The 58th International Human Rights Day was observed in Nepal yesterday (December 10). Political leaders and office-bearers of human rights organisations at home and abroad issued messages to stress the importance of the day or produced articles taking stock of the situation in global, regional or local terms. In his message, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala said that nobody should violate anybody’s human rights under any pretext. CPN-UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal also spoke along similar lines. Lena Sundh, chief of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, emphasised the need to end the state of impunity for violators to ensure respect for human rights in the country. Louis Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has dedicated this year’s Human Rights Day to the anti-poverty fight, closely linking both, and arguing that rights abuses are both the cause and the effect of poverty.

At a time when one out of every seven persons in the world goes to sleep hungry, the link between the two is understandable, more so in underdeveloped countries like Nepal where deep-seated social and economic evils persist, along with mass illiteracy and ignorance. Nepal ranks among the 20 per cent of the world’s nations signing more than four of the seven international rights conventions, but its scorecard doesn’t reflect the same commitment. The situation got from bad to worse during the 11-year-old insurgency, that just ended with the November 21 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Maoists and the government, with the UN as a witness.

With the return of peace, public expectations of improvement have shot up not only on the human rights front, as the Maoists and the SPA constituents are now preparing to take supposedly a big stride, through the formation of an interim government, towards establishing “total” democracy, restructuring the state and providing a fair deal to those classes of population who had somehow not been able to utilise the opportunity available in society to uplift their status — socially, economically and politically. But poverty cannot be wished away by dedicating a day. The economic and social state Nepal is in is due to myriad factors, and some of them are imponderable. But even poor countries like Nepal can provide equality of opportunity for all irrespective of caste, creed and gender, and adopt special measures to enable those left behind to come forward and use their rights. This means all efforts should be directed towards promoting good governance, something which will be impossible unless transparency and accountability are injected into the system. But the observance of the day should provide an occasion for reflection on past deficiencies and opportunity for correction in future. The UN itself is not in a position to perform independently of the veto-wielding UN oligarchs. Therefore, Human Rights Day will hold relevance only if they make December 10 a day for soul-searching, asking themselves if human rights and democracy have not suffered around the globe when and where the powerful perceived these things to clash with their “national or vital strategic interests”.