FEBRUARY 27

The Prime Minister's decision to block Foreign Minister Bimala Rai Paudyal's scheduled visit to Geneva to attend the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting at the last moment has sent a very wrong message in the diplomatic community.

She was departing for the airport to board the flight Sunday evening, when a message from the Prime Minister's Office was communicated that she was to cancel her visit. What is surprising is that her trip had been okayed by the Cabinet just days ago but was prevented from flying there at the eleventh hour.

Although no official reason has been given for the PM's decision, given the fast political developments taking place in the country in the last few days, it is not difficult to see why Foreign Minister Paudyal was barred from taking part in the conference. Paudyal became foreign minister on the recommendation of the CPN- UML, through whose backing the coalition government of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal was formed in December.

However, relations between the UML and Dahal's Maoist Centre have soured after the Prime Minister forged an alliance with the largest party in the Parliament, the Nepali Congress, together with seven other fringe parties last week to back the NC's candidate for the post of president instead of the UML's choice.

The 52ndregular session of the HRC began on Monday and will last till April 4. Nepal considers this meeting to be crucial as this is the final year as HRC member, having been re-elected as member in October 2020 for three years. Among others, Nepal was to make presentations on the progress made on the yet-tobe concluded transitional justice, even though the decade-old Maoist insurgency that claimed 17,000 lives ended in 2006 through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Paudyal would also have been participating in the conference at a time when the Geneva-based Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) has degraded the status of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to status B from A over the legality of the appointment of the office bearers of the commission.

This is the first time the NHRC has had to face such a situation since it was set up in 2000. Paudyal's is not the first case where scheduled official visits have been cancelled at the last moment. In March 2000, then Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai had to scrap his scheduled foreign visit after being forced to resign by an ambitious Girija Prasad Koirala, who could not wait until Bhattarai's return from abroad. What this shows is that our domestic political squabbles tend to spill over to our foreign relations as well, which does not augur well for the conduct of our diplomacy with other nations. Prime Minister Dahal's decision to prevent Paudyal from participating in the Geneva conference is not only immature but also smacks of vendetta, which has already drawn considerable criticism from Nepali diplomats.

She represents the government of Nepal, not a political party. The tendency to see individual ministers as being representatives of different political parties, instead of as people serving the interest of the nation, is wrong. Our conduct of foreign policy should be based on principles not on the whims of prime ministers.

A version of this article appears in the print on February 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.