KATHMANDU, JANUARY 30
A recently released research-based book titled 'The Disappeared: Enforced Disappearance and Human Rights Violations during Armed Conflicts' by Deb Bahadur Bohara, a PhD holder, depicts how the human rights of ordinary people in Nepal were curtailed and violated during the decade-long armed conflict that erupted in 1996.
It focuses mainly on cases of disappearance, analysis of its complex nature and gross violation of human rights.
According to Bohara, this is an analytical and exploratory research-based book of qualitative as well as quantitative nature. Primary information was collected through opinion survey of 230 samples using judgemental sampling method from different groups, including civil servants of the Government of Nepal and security forces, human rights and civil society sectors.
Eighty-five per cent of the respondents were males. Likewise, 50 per cent of the respondents belonged to the age group 30-40 years.
"It is a well-known fact that disappearance is a crime against humanity and a global human rights violation. The United Nations adopted legal provisions such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2007. However, Nepal has not ratified either convention so far," it reads. In order to settle the issues of disappearance cases, Nepal has already constituted Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons.
Documentation of data of ICRC, National Human Rights Commission and the Government of Nepal illustrates 193, 133, and 212 cases of disappearance per year in a decade on average respectively. There were 1,275 cases of disappearance recorded during the period of conflict in Nepal. About 8.7 per cent of the disappeared people were women and nearly 0.4 per cent were children below the age of 13.
Comparison among all the districts shows that Bardiya had the highest number of disappeared people (251) from 2001 to 2006. Similarly, Dang (108) and Banke (107) hold the second and third position in terms of number of disappeared people. There were 34.3 per cent of disappearances reported from an unknown age group.
Data shows that 94 per cent stakeholders believed that the state did not honour human rights and 73 per cent believed that the government was responsible for human rights violation.
Approximately, 82 per cent of the respondents stated that frequent political interference was responsible for lack of justice in cases of disappearance.
The study reveals that the most responsible factors for non-implementation of fundamental rights of citizens were lack of political will (73.96 per cent) and the then government (73 per cent) which was compelled to use force, giving rise to human rights violation during the insurgency period.
Bohara said comparative studies of national and international disappearance cases revealed that the nature of most cases of disappearance seemed similar. In most cases, it seems that the court has taken a serious stand and summoned the government to take strict and strong actions against the perpetrators, and has asked the state to provide better opportunities to the victims and their relatives. The research finds that the impunity is at the crux of disappearance cases in Nepal as people of this nation pay no regard to the principle of the supremacy of law. The research recommends that the government take initiatives to improve the situation while facilitating and removing obstacles for all mechanisms of investigations in cases of disappearance.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 31, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
