After coming under heavy pressure from rights bodies at home and abroad, the government has finally forwarded the whereabouts of 38 missing persons to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and has also promised to reveal the details of the remaining lost ones at the earliest. It is good that the government is holding extensive discussions with the security forces to make public the status of around 725 missing people, many of whom are believed to be reeling at various detention centres or have been killed. Since it is a strenuous task to find out about those missing since years, the government’s effort in this regard has to be appreciated. Ironically, however, the list does not include even a single name of the disappeared individuals whose families are on a hunger strike in the premises of the Nepal Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the last five days. These families are compelled to live under the trauma of not knowing the fate of their kin. The government simply cannot deal with this issue in a lopsided way. It should be handled with utmost care and compassion.

Time and again, the government has been criticised for not displaying seriousness in dealing with cases of disappearance. Lately, the US 2005 Human Rights Report on Nepal, released in Washington DC, listed unresolved disappearance cases of 1305 persons since the start of the insurgency. It said the government had arrested 1697 people since 1996 until 2005, but it is yet to confirm the whereabouts of 90. Around 290 persons were said to be in Maoist detention. In this context, it would be ideal if the recent Surrender and Rehabilitation Policy, 2062, gets materialised. A provision of the Policy allows the Maoists to surrender in the NHRC premises, but the NHRC officials have dismissed this possibility as not being within its mandate. But it is not at all a bad idea for the NHRC to play some sort of a ‘facilitator’ role for whoever in the Maoist camp wishes to lay down their arms to. After all, the arms would have to be received and inventory kept by someone with authority.