Kathmandu, June 4: A week after the government constituted the Human Rights Commission (HRC), human rights activists today questioned its effectiveness and voiced for the amendment in HRC Act to make it more powerful.
“The HRC – as it has been constituted – seems to be the government’s Commission and not the citizen’s,” Former Speaker Daman Nath Dhungana said.
“How can it be the citizen’s Commission if the Attorney General outlines its jurisdiction?”
Dhungana also questioned the legal provision that allows only the retired Chief Justice as chief of the Commission. “Why can’t others be appointed as the head of the Commission?”
The Commission as it has come is not agile enough, Dhungana told an interaction on the Effectiveness of the HRC here this afternoon. “The duty of the Commission is not to stick to the dictates of government but to check it from violating the human rights.”
Senior advocate Sarbagya Ratna Tuladhar doubted whether the government would implement the recommendations forwarded by the Commission. “What happens if the executive declines to implement the Commission’s reports? he questioned and called for an amendment in the Act to empower the Commission.
INHURED International’s programme director Neeru Shrestha said that the Commission would not be as effective as expected as the Act had not given it a mandate to implement its findings.
President of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists Suresh Acharya criticised the government for not including the representative of the Fourth State in the Commission. Human Rights Protection Forum’s President Padma Ratna Tuladhar however said that much could be done to protect human rights even within the framework of the existing Act. “The Commission can do a lot if it works with commitment.”
Tuladhar said that common people’s issues should be the first priority of the Commission.
Sushil Pyakurel – one of the five HRC members – said that his priority as an HRC member would be to break the culture of impunity.
Another member Kapil Shrestha said that he would try to make the government serious and responsive to human rights issues.