Somby, a journalist at Sami Radio, a division of Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

Inger added that she is willing to publicise issues that she knows are likely to upset the Sami community, and she spends a lot of time deciding how to present those stories while minimising the hurt. "I hear people say &#39we have to protect our people. Why are you discussing these things&#39? As a journalist it&#39s my job to tell the negative as well as the positive news; it&#39s my job to explain why this is happening here," she added in an interview.

The veteran Sami journalist described reporting on the court case of the deputy mayor of a Sami community, who had sex with a 16-year-old girl. During the trial, the girl testified that she had had sex with 17 different men. "It was such a sad story," remembered Inger. "I was thinking, as a Sami journalist do I have to report all these details to all the Sami people?"

"In the end I avoided the details. I decided to tell the story of how this man used the girl," she recalled. However, reporters from the national media publicised the details, which resulted in a probe by the media ombudsman. The ombudsman "decided that we were the only ones who didn&#39t do anything wrong," said Inger.

*Marty Logan is a former IPS journalist who now works with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal.

The post MEDIA: Indigenous Journalists Seek Identity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Feb 9 2007 (IPS)

Hiring a private firm to manage the drinking water system in Nepal’s capital violates the right to health guarantee in the country’s interim constitution, activists are set to argue before the Supreme Court.

Four groups are opposing a plan to break up the Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC) in the Kathmandu Valley and disperse its work and assets among three new agencies, one of which will hire the British firm Severn Trent to manage water delivery in the Valley’s five municipalities for six years.

The scheme, which has been approved by Nepal’s new legislature, is a condition tied to building the huge Melamchi project that will divert river water to the capital. It is led by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

“Health is a fundamental right. When you say health, that includes water,” says Gopal Siwakoti ‘Chintan’, legal advisor at Water and Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal (WAFED). “What is the guarantee that Severn Trent will continue the supply in a free and affordable manner?” he added in an interview.

The organisations that launched the court challenge also contend that the management contract should have been awarded to a local company and that NWSC should have been given a real chance to reform.

AsDB counters that its plan will devolve responsibility for supplying drinking water and managing wastewater to Nepal’s municipalities, where it belongs, and that the NWSC is not being privatised because 80 percent of the shares in the new utility operator will be held by the central and local governments, making Severn Trent a “private sector participant”. That firm was hired because its expertise is unavailable in Nepal, adds the Bank.

Water supply in the Kathmandu Valley, home to close to two million people, is notoriously poor. Roughly 30-40 percent of people are not connected to the NWSC system, according to Chintan, relying on public water taps, which are unreliable, and springs and other surface water sources.

Many homeowners who have connections supplement the piped supply by tapping groundwater, which supplies 60-70 percent of the Valley’s demand during the dry season. In 2004, the NWSC was supplying only 145 million litres a day to meet a demand of 294 million litres, according to the corporation.

Nor is the piped water potable in many areas. One-half of households tested in the Valley were receiving water that contained no chlorine, the simplest method for disinfecting water, according to a study done by government and NGOs in August 2006.

One of the first tasks for Severn Trent will be installing water meters where none now exist, says AsDB Senior Urban Development Specialist Keiichi Tamaki. That includes at the more than 1,000 public taps where locals now often collect water for free. NWSC currently charges those with meters 50 rupees (0.71 U.S. dollars) for the first 10,000 litres of water and 15 rupees for every 1,000 litres above that.

That base rate will remain unchanged until delivery is improved, says AsDB, but the charge for water supplied beyond 10,000 litres needs to increase by 50 percent to finance operating costs, capital investment and professional management of the new company. The tariff rose 15 percent in September 2004 and will “likely” increase once this year and again in 2008, Tamaki said in an interview.

“People are already paying much more than expected in the form of tankers (to deliver water), diseases and bottled water. When you add up these ‘coping costs’ the increase is easily affordable,” he added.

The Nepal Government says it is too soon to predict if the review board that will be created from splitting the NWSC’s Valley business into three – including the utility operator and management board – would approve an increase. “If the operator wants the tariff raised they will have to make a request to the management board, which will make a request to the Tariff Fixation Board, which is independent,” said Krishna Prasad Acharya, joint secretary at the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works.

“It’s not like AsDB has recommended a 50 percent raise so it has to go up by 50 percent. It could be done like that in the past but now you’ll have to go step-by-step,” Acharya told IPS.

What is certain is that those using public taps will have to start paying a monthly tariff, and that they will not benefit from what the bank calls the “generously subsidised” first 10,000 litres of water. Tap users will pay 70 percent of what homeowners pay for their non-subsidised water, at today’s rates 10.5 rupees for each 1,000 litres. By 2008 that would rise to almost 14 rupees, slightly more than a packet of milk in Kathmandu, according to Tamaki’s projected rate hike.

“In our visits and surveys (to lower income areas) a family is using 15-30 litres a day for drinking and cooking. That’s 450-900 litres a month,” says Divas B Basnyat at the Melamchi project’s Low Income Consumer Support Unit. “They laugh when we tell them how much that will cost because they’d rather pay than get up early in the morning to stand in line for water,” he added.

At the same time, the Unit has also found that low-income people now use other water sources, like spring water, for washing and bathing, but would prefer to use piped water. If they were to start doing that, then their monthly bills would rise.

The Unit is planning to rehabilitate most of the public taps in the Valley. The work will be free but the community will have to set up a users’ group to manage the water. Water in the first year after a meter is installed will be free and it will be piped for half-price in the second year, added Basnyat.

‘Chintan’ asks why such improvements could not be made by the existing NWSC working with Severn Trent. Alternatively, “Hand the operating system to the municipalities so they own the board, the management and the profit. Then they will have the incentive” to provide quality service, he suggests.

“In all legal, political and technical terms, (the plan) is a privatisation,” he adds. A public institution will be de-authorised and all its wealth and functions transferred to a Nepali private company and ultimately to Severn Trent.”

According to Tamaki, “A number of (reform) models were tried by the World Bank from the late 1970s to the early 2000s and failed…in the eyes of the donor community the NWSC is a non-starter.”

Water expert Ajaya Dixit disagrees. “It was never given an opportunity to reform,” he told IPS. “Its creation (as a board to usher in a World Bank water supply project) was greatly flawed. It ended up basically becoming a procurement agency. The law said it had to follow central government directives and a minister sat on the board.”

“You can do things when you’ve been given responsibility but responsibility must be given,” added the founder of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation.

In an email, a Severn Trent employee told IPS he could not discuss the management contract now. Media here have highlighted the UK firm’s recent overcharging of customers, which led to a probe by utility regulatory Owfat. It found, “Severn Trent Water had provided regulatory data that was either deliberately miscalculated or poorly supported”. The firm must refund customers 42 million pounds (82.2 million dollars) by 2009.

The investigation into Severn Trent’s “customer service performance failures is still continuing”, Peter Mandich from Ofwat’s press office told IPS via email.

The AsDB is unconcerned, says Tamaki. “Disputes between operators and regulators are not uncommon at all…Severn Trent was very cooperative in the first instance – they realised (the miscalculation) themselves and reported it.”

The post NEPAL: ‘Privatisation’ Violates Right to Health – Activists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Feb 9 2007 (IPS)

Hiring a private firm to manage the drinking water system in Nepal’s capital violates the right to health guarantee in the country’s interim constitution, activists are set to argue before the Supreme Court.

Four groups are opposing a plan to break up the Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC) in the Kathmandu Valley and disperse its work and assets among three new agencies, one of which will hire the British firm Severn Trent to manage water delivery in the Valley’s five municipalities for six years.

The scheme, which has been approved by Nepal’s new legislature, is a condition tied to building the huge Melamchi project that will divert river water to the capital. It is led by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

“Health is a fundamental right. When you say health, that includes water,” says Gopal Siwakoti ‘Chintan’, legal advisor at Water and Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal (WAFED). “What is the guarantee that Severn Trent will continue the supply in a free and affordable manner?” he added in an interview.

The organisations that launched the court challenge also contend that the management contract should have been awarded to a local company and that NWSC should have been given a real chance to reform.

AsDB counters that its plan will devolve responsibility for supplying drinking water and managing wastewater to Nepal’s municipalities, where it belongs, and that the NWSC is not being privatised because 80 percent of the shares in the new utility operator will be held by the central and local governments, making Severn Trent a “private sector participant”. That firm was hired because its expertise is unavailable in Nepal, adds the Bank.

Water supply in the Kathmandu Valley, home to close to two million people, is notoriously poor. Roughly 30-40 percent of people are not connected to the NWSC system, according to Chintan, relying on public water taps, which are unreliable, and springs and other surface water sources.

Many homeowners who have connections supplement the piped supply by tapping groundwater, which supplies 60-70 percent of the Valley’s demand during the dry season. In 2004, the NWSC was supplying only 145 million litres a day to meet a demand of 294 million litres, according to the corporation.

Nor is the piped water potable in many areas. One-half of households tested in the Valley were receiving water that contained no chlorine, the simplest method for disinfecting water, according to a study done by government and NGOs in August 2006.

One of the first tasks for Severn Trent will be installing water meters where none now exist, says AsDB Senior Urban Development Specialist Keiichi Tamaki. That includes at the more than 1,000 public taps where locals now often collect water for free. NWSC currently charges those with meters 50 rupees (0.71 U.S. dollars) for the first 10,000 litres of water and 15 rupees for every 1,000 litres above that.

That base rate will remain unchanged until delivery is improved, says AsDB, but the charge for water supplied beyond 10,000 litres needs to increase by 50 percent to finance operating costs, capital investment and professional management of the new company. The tariff rose 15 percent in September 2004 and will “likely” increase once this year and again in 2008, Tamaki said in an interview.

“People are already paying much more than expected in the form of tankers (to deliver water), diseases and bottled water. When you add up these ‘coping costs’ the increase is easily affordable,” he added.

The Nepal Government says it is too soon to predict if the review board that will be created from splitting the NWSC’s Valley business into three – including the utility operator and management board – would approve an increase. “If the operator wants the tariff raised they will have to make a request to the management board, which will make a request to the Tariff Fixation Board, which is independent,” said Krishna Prasad Acharya, joint secretary at the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works.

“It’s not like AsDB has recommended a 50 percent raise so it has to go up by 50 percent. It could be done like that in the past but now you’ll have to go step-by-step,” Acharya told IPS.

What is certain is that those using public taps will have to start paying a monthly tariff, and that they will not benefit from what the bank calls the “generously subsidised” first 10,000 litres of water. Tap users will pay 70 percent of what homeowners pay for their non-subsidised water, at today’s rates 10.5 rupees for each 1,000 litres. By 2008 that would rise to almost 14 rupees, slightly more than a packet of milk in Kathmandu, according to Tamaki’s projected rate hike.

“In our visits and surveys (to lower income areas) a family is using 15-30 litres a day for drinking and cooking. That’s 450-900 litres a month,” says Divas B Basnyat at the Melamchi project’s Low Income Consumer Support Unit. “They laugh when we tell them how much that will cost because they’d rather pay than get up early in the morning to stand in line for water,” he added.

At the same time, the Unit has also found that low-income people now use other water sources, like spring water, for washing and bathing, but would prefer to use piped water. If they were to start doing that, then their monthly bills would rise.

The Unit is planning to rehabilitate most of the public taps in the Valley. The work will be free but the community will have to set up a users’ group to manage the water. Water in the first year after a meter is installed will be free and it will be piped for half-price in the second year, added Basnyat.

‘Chintan’ asks why such improvements could not be made by the existing NWSC working with Severn Trent. Alternatively, “Hand the operating system to the municipalities so they own the board, the management and the profit. Then they will have the incentive” to provide quality service, he suggests.

“In all legal, political and technical terms, (the plan) is a privatisation,” he adds. A public institution will be de-authorised and all its wealth and functions transferred to a Nepali private company and ultimately to Severn Trent.”

According to Tamaki, “A number of (reform) models were tried by the World Bank from the late 1970s to the early 2000s and failed…in the eyes of the donor community the NWSC is a non-starter.”

Water expert Ajaya Dixit disagrees. “It was never given an opportunity to reform,” he told IPS. “Its creation (as a board to usher in a World Bank water supply project) was greatly flawed. It ended up basically becoming a procurement agency. The law said it had to follow central government directives and a minister sat on the board.”

“You can do things when you’ve been given responsibility but responsibility must be given,” added the founder of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation.

In an email, a Severn Trent employee told IPS he could not discuss the management contract now. Media here have highlighted the UK firm’s recent overcharging of customers, which led to a probe by utility regulatory Owfat. It found, “Severn Trent Water had provided regulatory data that was either deliberately miscalculated or poorly supported”. The firm must refund customers 42 million pounds (82.2 million dollars) by 2009.

The investigation into Severn Trent’s “customer service performance failures is still continuing”, Peter Mandich from Ofwat’s press office told IPS via email.

The AsDB is unconcerned, says Tamaki. “Disputes between operators and regulators are not uncommon at all…Severn Trent was very cooperative in the first instance – they realised (the miscalculation) themselves and reported it.”

The post NEPAL: ‘Privatisation’ Violates Right to Health – Activists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 31 2007 (IPS)

A 12-day uprising by Nepal’s ‘madheshi’ (plains) people has forced the revolutionary government to promise it will change the state structure to more fairly distribute power to excluded groups.

The ‘new Nepal’ will be a federal state instead of the current centralised one and will include more electoral constituencies to reflect recent population growth, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala announced in a televised speech Wednesday.

Madheshis now comprise 36 percent of the population of this South Asian nation bordered by India and China but have held only roughly 15 percent of the seats in recent governments. Women, indigenous people and dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’ under Hindu dogma) are the other ‘excluded’ groups in this society dominated by upper-caste males.

“We are working on the formation of a new structure of the state, where people from all races, castes and quarters will be represented. All of them will have their responsible roles in building the nation,” said Koirala in the speech. He also directed the home minister to hold talks with madheshi protesters.

But such rhetoric is unlikely to satisfy protesting madheshis and other ‘excluded’ Nepalis who have raised their voices in unison with protests on the plains in recent day. For example, groups representing three indigenous nationalities called a three-day general strike in the eastern hills from Wednesday to press their demands for ethnic autonomy and the right to self-determination.

Koirala’s speech was burned by activists of political parties in some parts of the terai, daily newspaper The Himalayan Times reported Thursday. “To say that constituencies will be based on population increase is merely an attempt to mislead the madheshi people,” said Bhagya Nath Gupta of the Madheshi People’s Rights Forum, the group leading the protests, reported the paper.

Wednesday evening activists reportedly stabbed to death a policeman after storming a police post near the city of Biratnagar in southeastern Nepal. One protester was reportedly killed in a police counter-attack.

Biratnagar had been under a curfew since Tuesday afternoon when one demonstrator was killed in clashes with police.

“I assure you there will be no election if the Madhesh issue is not settled…this movement will not be stopped. That’s because all of us living here (in Kathmandu) will leave and go to the Madhesh to support it,” said Vijay Kant Karna, chairman of madheshi rights NGO, JAGHRIT Nepal.

And while the government is promising federal government, Karna told IPS that protesters have a specific model in mind. All powers would be transferred to states except finance, foreign policy and defence. “We want a federal system where all the ethnic people can build their states in their own way,” he added.

The Maoists brought notions of federalism and autonomy into the mainstream when they divided Nepal into nine autonomous regions based largely on the dominant indigenous group in each area. They also promised these groups the right to become independent nations if they could not agree with the central government.

But Maoist leaders have questioned the authenticity of the current madheshi uprising, blaming it on flames kindled by disgruntled royalists and Hindu activists. One of the first acts of the recalled parliament after April’s ‘people’s movement’ was to declare the former “Kingdom of Nepal” a secular state.

Most senior government leaders have also downplayed madheshi grievances and pointed fingers at “regressive elements” working behind the scenes to revive the monarchy. On Tuesday three former ministers from the king’s regime were arrested for instigating violence in the ‘terai’ (plains region). On Wednesday they were handed three-month detention warrants under the Public Security Act. The government said it has a watch list of 80 other royalists.

The madhesh revolt was sparked when Maoist activists reportedly shot dead a madheshi who was among a group trying to enforce a transportation strike to protest the government’s interim constitution Jan. 19. Since then eight people have died, hundreds have been injured and closures have crippled economic lifelines from the plains to the capital Kathmandu in the country’s central hills and remote mountain regions.

The interim constitution was passed by a temporary legislative assembly Jan. 15. It is notable for 73 Maoist members, whose place was secured in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between government and formal rebel leaders last November. After 10 years of guerrilla war, the Maoists suspended their revolt last April to team up with major political parties against the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, who was pushed from power by a tidal wave of hundreds of thousands of protesters on Nepal’s streets.

The interim government is tasked with preparing the nation for elections in June to a constituent assembly that will draft a permanent constitution. But unrest threatens the possibility for the ‘safe and secure environment’ that is required to hold the polls.

“A redefinition of Nepal is essential,” said Karna. “We are multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-religious but one country.”

The post NEPAL: Revolution Within a Revolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 24 2007 (IPS)

Five people have died and a curfew has been imposed in a district in Nepal’s plains region after a clash between Maoists and activists for regional autonomy left a student dead.

Five people have died and a curfew has been imposed in a district in Nepal’s plains region after a clash between Maoists and activists for regional autonomy left a student dead.

The ‘madheshi’ (after the ‘madhesh’ or plains region) activists were blocking traffic Friday to protest the interim constitution approved by the new government when they stopped two vanloads of activists from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). A fight erupted and student Ramesh Kumar Mahato was shot dead.

The killing provoked riots by the activists, who then clashed with police sent to control the situation. On Monday, police shot and killed three protesters and a 12-hour curfew was imposed in the city of Lahan and surrounding areas in Siraha district. The curfew was reduced to eight hours Wednesday, but local media reported that protesters were burning tyres in some areas.

The unrest comes as the United Nations Security Council approved a mission Tuesday to monitor the arms and armies of the Maoists and an equivalent number of both from the Nepal Army. The United Nations Political Mission in Nepal will also help organise planned June elections to the Constituent Assembly, whose members will draft a permanent constitution.

As agreed in November’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the Maoists’ 10-year uprising, soldiers from the rebel army and their weapons are being sequestered in seven main and 21 smaller camps across the country. Nepal Army troops will be assigned to barracks for a similar period, which could be as long as two years, according to some observers.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala blamed the Maoists for the Terai violence. “The Maoists are yet to give up the charm of arms,” said Koirala, telling them publicly, “You must mend your ways.”

In turn, Maoist Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) pointed a finger at forces loyal to King Gyanendra. The monarch was forced from power when the then underground Maoists united temporarily with Koirala’s Nepali Congress and six other parties to lead a ‘people’s revolution’ on the streets of this South Asian nation. After three weeks of demonstrations in which 19 people died, the king recalled parliament in late April.

“Negotiation is done with political forces, not with criminals and gangsters. The (protesters) are being given undue importance. They are people who ran away from our party. We know who they are and who are dictating them,” said Dahal on Wednesday.

But both he and Koirala, who control the largest parties in the interim parliament, downplayed madheshis’ long-standing grievances against the power centre in the capital Kathmandu.

Madheshis are one of numerous ‘excluded’ groups that have long been underrepresented in Nepal’s power structures, which have been historically dominated by upper caste Hindu men. For example, although madheshis officially comprise 17 percent of the population, they were given only five percent of government appointments between April and November, according to a study by NGO Namuna Nepal.

The new government made an effort to answer their demands in recent months by changing the law and promising to award citizenship to roughly three million madheshis who do not have papers before June’s polls. The Maoists also took a step earlier this month by naming 16 of their 73 representatives from the madhesh to their parliamentary team.

But Madheshi People’s Rights Forum (MRPF) leader Amaresh Narayan Jha said the group’s movement will not be withdrawn until and unless their demands are addressed by the government, reported website Nepalnews.com. Those demands include redrawing electoral constituencies based on population and provisions to ensure the rights of madheshis in the interim constitution, it added.

“We concede that MPRF is not a big party and, therefore, we alone did not have the strength of leading such a big movement,” Jha told an FM radio programme. “But this has ceased to become only our movement. All the people of Madhesh have risen up against oppression and even workers of eight parties have joined us.”

On Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said she was not surprised at the violence, which broke out at the start of her six-day visit to the country. “What is happening in the Terai is in a sense inevitable,” Arbour told a news conference.

“The conflict has obscured a lot of chronic, human rights shortcomings,” she added. “As the space for democracy opens.marginalised groups take it seriously. Democracy is much more chaotic than autocracy. The key issue is pressing the leaders of these movements to take responsibility so that this is done peacefully.”

On Wednesday, Koirala repeated the government’s offer to hold talks with the MRPF and groups supporting it. MRPF Chairman Upendra Yadav said Tuesday his group is willing to dialogue but is waiting for the invitation to be delivered officially.

The post NEPAL: New War Erupts as UN Peace Mission Gets Nod appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 24 2007 (IPS)

Five people have died and a curfew has been imposed in a district in Nepal’s plains region after a clash between Maoists and activists for regional autonomy left a student dead.

The ‘madheshi’ (after the ‘madhesh’ or plains region) activists were blocking traffic Friday to protest the interim constitution approved by the new government when they stopped two vanloads of activists from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). A fight erupted and student Ramesh Kumar Mahato was shot dead.

The killing provoked riots by the activists, who then clashed with police sent to control the situation. On Monday, police shot and killed three protesters and a 12-hour curfew was imposed in the city of Lahan and surrounding areas in Siraha district. The curfew was reduced to eight hours Wednesday, but local media reported that protesters were burning tyres in some areas.

The unrest comes as the United Nations Security Council approved a mission Tuesday to monitor the arms and armies of the Maoists and an equivalent number of both from the Nepal Army. The United Nations Political Mission in Nepal will also help organise planned June elections to the Constituent Assembly, whose members will draft a permanent constitution.

As agreed in November’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the Maoists’ 10-year uprising, soldiers from the rebel army and their weapons are being sequestered in seven main and 21 smaller camps across the country. Nepal Army troops will be assigned to barracks for a similar period, which could be as long as two years, according to some observers.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala blamed the Maoists for the Terai violence. “The Maoists are yet to give up the charm of arms,” said Koirala, telling them publicly, “You must mend your ways.”

In turn, Maoist Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) pointed a finger at forces loyal to King Gyanendra. The monarch was forced from power when the then underground Maoists united temporarily with Koirala’s Nepali Congress and six other parties to lead a ‘people’s revolution’ on the streets of this South Asian nation. After three weeks of demonstrations in which 19 people died, the king recalled parliament in late April.

“Negotiation is done with political forces, not with criminals and gangsters. The (protesters) are being given undue importance. They are people who ran away from our party. We know who they are and who are dictating them,” said Dahal on Wednesday.

But both he and Koirala, who control the largest parties in the interim parliament, downplayed madheshis’ long-standing grievances against the power centre in the capital Kathmandu.

Madheshis are one of numerous ‘excluded’ groups that have long been underrepresented in Nepal’s power structures, which have been historically dominated by upper caste Hindu men. For example, although madheshis officially comprise 17 percent of the population, they were given only five percent of government appointments between April and November, according to a study by NGO Namuna Nepal.

The new government made an effort to answer their demands in recent months by changing the law and promising to award citizenship to roughly three million madheshis who do not have papers before June’s polls. The Maoists also took a step earlier this month by naming 16 of their 73 representatives from the madhesh to their parliamentary team.

But Madheshi People’s Rights Forum (MRPF) leader Amaresh Narayan Jha said the group’s movement will not be withdrawn until and unless their demands are addressed by the government, reported website Nepalnews.com. Those demands include redrawing electoral constituencies based on population and provisions to ensure the rights of madheshis in the interim constitution, it added.

“We concede that MPRF is not a big party and, therefore, we alone did not have the strength of leading such a big movement,” Jha told an FM radio programme. “But this has ceased to become only our movement. All the people of Madhesh have risen up against oppression and even workers of eight parties have joined us.”

On Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said she was not surprised at the violence, which broke out at the start of her six-day visit to the country. “What is happening in the Terai is in a sense inevitable,” Arbour told a news conference.

“The conflict has obscured a lot of chronic, human rights shortcomings,” she added. “As the space for democracy opens.marginalised groups take it seriously. Democracy is much more chaotic than autocracy. The key issue is pressing the leaders of these movements to take responsibility so that this is done peacefully.”

On Wednesday, Koirala repeated the government’s offer to hold talks with the MRPF and groups supporting it. MRPF Chairman Upendra Yadav said Tuesday his group is willing to dialogue but is waiting for the invitation to be delivered officially.

The post NEPAL: New War Erupts as UN Peace Mission Gets Nod appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 19 2007 (IPS)

While former Maoist outlaws have traded battle fatigues for grey suits and seats in Parliament, torture victim Pradesh Bahadur Bista is making the rounds of hospitals for proof that his chronic pains were caused by daily torture during 100 days of illegal detention by soldiers of the Nepali Army.

A lot has changed in the ‘new Nepal’ that dawned Apr. 25, 2006, the day after King Gyanendra relented in the face of hundreds of thousands of chanting protesters and recalled Parliament – but a lot has not.

“I don’t expect to get compensation for this but I want to punish the perpetrators, who deny doing this to me,” says Bista, who was seized from home by plainclothes men as a suspected Maoist on Sep. 10, 2003. For the next 100 days he was held in the army’s infamous Maharajgung Barracks in the capital Kathmandu, home to the Bhairav Nath Battalion, and tortured almost daily. “I want to see that battalion disbanded,” he adds in an interview.

In two weeks Bista will make his seventh appearance in court to try to set that process in motion. Since 2002, just six victims of torture by army or police have been awarded compensation, according to NGO Advocacy Forum, which is assisting Bista.

“Breaking the climate of impunity in Nepal remains the single most difficult human rights challenge,” wrote the United Nations high commissioner for human rights in her annual report in October. Louise Arbour arrived in Kathmandu on Friday for a six-day visit to assess the rights landscape since Maoist and government leaders signed a peace deal in November, ending a 10-year insurgency that left more than 13,000 people dead.

It is estimated that tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people fled their homes after threats from the rebels or government security forces during the decade; no one knows how many were tortured or ‘disappeared’ – and few people in power seem prepared to find out.

“There are few signs of the government actively taking steps to effectively end impunity – institutions haven’t been reformed and there is no indication of a change of culture as regards accountability,” says Sandra Beidas, chief of protection at the human rights commissioner’s Nepal office.

In May her office released a report of its investigation into charges of arbitrary detention, torture and disappearances in 2003-2004 at Bhairav Nath. “Most of the hundreds of individuals who were arrested by the (Army) in 2003 and detained for varying periods in Maharajgunj barracks were subjected to severe and prolonged ill-treatment and torture,” it says.

“At least 49 persons, and probably a significantly higher number, remain disappeared. National and international appeals for information and clarification were ignored. Detainees were hidden from inspection,” adds the report.

In October, the Secretary of the Minister of Defence told a parliamentary committee the UN report was based on “fallacious accusations”. Two of the 49 people named in the UN report had died and 10 were released to their families, he added, but was silent on the 37 others.

Last week the Supreme Court ordered a taskforce probing the disappearances of four people to expand its scope to include the 49 in the report. “It’s an important step in the context of almost total impunity but much much more needs to be done,” Beidas told IPS. “There are many more human rights abuses that occurred in the course of the conflict and outside the conflict.”

On Friday, Bista was at training workshop in the capital learning about the security of human rights defenders, one of 18 people nominated from victims’ rights group that Advocacy Forum has helped establish. “Our main goal is to publicise our painful experiences for all Nepalis to see,” said Bista, a small, soft-spoken, middle-aged man.

“We also want justice from the government, including compensation for those who are still having health problems…I still have pains in my chest where the soldiers kicked and punched me,” he added.

Promises of human rights protection figure prominently in many of the agreements that the government and Maoists signed en route to November’s final peace deal. But often they lack the substance needed to fulfil such pledges, according to the UN rights office, while the new Army Act actually makes military courts responsible for torture and disappearance cases. “That’s one of our big concerns,” said Beidas.

Other worrying signs have emerged about the government’s commitment to ending impunity for rights violations. A commission established to probe those responsible for the deaths of protesters in April’s ‘people’s movement’ in November named 202 people who should be prosecuted, including King Gyanendra, then government ministers and security chiefs. But it has yet to be made public.

Human rights NGOs have been leading a campaign to pressure the government to sign the treaty that would bind it to the International Criminal Court, whose mandate is to investigate allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity. Parliament in July directed the government to ratify the Rome Statute but it only set up a taskforce, which submitted its report one month ago.

Many activists are looking to a future Truth and Reconciliation Commission, promised in November’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, as an essential step to finally emptying the skeletons in the country’s human rights closet. “It can be a crucial step along this process”, if done right, said Beidas. That means its mandate must be decided in consultation with victims and their relatives, and its members must be credible and independent.

“But truth commissions themselves cannot substitute for prosecutions of serious human rights violations,” she added.

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The post NEPAL: Revolutionary Politics, Feudal Justice appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 16 2007 (IPS)

Former Maoist rebels entered the parliament that once outlawed them Monday, filling enough seats to become the second-largest party in the temporary government.

Former Maoist rebels entered the parliament that once outlawed them Monday, filling enough seats to become the second-largest party in the temporary government.

It was an amazing transformation. Nine months ago the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) was labelled “terrorist” and many of its leaders sat in jails in Nepal and neighbouring India. Then Nepal’s opposition parties inched open the door for the insurgents to join a temporary alliance to oppose King Gyanendra, who seized direct power Feb. 1, 2005.

The hesitant partners succeeded in drawing hundreds of thousands of chanting protesters – men, women and children – onto the streets across this South Asian nation, forcing the king to recall Parliament. Since then, the two sides have managed to ride a bumpy peace process that produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in November and the temporary government that was sworn in Monday.

Its first task was to approve the interim constitution that will guide its decisions until elections to a constituent assembly, scheduled for late May or early June.

“We are here through this epoch making leap, and armed with a new ideology, philosophy and a new way of thinking,” said Maoist leader in Parliament Krishna Bahadur Mahara.

The Maoists are already building a front of leftist parties, which will comprise a majority in the 330-seat Parliament.

The Maoist contingent entered Parliament en masse Monday evening, both men and women wearing grey suit jackets. One man sported a red beret with the symbolic hammer and sickle but overall their arrival was low-key. Many of them smiled and Maoist leaders were greeted with handshakes from their peers in other parties.

“This critical juncture is the new beginning of unity and reconciliation,” declared Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.

The Maoists signalled their war against the state in 1996 by tossing homemade bombs at government buildings, after the country’s leaders ignored their 40-point demand for social and political reforms, including replacing monarchy with a republican system of government.

The uprising was virtually ignored in its early years, based as it was in the country’s west, long shunned by leaders in the capital Kathmandu in central Nepal and the most impoverished region of one of the poorest countries in South Asia.

The government called peace talks in July 2001 but four months later Maoists declared them failed and launched their first attacks against the Nepali Army. The government countered by declaring an emergency, and drafted the army into the fight alongside police for the first time.

In 2003, peace talks again failed and by last spring, the Maoists were said to control 80 percent of the villages where most Nepalis live, and many observers had concluded the war was ‘unwinnable’ by either side.

In 10 years roughly 14,000 people died, most of them innocent villagers; more than 100,000 people fled their homes because of intimidation from both armies and more than 1,000 people were “disappeared”.

Although the Maoists called a ceasefire soon after the victory of April’s ‘people’s movement’, their cadres in some areas continue their old ways: ‘taxing’ local people and businesses, and blocking government officials from returning to their rural bases.

Only 904 of 1,271 police posts damaged during the insurgency have been restored, despite the government setting Jan. 14 as the due date for that work. Local Maoists have refused to permit the others to be revived, reported Kantipur daily Monday.

Monday was also to be the first day of registration of Maoist soldiers and their weapons, which are now sitting in seven main camps and 21 satellite camps across the country. But technical problems delayed that till Tuesday, according to officials.

The fighters and their arms will be monitored by a UN team numbering 183. It will also include experts to help plan June’s election and civil and political advisors to assist in establishing a ‘free and fair’ environment for those polls, according to a report presented to the UN Security Council last week.

“My duty will be to ensure the representation of indigenous people in the constituent assembly,” said activist Malla K Sundar on Monday. He is one of 10 civil society representatives chosen by Maoist leaders to sit in the interim government. The other main parties also nominated representatives in recognition of the role they played in April’s movement.

“I’m not scared of being labelled a Maoist,” added Sundar in an interview. “Maoist party leaders have stated very clearly that the people they have nominated are independent and that our roles will be independent.”

The Maoists attracted many followers with a pledge to end discrimination against indigenous people, dalits (declared ‘untouchable’ in Hindu dogma) and women, who have been overwhelmingly sidelined in Nepal’s patriarchal society. Among their 73 members sitting in the new government, 29 are women, 23 are indigenous people and 11 are dalits.

“Up to now they seem to be very sincere about putting their commitments into practice. I hope that they will also be inclusive in the future,” added Sundar.

Outside parliament Monday the mood was split among people working in small roadside shops or on the roadside – although three of five people asked by IPS did not even know the new government was being sworn in.

“Maoist government is an impossibility – the Maoists are still looters,” said Suman, who was selling mushrooms on the roadside. “They will do whatever they want,” he added.

“It’s good,” said Ishwor, who was selling plates of sliced fruit from a wooden cart. “It’s good that the Maoists are in the government – no one will have a problem, no one will die.”

The post NEPAL: Parliament Opens Doors to Maoists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 15 2007 (IPS)

Former Maoist rebels entered the parliament that once outlawed them Monday, filling enough seats to become the second-largest party in the temporary government.

It was an amazing transformation. Nine months ago the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) was labelled “terrorist” and many of its leaders sat in jails in Nepal and neighbouring India. Then Nepal’s opposition parties inched open the door for the insurgents to join a temporary alliance to oppose King Gyanendra, who seized direct power Feb. 1, 2005.

The hesitant partners succeeded in drawing hundreds of thousands of chanting protesters – men, women and children – onto the streets across this South Asian nation, forcing the king to recall Parliament. Since then, the two sides have managed to ride a bumpy peace process that produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in November and the temporary government that was sworn in Monday.

Its first task was to approve the interim constitution that will guide its decisions until elections to a constituent assembly, scheduled for late May or early June.

“We are here through this epoch making leap, and armed with a new ideology, philosophy and a new way of thinking,” said Maoist leader in Parliament Krishna Bahadur Mahara.

The Maoists are already building a front of leftist parties, which will comprise a majority in the 330-seat Parliament.

The Maoist contingent entered Parliament en masse Monday evening, both men and women wearing grey suit jackets. One man sported a red beret with the symbolic hammer and sickle but overall their arrival was low-key. Many of them smiled and Maoist leaders were greeted with handshakes from their peers in other parties.

“This critical juncture is the new beginning of unity and reconciliation,” declared Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.

The Maoists signalled their war against the state in 1996 by tossing homemade bombs at government buildings, after the country’s leaders ignored their 40-point demand for social and political reforms, including replacing monarchy with a republican system of government.

The uprising was virtually ignored in its early years, based as it was in the country’s west, long shunned by leaders in the capital Kathmandu in central Nepal and the most impoverished region of one of the poorest countries in South Asia.

The government called peace talks in July 2001 but four months later Maoists declared them failed and launched their first attacks against the Nepali Army. The government countered by declaring an emergency, and drafted the army into the fight alongside police for the first time.

In 2003, peace talks again failed and by last spring, the Maoists were said to control 80 percent of the villages where most Nepalis live, and many observers had concluded the war was ‘unwinnable’ by either side.

In 10 years roughly 14,000 people died, most of them innocent villagers; more than 100,000 people fled their homes because of intimidation from both armies and more than 1,000 people were “disappeared”.

Although the Maoists called a ceasefire soon after the victory of April’s ‘people’s movement’, their cadres in some areas continue their old ways: ‘taxing’ local people and businesses, and blocking government officials from returning to their rural bases.

Only 904 of 1,271 police posts damaged during the insurgency have been restored, despite the government setting Jan. 14 as the due date for that work. Local Maoists have refused to permit the others to be revived, reported Kantipur daily Monday.

Monday was also to be the first day of registration of Maoist soldiers and their weapons, which are now sitting in seven main camps and 21 satellite camps across the country. But technical problems delayed that till Tuesday, according to officials.

The fighters and their arms will be monitored by a UN team numbering 183. It will also include experts to help plan June’s election and civil and political advisors to assist in establishing a ‘free and fair’ environment for those polls, according to a report presented to the UN Security Council last week.

“My duty will be to ensure the representation of indigenous people in the constituent assembly,” said activist Malla K Sundar on Monday. He is one of 10 civil society representatives chosen by Maoist leaders to sit in the interim government. The other main parties also nominated representatives in recognition of the role they played in April’s movement.

“I’m not scared of being labelled a Maoist,” added Sundar in an interview. “Maoist party leaders have stated very clearly that the people they have nominated are independent and that our roles will be independent.”

The Maoists attracted many followers with a pledge to end discrimination against indigenous people, dalits (declared ‘untouchable’ in Hindu dogma) and women, who have been overwhelmingly sidelined in Nepal’s patriarchal society. Among their 73 members sitting in the new government, 29 are women, 23 are indigenous people and 11 are dalits.

“Up to now they seem to be very sincere about putting their commitments into practice. I hope that they will also be inclusive in the future,” added Sundar.

Outside parliament Monday the mood was split among people working in small roadside shops or on the roadside – although three of five people asked by IPS did not even know the new government was being sworn in.

“Maoist government is an impossibility – the Maoists are still looters,” said Suman, who was selling mushrooms on the roadside. “They will do whatever they want,” he added.

“It’s good,” said Ishwor, who was selling plates of sliced fruit from a wooden cart. “It’s good that the Maoists are in the government – no one will have a problem, no one will die.”

The post NEPAL: Parliament Opens Doors to Maoists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 10 2007 (IPS)

United Nations monitors will begin counting weapons and soldiers of the Maoist army in camps across Nepal next week, and activists are concerned that the needs of women and children there could be overlooked.

About 35 of a planned force of nearly 200 UN monitors will be joined in the exercise by 111 former Ghurkha soldiers, Nepalis who served in the British or Indian armies. The latter will work until the full UN contingent arrives later this spring.

The monitoring follows the peace agreement signed between the Nepal government and the former rebels in November, which ended months of negotiations between mainstream political parties and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), who had teamed up to unseat King Gyanendra in April’s ‘people’s movement’. Besides monitoring arms and armies, the UN has also agreed to scrutinise human rights in the country and help prepare for constituent assembly elections scheduled for June.

Seven main camps and 21 satellite camps are being set up to hold roughly 15,000 Maoist fighters from the decade-long insurgency that left 14,000 dead, scattered tens of thousands of villagers around the country and beyond, and cast a dark cloud over the battleground of rural Nepal. The Nepal Army will assign a corresponding number of soldiers and their weapons to barracks during a transition period that is expected to end after the constituent assembly drafts a permanent constitution.

An interim constitution is scheduled to be approved by the house of representatives Monday, the same day that 73 Maoist members will take their seats in the temporary government that will serve until the June polls. Jan. 15 is also when monitors will begin registering weapons in the camps. An initial group is inspecting some of those cantonments this week.

“We have told the government and the UN that the monitors need basic training on child rights and basic childhood development,” says activist Gauri Pradhan, president of Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN).

CWIN is part of a coalition of groups, including Save the Children and local offices of the UN’s children fund and humanitarian affairs office, which has inspected the camps in recent days independent of the UN arms monitors.

“Certainly we have observed the involvement of children,” Pradhan told IPS in a telephone interview. “There are not enough facilities for those children, and there is not proper child care. There are also boys and girls who claim they are not part of the combat force but say they are associated with them doing other types of work – collecting firewood, working in the kitchen, etc. But our observers got information that they were (part of the combat force).”

Prior to the camps being set up in November, reports mushroomed of Maoist cadres abducting youths, including minors, for the camps. It was said the rebels wanted to increase their numbers in order to get more benefits from the government. But Maoist leaders said they were simply hiring political workers.

Activists who visited the camp on a separate inspection mission in December also said they did not see any minors who appeared to be soldiers. Overall, conditions were very poor, said civil society leader Padma Ratna Tuladhar. “There was no drinking water or electricity, the roads were not very good, even the food was not satisfactory,” he told IPS. In one camp the Maoists slept in tents that were “suffocatingly hot” in daytime and dripped water at night, he added.

Hundreds of former rebels, including pregnant women, fell sick soon after the camps were established, at the dawn of winter. Initial stocks of medicines ran out quickly.

“In one camp the women were saying that there were some illiterates among them, or those who had studied just to class four, so there should be some schools for them. They also asked about skills training,” added Tuladhar.

“The government, Maoists and the international community should decide what kind of camps that they should have,” he said, suggesting the former rebels could be there as long as two years. “It would be impossible to stay that long under (current) conditions,” added Tuladhar.

Nepal’s UN chief Matthew Kahane recently urged the government and Maoists to integrate women into planning the camps. “We would like to highlight the concern that the needs of female ex-combatants, supporters and dependents be taken into consideration. Any transition plan for Nepal will not be effective without women’s and young girls’ inclusion in the design, delivery and evaluation of all cantonment and reintegration related plans,” he said in a statement.

CWIN’s concern, said Pradhan, “is not only to expose the reality but also to follow up with reintegration.” For three years, the organisation has been working with children in west Nepal who were orphaned by the conflict. “Our major concerns are psycho-social counselling, early childhood care and taking the children out of the camps,” he added.

According to CWIN, during the 10-year conflict 419 innocent children (295 boys and 124 girls) were killed, 454 children (272 boys, 128 girls and 54 unknown) were physically injured, and 29,244 children and their teachers were “abducted” by Maoists for “people’s education training” while 230 children were arrested by state security forces.

The post NEPAL: Women and Children Count too, in Maoist Camps appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 3 2007 (IPS)

Civil society activists who led the fight against the former royal regime are now risking jail to protest against the government they helped push to power.

At least 70 demonstrators were arrested Monday during a sit-in before the prime minister’s residence and the Home Ministry warned Wednesday police will continue to intervene in protests in prohibited areas.

NGO Federation of Nepal President Arjun Karki told IPS his group will continue to organise demonstrations until the government finalises the interim constitution and forms a temporary government that includes former Maoist rebels.

The deal was worked out in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the governing seven-party alliance (SPA) and Maoist leaders in November. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) gave up its 10-year guerrilla war after uniting with the SPA to spearhead three weeks of protests in April that forced King Gyanendra to hand over rule to the house of representatives that had been dissolved in 2003.

The SPA and Maoists then travelled a bumpy peace process to the CPA, which calls for an interim government to rule until elections to a constituent assembly in June. The Maoists are also supposed to lock up their soldiers and weapons in 28 camps across the country but that is delayed because United Nations monitors have been slow to arrive.

Prime Minister Girija Koirala argues that the former insurgents cannot join the government until monitoring begins, but Karki, president of Rural Reconstruction Nepal, told IPS the leader “only wants to buy time”.

“The Maoists are in the cities, we know that they possess arms, but they’re working with the PM, they’re part of the decision-making process. The longer we keep them out of the government the more vulnerable peace becomes,” said Karki.

“After the Maoists join, all the problems like arms will also become their problems and they will be more responsible. The government either doesn’t understand this, or they are under pressure to keep the Maoists out, from external or internal forces,” he added.

Because the interim government was not formed by the Dec. 1 deadline, the Maoists have been violating the peace pact: their cadres are stopping NGO employees and government officials from returning to work in the countryside of this largely rural South Asian nation; preventing police from re-establishing posts that they surrendered to the rebels in the past decade; and collecting ‘taxes’ from businesses and customs offices.

On Monday, Maoist Spokesman Krishna Mahara said his party would not permit some posts to be opened until its representatives were sitting in government.

The former rebels “feel very vulnerable” according to Roderick Chalmers of the International Crisis Group (ICG). “They’re the illegitimate force, outside government, trying to get a stake in power. If the interim government is formed, I think that will add an awful lot of pressure on them,” he said in a recent interview with IPS.

But it is the government that is facing pressure from many sides these days. Late Wednesday afternoon traffic police were pleading with motorists to detour around the major avenue that runs past the Supreme Court, where former indentured workers known as ‘kamaiyas’ were holding a sit-down protest. The men and women were surrounded by an almost equal number of police, but they were watching only.

A day earlier police hauled away 100 demonstrators who were just sitting down to their protest 100m away, in front of parliament’s main gate. They were demanding medical treatment for those injured in April’s ‘people’s movement’.

Tribhuvan University staff were beaten and arrested Monday for a protest to demand that the government appoint a vice-chancellor and other senior officials. The posts have been empty since April.

On Monday, human rights activists demanded the government implement the report of a commission formed to probe those responsible for suppressing April’s ‘people’s movement’, in which nearly two dozen people were killed or mortally wounded by security forces. It recommended action against 202 people, including King Gyanendra, former government ministers and security officials.

“Implementation of the report will help check the existing impunity in society and make the government answerable to the people,” said Harihar Birahi of the Joint Forum for Peace and Human Rights. He warned that ignoring the recommendations could fuel autocratic forces trying to destabilise the new government, reported local media.

Such forces are more powerful than external players, such as the United States and India, which are lobbying to keep the Maoists out of government, said Karki. “There are royalists in all the political parties. If there’s a power vacuum, if the elections don’t happen on time, the people will not have legitimate representatives. It will destabilise democratic forces and the people might think ‘maybe the king is the best option’.”

Civil society groups were the first to violate anti-assembly laws enacted by the royal regime after King Gyanendra fired his handpicked prime minister and seized power Feb. 1, 2005. But today they are ignored by the government, according to Karki. “They created the interim constitution, with many flaws, but never thought to consult civil society before they signed it – that has really created a gulf between us.”

The post NEPAL: Civil Society Protests Laggard Gov’t appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 27 2006 (IPS)

Washington&#39s offer to resettle most of the 106,000 Bhutanese refugees who have stagnated in camps in Nepal for 16 years has provoked a whirlwind of reaction that could finally sweep away official inertia toward their plight.

This is "an opportunity for the refugees who had been living a sub-human life for the last 16 years", U.S. Ambassador to Nepal James Moriarty said on a visit to one of the seven camps in southeastern Nepal in November. He reaffirmed the position set out by Assistant Secretary of State for Refugee Affairs Ellen Sauerbrey on Oct. 2 – the offer to take in up to 60,000 refugees is a humanitarian one and not meant to absolve Bhutan for evicting the ethnic Nepalis, known as Lhotsampas.

But that will be the result, exiled leaders of opposition Bhutanese political parties and human rights groups have argued. The U.S. "on one hand is aware that (Bhutan&#39s government) is a terrorist regime," says prominent Nepal-based leader Tek Nath Rizal. "But instead of pressuring Bhutan through (South Asia&#39s superpower) India, they say &#39we want to take you to America&#39…Knowingly or unknowingly the U.S. is helping the terrorist government in Bhutan", he added in an interview with IPS.

Some of the extremely influential exiled leaders have damned the U.S. proposal outright. Others like Rizal say they will accept "third-country resettlement" only as a last resort. First priority must be given to "repatriation" to Bhutan followed by settlement in Nepal or India, where another 15,000-20,000 refugees live.

But in the tidy camps with their dirt roads and long lines of tiny bamboo huts, it is hard to find anyone in favour of going to the U.S. or to the other countries that have reportedly also offered safe haven – Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

"It&#39s better to go back to Bhutan than to stay here," says one former farmer, 78, in Sanischare, the western-most camp, home to 21,000 people. "If I can&#39t go to Bhutan I leave it up to the agencies (that support the camps) to decide," adds the man.

As he talks to visiting journalists, other residents – men, women and children – crowd around. Most identify themselves as the old man&#39s relatives; all of them say they want to return to their homeland, even those hardly old enough to remember it.

Local media has reported that some refugees who publicly welcomed the resettlement offer have been threatened, and leaders of the camp management committees who backed the idea were "fired" by the exiled leaders. But later, as the reporters walk through the dusty camp, a United Nations employee suggests that if given the chance to vote confidentially, about 70 percent of residents would choose third-country resettlement.

In an interview in Kathmandu, human rights activist Gopal Siwakoti agrees that 70 percent is a good estimate. A supporter of a "comprehensive solution" to the refugee problem, Siwakoti has joined hands with activists in India and Bhutan to press the three governments to focus on the humanitarian issue and resolve the stalemate – Nepal and Bhutan have held 15 rounds of talks and failed, while India has refused to participate.

Bhutan and Nepal do not share a border. They are separated by Sikkim, a former independent state that is now part of India. When Bhutan&#39s royal government expelled the Lhotsampas in 1990, the refugees first entered India before most returned to Nepal, their ancestral home.

In the 1980s, the northern-based Drukpa elite (ethnic Tibetans) who rule Bhutan as an autocracy accused the Lhotsampas of anti-nationalist activities and began to impose strict conditions. They changed citizenship rules, forced ethnic Nepalis to wear Drukpa dress, to speak their language (Dzongkha) and to stop practising Hinduism; eventually they were chased across the border.

The international community failed to address the issue, Siwakoti told IPS. "It has a moral obligation, but India has an official obligation, for two reasons: it has security and external affairs treaties with Bhutan, and because the refugees transited through India."

According to Rizal, a former senior civil servant in Bhutan who was jailed for 10 years, "Unless India gets involved in the talks, nothing will happen…Nepal should initiate India&#39s involvement in the talks."

But while the South Asian giant&#39s media, civil society and some politicians are starting to show interest, the government position has not changed. "India encourages the governments of Nepal and Bhutan to find the solution of the problem on their own," Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on a visit to Kathmandu on Nov. 30.

Still, momentum seems to be growing toward a fundamental step that could break the deadlock – refugee leaders and their backers accepting to detach repatriation from the resettlement option.

Siwakoti describes it as adopting a "multi-track approach": untie the human rights and humanitarian issues and pursue all options simultaneously instead of waiting for repatriation. "You can&#39t make this whole population responsible for restoring democracy in Bhutan: they are refugees," he said.

But, added the activist, the refugees must be declared Bhutanese citizens before being resettled, so they can retain the option to return to the country.

The head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Nepal, Abraham Abraham, has a similar view. "The key (to an agreement) lies in understanding that you can&#39t keep human beings in a camp situation for 16 years. In my opinion, the humanitarian considerations should prevail over political ones."

A first step is to "de-link" the options, added the UNHCR chief in an interview. "As things stand, it appears as if repatriation is holding hostage the other two possible solutions…You don&#39t need to keep all the 100,000 people for the next 10 years (until repatriation is settled). You already have prospects for at least reducing the numbers in the camps now."

Rizal says he will not block refugees who truly want to resettle. "For the last 17 years my people have been fighting.If they are fed up I&#39ll help them to go. But those whose family members are in Bhutan&#39s jails or living there without citizenship rights and those who are in India separated from their families – if they want to go back, the international community should not stop them."

The U.S. offer coincided with other significant events in 2006: April&#39s &#39people&#39s movement&#39 in Nepal, the popular uprising that united Maoist rebels and seven main opposition parties to oust the autocrat King Gyanendra; and the peace agreement signed between the Maoists and the new government.

That administration scheduled talks with the Bhutan government in November and December but both times they were postponed because of peace negotiations. "In my four years here, this is the first time I&#39m seeing such a genuine attempt (from Nepal&#39s government) to try and resolve this problem," says Abraham. "What we need now is a clear policy decision from the Nepali government that includes resettlement as an alternative, with repatriation being the preferred solution," he told IPS.

A more urgent problem is feeding the refugees. The UN World Food Programme said Friday it will run out of food in January without donations for the two-year, 24-million-dollar programme that starts Jan. 1.

According to Rizal, such news is indirectly scaring refugees into supporting third-country resettlement. "My request to the US Government is that the refugee community must not be pressured…Indirectly they are saying in five or six years there won&#39t be any camps – what is the meaning of that?"

The post CHALLENGES 2006-2007: US – Last Stop for Bhutanese Refugees? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 22 2006 (IPS)

Cycle and foot traffic will swell on the two-lane highway that runs through Nepal’s ‘tarai’ (plains region) Dec. 25. Normally the road teems with buses that pack passengers onto their roofs and careen from stop to stop, speeding trucks with squealing brakes and a few personal cars. But the Nepal Sadhbhawana Party (NSP)has called a general strike on that day and motorised vehicles risk being attacked by mobs.

The NSP, which represents the plains people (‘madheshis’ in Nepali), is protesting last week’s signing of an interim constitution in this small South Asian nation wedged between giants India (to the south) and China. It says the document maintains the region’s exclusion from power.

While much of the media, leaders of the governing seven-party alliance (SPA) and their Maoist counterparts praise the interim law as the latest stop on the road to peace, the strike will be a reminder of how much remains to be done to address long-standing grievances against the Nepali state – the reasons for which the Maoists said they launched their uprising a decade ago.

Nepal is a nation of 27 million people dominated by the fewer than one-third who make up the so-called ‘high castes’ according to Hindu orthodoxy. These few groups rule over other lower-caste Hindus – particularly ‘dalits’ or ‘untouchables’ – 59 officially recognised groups of indigenous people, Muslims and other minorities. Their power centre is the capital Kathmandu.

All that is supposed to change in the ‘new Nepal’, the nation that is emerging from April’s ‘people’s movement’, when the SPA and then still-at-war Maoists warily united to lead hundreds of thousands of marching, chanting protesters onto streets across the country to force King Gyanendra to relinquish direct rule.

The arrogant monarch was their immediate target but the housewives and civil servants, who joined young activists on the streets, were also protesting 10 years of civil war that killed 14,000 Nepalis, forced 100,000 or more to flee their village homes to barbed-wire encircled district towns or farther a field, and clouded much of the nation in fear and suspicion. Many also demanded an end to corruption, to the acute poverty that marks many people’s lives outside the capital and for the sharing of power among all Nepalis.

“We, the people, were successful in bringing down an ignorant crown, but the mendacity of the parties and the Maoists still reigns over us,” says the report of a new group, Namuna Nepal, released this week. Its analysis of a sampling of the new administration’s appointments “proves that your government is functioning without regard for broad based representation and ignores the people’s voice and aspiration”, it adds.

Namuna Nepal found that 62 percent of positions went to Brahmins, who account for 13 percent of the population – the same proportion as dalits. But the latter group received only one percent of the postings. Women did somewhat better, getting seven percent of the appointments.

“Till the minority rule of one caste/class (is) uprooted, the majority of citizens will not see justice and fair play in the light of day,” adds the report. “If the new constitution does not involve social inclusion, the peace resolution will only diminish the human rights of most Nepalese and will further fuel a civil war based on caste/ethnicities and gender rights,” says Namuna Nepal.

An end to the eight-month peace threatened this week when armed, Maoist cadres left their designated camps to protest the government’s announcement of the appointments of 14 ambassadors. (They returned hours later). Their leaders said the move, just weeks before the former rebels will join an interim government, violates the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed Nov. 21.

Maoist leaders also announced a country-wide strike Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 to protest the appointments.

The CPA assigns soldiers from the Maoist army to seven main camps, each with three nearby ‘satellite’ camps. Their weapons will be stored in steel containers and the keys given to rebel leaders. The camps will be watched by UN monitors, who are due to start arriving by year-end.

“I still do feel more optimistic than pessimistic (about the peace process) though not by a large margin,” says Rhoderick Chalmers of the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Last week ICG released its latest report, ‘Making Nepal’s Peace Agreement Work’. It describes daunting challenges ahead, among them: transforming the current personality-driven, sometimes ad-hoc peace process – despite its success to date – into a more inclusive, structured one; bringing military leaders of the state and Maoist armies together to start talks on merging their forces; and holding constituent assembly elections by mid-June, a deadline that many observers here scoff at.

“If elections do happen it’s almost certain they won’t be free and fair (but) the trade-off is to sacrifice a little bit of the perfection of the election process to keep the momentum going,” Chalmers told IPS in an interview.

Both the government and Maoists have persisted with peace talks until now because it served their own interests, says the report. “The Maoists don’t believe in multi-party democracy and they’re keeping Plan B open and ready but as long as (the process) works they’ll continue with it,” added Chalmers.

The other political parties “still do have at the backs of their minds that the public won’t forgive them if they don’t get it right this time”, he said. The first ‘people’s movement’ in 1990 forced then King Birendra to return multi-party democracy, but many people here believe the political parties that afterwards took turns running the nation squandered the chance to develop Nepal, sowing the seeds of the Maoist rebellion.

Looking back at the 13 months since the SPA and Maoists penned their first agreement, “to have come this far without major upsets – the country hasn’t fallen apart, crime has risen slightly but there’s not anarchy on the streets – it’s not bad at all,” added Chalmers. Compared to many conflict situations, it’s quite good.”

State Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare, Urmila Aryal, agrees. “Compared to other countries (the peace process) has been very successful but the issues of inclusion still need serious consideration,” she told IPS.

Senior human rights activist Padma Ratna Tuladhar says the Maoists have consistently championed the causes of madheshis and other oppressed groups. “They say there should be a federal state where powers are shared or autonomy given to these groups. But then they conclude agreements with the government and say they couldn’t attain these things because it was a ‘compromise document’.”

“The losers have always been oppressed peoples,” added Tuladhar.

Neither the CPA nor the interim constitution deal substantively with excluded peoples, although parliament has just passed a law that will make millions of madheshis eligible for citizenship for the first time. Maoist leaders have pledged that 80 percent of their seats in the interim government will go to indigenous peoples and 40 percent to women.

One of the ideas in the air in the heady days since April has been electing the constituent assembly based on proportional representation, where excluded groups would finally get their fair share. But in their dealings, the SPA and Maoists decided that only half the seats would be elected based on that plan and the other half according to the status quo.

“On one hand we have to welcome the end of the killing, of the 10 years of war,” said Tuladhar. ”On the other, we have to complain that the parties could not fulfil the desires of indigenous peoples, madheshis, women and others.”

The post CHALLENGES 2006-2007: A ‘New Nepal’ for All? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 14 2006 (IPS)

Government and Maoist leaders holding high-level talks to finalise Nepal’s interim constitution have discovered they have one thing in common: none of them can say that at least a third of their party workers are women.

That was the message passed to activist Shobha Gautam from a source inside the talks, which entered their second day Thursday. After the counting of cadres was done, leaders dropped a suggestion that only parties where women make up at least 33 percent of political workers should be able to register with the Election Commission, said Gautam in an interview Wednesday.

“No, we’re not frustrated. The leaders do not listen (to women activists) but that just means we have to point out even more strongly their weaknesses; it’s our duty,” added Gautam, head of Shantimalika, a network of women’s peace groups, in a roundtable interview at the office of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Nepali women have been hammering on the doors of political power since soon after the revived parliament proclaimed May 30 that one-third of seats on all state bodies would be reserved for women. Weeks later the government named a committee to draft an interim constitution – five men, no women – and a ceasefire monitoring body – 29 men, two women.

The activists then turned to the United Nations office in Nepal’s capital for help. It has centred its activities on UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the document that directs governments, and the world body itself, to ensure women participate fully in preventing and resolving conflicts and in peace-building. It also stipulates that all post-conflict activities take women’s specific needs into account.

That does not simply mean appointing women to committees in equal numbers to men, says Sanam Anderlini, UNFPA technical advisor. “It’s about recognising that if you want to do it right, you include women. That, for example, when you’re collecting arms, if you want to find out where all the socket bombs are hidden, you have to talk to women,” she told IPS.

Nepal’s Maoists stopped tossing their homemade socket bombs when their leaders called a ceasefire to the 10-year uprising soon after the “people’s movement” forced King Gyanendra to give up direct power in April. The government soon reciprocated and peace talks began weeks later.

In November, negotiations culminated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). It lays out the path to lasting peace: an interim constitution, followed by an interim government to replace the existing parliament. Next June, elections will be held to a constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution, deciding the future of the monarchy, among other things.

While Nepal’s peace process since the “people’s movement” has used a “classic top-down approach” that excludes women, and civil society as a whole, Anderlini is somewhat optimistic that women’s needs will be provided for. “This is the first time we see a concerted approach (to implement Resolution 1325 in a post-conflict situation) and a dialogue going on,” she said.

But Minister of State for Women, Children and Social Welfare, Urmila Aryal, is cautious. “Of course it’s great support when (UN officials) pressure the government about these issues. But these feelings should come from Nepali women first…they need to apply more pressure, make more noise. Sometimes when I’m in cabinet meetings I feel like I’m (pushing this agenda) alone,” she told IPS on Thursday.

Nepali women could help by grooming potential young women leaders and creating more powerful, inclusive networks, added the minister.

UNFPA Nepal Representative Junko Sazaki says her office and the UN Peace Support Working Group on 1325 are working hard to spread awareness about the resolution throughout Nepal. “Our challenge is to include local women’s groups and make them aware,” added Sazaki, a member of the UN assessment mission in Kathmandu this week preparing for the future UN Peace Support Mission. Existing networks of women’s organisations, such as the nation’s 48,000 Female Community Health Volunteers, could be employed to spread information about 1325, she suggested.

The slow pace of setting up the UN mission that will monitor the locked arms of the two fighting forces is being blamed by some here for the interim constitution stalemate. Maoist negotiators are pushing for the document to be signed so they can be quickly included in a new government, while Prime Minister Girija Koirala is arguing that the former rebels cannot enter parliament until UN monitors have taken up their positions.

Already there are reports that some Maoist women are leaving the 28 cantonments that are slowly being erected across the country to house the former fighters. That would echo experiences in other countries, where rebel women are excluded before the formal reintegration process begins, and then miss out on government support, said Anderlini.

“It happens everywhere and it’d be a real shame if it happens here…if women are leaving the camps, how on earth are we to find them? In part, our challenge has been to say to the Maoists: ‘it’s in your interest to see that these things (provided for women) happen’. We need to develop a partnership with them on this,” added Anderlini.

The interim government will include all current members – minus supporters of the king – plus 73 seats for the Maoists and 48 for representatives of society at large. Aryal said she has suggested reserving 33 percent of the latter seats for women but “my leaders have not fully committed”.

Maoist leaders say women will make up 40 percent of their contingent in the temporary government. That will provide “great pressure”, according to Aryal, who added, “Now the iron is hot – it’s time to hammer it. If people feel tired and are passive, nothing will be accomplished because the party leaders are very conservative.”

The post POLITICS-NEPAL: Women Push for Space in Peace Plans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
DADELDHURA, Dec 10 2006 (IPS)

While women in the capital Kathmandu fight for representation on the political bodies designing the ‘new Nepal’, in the remote western region Bhakti Oli has just claimed her right to health care after more than 35 years.

It was after her third child was born at her home in Ganeshpur village that Oli suffered a uterine prolapse. “Everything came out,” she says at a mobile health camp where she has finally sought treatment. “Everybody knew it but there was no hospital so…I put it back in myself.”

Oli, 65, has just had a pessary ring inserted in her vagina to stop her uterus from descending. Suffering from third degree prolapse, the most severe form, she might have been a candidate for surgery to remove the uterus, but a doctor at the camp has counselled her against it because she is over 50.

“She might not be fit to overcome the risks associated with surgery,” says Chandeshwari Tamrakar of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), which, along with the NGO Public Health Concern Trust, is running the two-day reproductive health camp – one of 84 planned in six of Nepal’s 75 districts.

Other partners in the year-long project are the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA) and Nepal’s health ministry, while funding is provided by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid office (ECHO).

“There’s a little bit of pain but overall it feels good,” says Oli recovering on a wooden bench following the 10-minute procedure. The mother of eight says she was married at 20, a late age even by today’s standards – the national average for women is 17.. She had her first child after two years, at home, like the seven that followed. Only 13 percent of Nepali women give birth with the help of trained attendants.

Days later, Oli was back on her feet running a house of 16 people and tending to the fields and livestock. After the prolapse she did not consider seeking medical help. “The health post is close by, but they have nothing,” says her adult daughter sitting next to her.

“Everyone just thinks that this is a problem that happens to at least half of the women her age, so they just hide it. It’s normal here to ignore women’s health,” adds the daughter.

A study released earlier this month estimated that 10 percent of Nepali women need treatment for pelvic organ prolapse, a common problem worldwide but one that strikes women here at a much younger age, and which is rarely treated. Many factors are behind the high incidence: women marry and get pregnant at an early age; they bear many children but receive poor pre- and post-natal care; do excessive heavy work during and immediately after delivering and most have little or no access to health care.

The situation worsened during the 10-year Maoist insurgency that ended after April’s “people’s movement”: delivery of medicines was often blocked and women and their families were scared of meeting Maoists en route to health centres.

In the rural areas where more than 85 percent of people live, many health staff stopped reporting for work. Today, Dadeldhura is short of seven health assistants, seven staff nurses and one doctor, according to acting district health officer Gopal Ganwali.. “There are people in many parts of Nepal who wait all year for mobile health camps so they can get services,” he told a group of journalists who travelled from Kathmandu with UNFPA to observe a camp.

The most severe cases from this district are referred to the Seti-Mahakali Zonal Hospital, a five-hour zigzagging bus ride through the steep, forested hills of Dadeldhura interrupted by tiny, terraced fields where farmers plough behind buffaloes.

Twenty-five to 30 percent of reproductive health cases at the hospital concern genital prolapse, says acting medical supervisor Ganesh Bahadur Singh, a gynaecologist. The main reason for the condition is lack of post-natal care. “After delivering, women are not given any sutures, they are not taking antibiotics; they are not cleaned properly; infections occur and can cause other problems,” he tells journalists.

“In the hill areas there are lots of uterine prolapse cases,” Singh adds. “Women are adopting their own treatments. In Baitadi (District) they take off a bangle (worn on the arms by almost all married Hindu women) and put it inside their uterus to act as a pessary ring. I’ve taken out one that was in there for five years; it was embedded in the tissue. I had to take a saw and cut it out.”

“In another case a woman took leaves from a Sal tree and made a thick ring that she put inside. It was so smelly you couldn’t go near her. She said, ‘I was in the forest getting wood when I felt severe pain and the uterus coming out.’ My god, it was horrible,” he said.

Despite such stories, Singh says things have improved tremendously. “Health education has had a tremendous impact: people are aware and they want to come to the hospital.” Where five years ago the hospital registered 100-150 patients a day, today it sees 300-350.

Dadeldhura too is seeing progress, says district health officer Shiva Dutta Bhatta. Last year its health centres delivered 2,500 babies, compared to about 1,000 in preceding years. One reason is that the government now provides financial incentives for both mothers and health workers who deliver in those centres.

At the health camp, on the grounds of a school, organisers expected around 350 women to show up, but by 1:30, 325 have registered and another 200 are waiting to sign up. They sit on benches chatting with their neighbours, many holding infants.

UNFPA says it expects more than 14,000 Nepalis to receive reproductive health services at the 84 camps and about 600 health workers to be trained in such skills as replacing pessary rings. The agency is now talking with the ministry of health about it taking on the task of holding similar camps once this project ends.

“We’ll never be able to equip every health office but at least these camps allow us to take the equipment to the poor people,” says UNFPA monitoring and evaluation Officer Mireille Guiraud.

The post HEALTH-NEPAL: Mobile Camps Treat Uterine Prolapse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 3 2006 (IPS)

The United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will remain influential despite being sidelined by an arm of the UN General Assembly last week, predicts the chairperson of the world body’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

“Whether it gets passed by the General Assembly or not, it’s already an indigenous people’s declaration and was passed by the Human Rights Council, a UN organ,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz in an interview.

“In fact, even when it was just a draft we used it very well – it was the basis for the formulation of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act in the Philippines, and it has been used as a framework for changing constitutions in Latin America,” added the activist before the Nov. 28 vote in the General Assembly’s Third Committee.

The 45-clause draft declaration was debated by UN member states and indigenous peoples for more than a decade before being passed at the UN Human Rights Council in June. It lays out what many of the world’s 370 indigenous – also known as tribal, aboriginal and First Nations – people say are minimum standards for respecting their unique rights, including rights to land, resources and traditional knowledge.

The 195-member nations of the Third Committee voted to delay a decision on the declaration until September 2007, a move condemned by many indigenous peoples and human rights groups. Tauli-Corpuz, who has represented Asia on the advisory Permanent Forum since its inaugural session in 2002, told IPS a yes vote in the committee and confirmation in the Assembly’s plenary session would have set a solid framework for the second UN decade on indigenous peoples, which started in 2006. But she suggested the document “will still have the weight of customary international law”.

The Permanent Forum chief was in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for a workshop hosted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) to gauge the results of the first UN indigenous decade in Asia.

Her assessment? “You can’t really generalise. In some countries there was an impact – in the Philippines we came up with the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act – but in some countries there were no clear policies or programs related to the decade… what really determined what happened in these countries was how active indigenous peoples themselves were.

In China, the central government took some steps to address its obligations in international conventions to recognise the human rights of ethnic minorities, according to researcher Li Yungxiang. But all of the decision-making flowed from the top downwards, he told about 20 people at the workshop.

Forty-five percent of China’s minority population lives in southwest provinces, including Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizou and Guangxi. The area “has the largest concentration of absolute and relative poverty within China, and within Southwest China, poverty is still concentrated in ethnic minority areas,” added Li.

On paper, the central government – which does not recognise the concept “indigenous people” and uses “ethnic minorities” instead – has taken steps to empower the 32 officially recognised groups in China, which range in size from 6,000 to 17 million people. But within minority autonomy areas for example, real power rests with the Communist Party and there is no rule that local leaders must be from ethnic groups, according to Li.

The Bangladesh government did not mark the first UN decade but in recent years “at least the government is not denying the existence of indigenous peoples; they are keeping silent,” activist Sanjeeb Drong told the workshop.

Dec. 2 was the ninth anniversary of the signing of a peace treaty between the central government and the indigenous people of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). But despite that agreement, the area remains under emergency rule and authorities continue to resettle people from the country’s crowded plains region in the CHT. In 1947, indigenous people made up more than half of the Tracts’ population; today they are a minority, said Drong.

Nepal has 59 recognised indigenous groups, which officially account for almost 40 percent of the population of 27 million people. For decades they have criticised so-called ‘upper caste’ groups (according to Hindu dogma) for monopolising state power and resources. That criticism was renewed two weeks ago when the peace treaty signed between the government and former Maoist rebels ending a 10-year uprising failed to recognise their grievances.

But last week Maoist leader Prachanda announced that 80 percent of his party’s members of parliament in the upcoming interim government would be from indigenous groups. The Maoists also remain committed to transforming centralised Nepal into a federal state where indigenous people would rule autonomous regions with control over almost all matters except defence and foreign affairs, Prachanda added in a speech here.

According to Tauli-Corpuz, few people are aware of the status of indigenous people in Nepal: “Sadly, indigenous people’s participation in bringing about change in countries like Nepal is not really visible.”

The post RIGHTS: Indigenous Declaration Still Powerful – UN Forum Chief appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nov 21 2006 (IPS)

Even before Maoist leaders could assign their soldiers to camps as part of the peace deal ending Nepal’s 10-year insurgency, United Nations officials appeared on the doorstep Monday warning that children will not be allowed into the cantonments.

Even before Maoist leaders could assign their soldiers to camps as part of the peace deal ending Nepal’s 10-year insurgency, United Nations officials appeared on the doorstep Monday warning that children will not be allowed into the cantonments.

“OHCHR (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and UNICEF (UN Children’s Fund) impressed upon the Maoist leadership at the camp that international law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 18 into armed groups,” said OHCHR-Nepal spokesman Kieran Dwyer on Tuesday.

“OHCHR has received numerous reports of child recruitment by the (Maoists) in recent months, and continues to investigate cases,” Dwyer added in an e-mail interview.

Tuesday is the deadline for PLA soldiers to disarm and enter seven camps at sites being set up across the country, where they will be watched by UN monitors, according to a draft peace pact signed two weeks ago. That latter agreement is also supposed to be finalised Tuesday.

In recent weeks, reports have grown of Maoist cadres recruiting, sometimes forcibly, children under 18 for the PLA. But Maoist leaders say the recruits are joining their political party only.

The UN has vowed to prevent minors from entering the camps. “The UN will certainly require that any persons under 18 are discharged and seek to ensure that they are helped to reintegrate into their families and communities,” Ian Martin, personal representative in Nepal of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told IPS via email on Tuesday.

UNICEF has negotiated access to the camps to ensure they do not house children, but exactly how that process will work is unclear, UNICEF Representative in Nepal Suomi Sakai said in an email interview Monday.

“UNICEF has been working with the OHCHR, our partners and the CPN-M (Maoist party) in returning children to their families with some success,” Sakai added. “While society at large needs to continue putting pressure on the CPN-M cadre about not recruiting children, the children and their parents themselves need to be educated about the harm it does to them and their future.”

Some parents delivered that message personally to Maoist officials in recent days, travelling to cantonment sites in west Nepal to find and reclaim their children. “They have lured my son into their army with their false promises,” said Prem Chandra Poudel, interviewed by the Kathmandu Post “How can a 15-year-old kid understand what is wrong or right for him? I have come here to take him back,” Poudel added.

According to locals interviewed by the Post, the rebels have lured many into PLA jobs with false promises of “high salaries” and later recruitment into the Nepal Army. Hundreds of such incidents have reportedly taken place across this small South Asian nation sandwiched between India and China.

No accurate figures exist on the number of minors used by the Maoists, or state security forces, since the rebels launched their fight for a republic and to deliver social justice for women, indigenous people and Dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’ in the Hindu caste system) in 1996.

As many as 14,000 people – most of them innocent villagers caught in the crossfire – were killed in the insurgency, which spread a blanket of fear over the hinterland of this largely rural country. Tens of thousands of Nepalis intimidated by soldiers on both sides locked their homes and fled to guarded district headquarters towns or across the southern border to India.

Late in 2005 the rebels joined forces with a wary alliance of mainstream political parties to unseat King Gyanendra, who fired his own prime minister and seized power Feb. 1, 2005. In April this year, after three weeks of sometimes violent street protests that swelled to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children marching on the streets of the capital Kathmandu, the monarch gave up power and recalled parliament.

Since then, government and Maoist leaders have been moving slowly to implement the 2005 blueprint, which will culminate in elections to a constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution, deciding the fate of the monarchy.

On Monday, a high-level commission recommended that King Gyanendra and 201 others be prosecuted for suppressing April’s “people’s movement” in which 19 people died. Under the existing constitution the monarch cannot be put on trial but some legal experts have already suggested that a new law could be created to clear that hurdle.

Last week there were reports that signing of the peace pact was delayed because the Maoists objected to certain human rights provisions the government had included in the document. According to UNICEF’s Sakai, “Although we would like to see as much detail as possible about the reintegration process in the peace accord, we believe that if the principles of child protection at time of conflict are included, we can continue working with both parties to get the details in the action plans.”

Tuesday afternoon, Ekantipur.com news site reported that parents in west Nepal had blocked buses carrying PLA soldiers to their camp in Nawalparasi district so they could search the vehicles for their children.

The post RIGHTS-NEPAL: Children Feared Bound for Maoist ‘Peace’ Camps appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nov 21 2006 (IPS)

Even before Maoist leaders could assign their soldiers to camps as part of the peace deal ending Nepal’s 10-year insurgency, United Nations officials appeared on the doorstep Monday warning that children will not be allowed into the cantonments.

“OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) and UNICEF (UN Children’s Fund)impressed upon the Maoist leadership at the camp that international law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 18 into armed groups,” said OHCHR-Nepal spokesman Kieran Dwyer on Tuesday.

“OHCHR has received numerous reports of child recruitment by the (Maoists) in recent months, and continues to investigate cases,” Dwyer added in an e-mail interview.

Tuesday is the deadline for PLA soldiers to disarm and enter seven camps at sites being set up across the country, where they will be watched by UN monitors, according to a draft peace pact signed two weeks ago. That latter agreement is also supposed to be finalised Tuesday.

In recent weeks, reports have grown of Maoist cadres recruiting, sometimes forcibly, children under 18 for the PLA. But Maoist leaders say the recruits are joining their political party only.

The UN has vowed to prevent minors from entering the camps. “The UN will certainly require that any persons under 18 are discharged and seek to ensure that they are helped to reintegrate into their families and communities,” Ian Martin, personal representative in Nepal of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told IPS via email on Tuesday.

UNICEF has negotiated access to the camps to ensure they do not house children, but exactly how that process will work is unclear, UNICEF Representative in Nepal Suomi Sakai said in an email interview Monday.

“UNICEF has been working with the OHCHR, our partners and the CPN-M (Maoist party) in returning children to their families with some success,” Sakai added. “While society at large needs to continue putting pressure on the CPN-M cadre about not recruiting children, the children and their parents themselves need to be educated about the harm it does to them and their future.”

Some parents delivered that message personally to Maoist officials in recent days, travelling to cantonment sites in west Nepal to find and reclaim their children. “They have lured my son into their army with their false promises,” said Prem Chandra Poudel, interviewed by the Kathmandu Post “How can a 15-year-old kid understand what is wrong or right for him? I have come here to take him back,” Poudel added.

According to locals interviewed by the Post, the rebels have lured many into PLA jobs with false promises of “high salaries” and later recruitment into the Nepal Army. Hundreds of such incidents have reportedly taken place across this small South Asian nation sandwiched between India and China.

No accurate figures exist on the number of minors used by the Maoists, or state security forces, since the rebels launched their fight for a republic and to deliver social justice for women, indigenous people and Dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’ in the Hindu caste system) in 1996.

As many as 14,000 people – most of them innocent villagers caught in the crossfire – were killed in the insurgency, which spread a blanket of fear over the hinterland of this largely rural country. Tens of thousands of Nepalis intimidated by soldiers on both sides locked their homes and fled to guarded district headquarters towns or across the southern border to India.

Late in 2005 the rebels joined forces with a wary alliance of mainstream political parties to unseat King Gyanendra, who fired his own prime minister and seized power Feb. 1, 2005. In April this year, after three weeks of sometimes violent street protests that swelled to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children marching on the streets of the capital Kathmandu, the monarch gave up power and recalled parliament.

Since then, government and Maoist leaders have been moving slowly to implement the 2005 blueprint, which will culminate in elections to a constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution, deciding the fate of the monarchy.

On Monday, a high-level commission recommended that King Gyanendra and 201 others be prosecuted for suppressing April’s “people’s movement” in which 19 people died. Under the existing constitution the monarch cannot be put on trial but some legal experts have already suggested that a new law could be created to clear that hurdle.

Last week there were reports that signing of the peace pact was delayed because the Maoists objected to certain human rights provisions the government had included in the document. According to UNICEF’s Sakai, “Although we would like to see as much detail as possible about the reintegration process in the peace accord, we believe that if the principles of child protection at time of conflict are included, we can continue working with both parties to get the details in the action plans.”

Tuesday afternoon, Ekantipur.com news site reported that parents in west Nepal had blocked buses carrying PLA soldiers to their camp in Nawalparasi district so they could search the vehicles for their children.

The post RIGHTS-NEPAL: Children Feared Bound for Maoist ‘Peace’ Camps appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nov 17 2006 (IPS)

Government and rebel leaders failed to sign an agreement Thursday to formally end a 10-year insurgency that killed up to 14,000 Nepalis, scarred the lives of tens of thousands more, and continues to claim victims.

Government and rebel leaders failed to sign an agreement Thursday to formally end a 10-year insurgency that killed up to 14,000 Nepalis, scarred the lives of tens of thousands more, and continues to claim victims.

On Nov. 9, Rupan Kandangwa, 9, his sister Rasmita, 5 and their neighbour friend Sushan Fambu, 4, were playing near their homes in the village of Sangrnati in eastern Tehrathum district when they found a strange looking object that they picked up and took home.

Soon after they arrived the landmine exploded, killing the children and mangling their bodies beyond recognition. “The mine was left by the Maoists. They were careless – they didn’t know where they had left it,” Bijaya Subba member of parliament for Tehrathum told IPS on Tuesday.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the government declared ceasefires after uniting temporarily in April to lead hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of this South Asian nation’s cities and towns, chasing King Gyanendra from power after three weeks of protests.

Soon after, the two sides started peace talks that ended in a deal last week that was to be officially sealed Thursday and is now delayed until Nov. 21. It creates an interim government (including Maoists) that will organise elections to a constituent assembly, whose members will write a new constitution.

The deal also binds the government and former rebels to not use landmines in future conflicts and to initiate a mine clearance campaign, says Purna Shova Chitrakar, coordinator of Ban Landmines Campaign Nepal (NCBL).

No one knows how many landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were planted during the country’s 10-year conflict. In April 2004, a military spokesman told NCBL that the RNA had deployed 9,500 mines to date.

According to civilians who talked to NCBL over the years, Maoist fighters usually scattered mines and IEDs randomly in areas where they were temporarily based while Nepal’s security forces planted them as perimeters to protect their barracks, government offices or important installations such as hydroelectric towers.

Seventy-two people were killed by mines and other exploding devices from January to September this year, including 13 children, 25 members of the security forces and 22 Maoists, according to NCBL. In 2005, 210 people died from such blasts, among them 33 children.

Chitrakar told IPS a mine awareness education campaign in 35 of Nepal’s 75 districts is one reason for this year’s decline in deaths. “If we compare with the last two-three years, people are more aware, except in the remote areas.”

She says NCBL will use the interim government period, scheduled to last until elections in mid-June 2007, to continue mine education and make arrangements so the next government can sign the International Mine Ban Treaty.

The group will also keep pushing for mine clearance. “If (fighting forces) don’t use mines it’s good, it’s beautiful, but they have to be concerned about those mines already (planted),” said Chitrakar.

On Friday, Ian Martin, personal representative in Nepal of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said he hopes government and Maoist leaders will include landmine clearance in an agreement they are now designing with the UN on decommissioning former rebel fighters.

“It’s a matter of concern to the UN because of the security of our own personnel but also for the women and children who are dying,” Martin told journalists. Until September, at least 46 women were victims of explosions in 2006, two of them fatal, according to NCBL.

Asked about reports that Thursday’s deal signing was postponed because the Maoists objected to clauses in the document on the protection of human rights, Martin said it is up to leaders on both sides to determine how rights are reflected in the deal. “Obviously the UN regards human rights as something at the centre of the peace process,” he said.

“Anything (in the document) that suggested there was less than a full commitment to human rights would be very uncomfortable,” he added.

Besides killings – most of them of innocent villagers caught between the fighting sides – Nepal’s uprising was marked by widespread torture and disappearances by both armies. Tens of thousands of people fled their village homes for district centres surrounded by sandbags, barbed wire and armed soldiers, or crossed the border to neighbouring India.

A draft peace treaty agreed last week calls for the creation of a reconciliation commission that would probe human rights abuses during the conflict.

According to media reports, Maoist leaders postponed Thursday’s signing because they feel the peace treaty does not fully acknowledge the social injustice that pushed them to launch their revolt. “(It) is a ridiculous document. It does not reflect the spirit of the Jana Andolan (April’s people’s movement that chased King Gyanendra from power). We cannot simply ignore the causes of the people’s war in the peace treaty,” The Himalayan Times quoted Baburam Bhattarai as saying.

But Prime Minister Girija Koirala was unfazed, telling reporters Friday, “Delaying a few days would not hamper the peace process but makes it more concrete and stronger.”

Local media continued to report Friday that Maoists are forcibly recruiting youths for their army. Rebel soldiers are scheduled to be placed in camps and their weapons collected on Nov. 21, so the Maoists are hastily boosting their numbers so they can collect more money in allowances, according to reports.

Plus, the more Maoist soldiers there are, the greater proportion of places the former rebels will occupy in the future Nepal army, which is to be created by merging the Maoist and state fighting forces, suggested a UN official Friday.

The post NEPAL: Peace Delayed, Dying Continues appeared first on Inter Press Service.