The scars of the conflict will remain unhealed unless the law relating to both the commissions is amended to meet international standards

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) were formed one year ago to make thorough investigations on serious human rights violation and cases of enforced disappearances during the decade-old conflict beginning February 1996 and May 2005. The two commissions were envisioned after the then government led by GP Koirala and the rebel Maoists reached a historic Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) in December 2006, and the same were also included in the Interim Constitution, now replaced by a new constitution. But these two commissions could not begin the task of investigations on the related fields in the absence of regulations, necessary human resources and technical expertise. Both are given two-year time to conclude the investigations on rights violation and cases of enforced disappearances. They have already spent one precious year without doing any substantive job and the TRC and CIEDP officials have demanded an amendment to the law so that the cases of serious human rights violations are clearly defined in the law.

Presenting a plan of action at the Parliamentary Social Justice and Human Rights Committee on Wednesday TRC chair Surya Kiran Gurung vowed to complete the task of investigations on rights violations in less than one year. But most of the committee members were skeptical about the TRC’s ability to complete the job in a free, fair and impartial manner as the commission does not have expertise and adequate financial supports from the government. TRC and CIEDP are supposed to carry out investigations throughout the country and submit their reports to the government along with recommendations for legal action against the rights violators and proper reparation or compensation to the rights victims either by the state or by the rebel sides. Both the commissions will be relying on the district-based peace committees formed under political affiliations. TRC has plans to collect complaints within two months from April 17 to June 16. Then, it will process the complaints and prepare a report within six months.

Rights activists and the international community, including the United Nations, have decried the formation of the commissions which, both have said, do not meet international standards to handle the cases of the conflict era and the transitional justice mechanism has serious flaws. That is why the world body has refused to extent financial and technical assistance to the commissions. On the other hand, the Supreme Court also has its reservation saying that the sub-judice cases cannot be handled by the transitional justice mechanism that does not even have semi-judicial power. In any case, reports of both commissions, deliberately formed to defuse the cases of serious rights violations and to give impunity to the rights violators, will not be recognized by the international community. The scars of the conflict that left over 17,000 people dead and thousands of others internally displaced will remain unhealed unless the law relating to both the commissions is amended to meet international standards. The commissions also lack expertise on collecting information on right violations, its processing and to protect the victims of possible reprisal from parties of the conflict.

No more chatting

Although no studies have been carried about the use of social networking sites by government officials in the Singha Durbar and if their use hampers their efficiency on the their job, senior government officials have concluded that it does. So a ban has been enforced on the use of such sites. We find many employees in government offices using these sites during office hours. The officials say that the civil servants could use the social networking site before or after the stipulated office hours.

As to whether if the ban would deprive the employees from acquiring vital information, they could visit government websites and online news portals. They are permitted to use their own email account to send and receive information under the circumstances.  This is fitting because using social networks sites during office hours hampers the service delivery for which they are assigned. We should keep up with the advances made in technology but it does not mean that we should allow this to affect the working of the civil servants.