Kathmandu, August 30
Three international human rights organisations have urged Nepal to let regular courts try conflict-era disappearance cases and other human rights violation cases during the war citing the existing transitional justice mechanisms cannot ensure justice.
Issuing a statement on the occasion of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Commission of Jurists on the occasion of International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the organisations said the courts should be allowed to hear conflict-era cases involving human rights violations as per a Supreme Court ruling in 2015.
“The governmental Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) … published a list of 2,506 people allegedly forcibly disappeared, but it has failed to determine what happened to a single victim, and nobody has been held accountable,” the statement reads, “Victims’ families have attempted to pursue justice through the legal system, but successive governments have blocked proceedings.”
“Alongside the disappearances commission, Nepal also established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which received over 60,000 complaints of abuses from the conflict era but has failed to complete the investigation of a single case.”
“Victims and civil society organisations in Nepal have been seeking meaningful consultations, amendments of the law, and appointment of commissioners only after the law has been amended. However, Nepal’s political parties have all, when they were in office, failed to hold meaningful consultations with victims.”
