Kathmandu, April 6:

Two Nepali students, Abishek Parajuli and Bipin Pandey, were declared winners (Asia/Pacific category) of an essay competition, the global Human Rights and Poverty writing contest.

The resident and humanitarian coordinator of the UN System in Nepal, Matthew Kahane, and OHCHR representative to Nepal, Lena Sundh, gave away the awards.

The UN Department of Public Information, New York, and the Geneva-based OHCHR organised the contest for Human Rights Day, 2006.

Parajuli, a tenth-grader at St Paul School Darjeeling, wrote about an eight-year-old boy from eastern Nepal while Pandey, a ninth-grader at Om Secondary School, Bhaktapur, wrote on racial discrimination.