Kathmandu, March 7:

The Human Rights Central Registry Unit set up at the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers sought records of the detainees held in government custody throughout the country from the Home Ministry and Defence Ministry today.

“We requested the home and defence ministries to provide their existing records of all detainees held in detention centres across the country,” Diwakar Pant, secretary of the PMO, told this daily.

According to him, the HRCRU has a mandate to provide records to the National Human Rights Commission, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and International Committee of the Red Cross.

“However, we do not have a policy of providing data to human rights defenders and human rights organisations,” he said. The HRCRU may assist the human rights defenders on moral grounds, but it does not have a “legal obligation” to provide them with data.

Human rights defenders’ job is to raise awareness on human rights and come up with recommendations but monitoring human rights is beyond their jurisdiction.

Terming Pant’s remark unconstitutional, Subodh Pyakurel, chairman of the Informal Sector Service Centre, said it is the government’s duty to provide information to human rights defenders. He reminded the government’s March 2003 human rights commitment to assist

human rights defenders and give them access to information.