KATHMANDU: Despite that Nepal is one of the immediate signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child after it came into being in 1989, the country has failed to submit its country report since then except its regular feature of observing the International Children’s Rights Day that falls on November 20.
Nepal signed the Convention in 1990, only one year after the UN adopted the Convention recognising the children’s rights. But it has failed to submit the country report even once. Once a nation commits to the convention, it is required to submit its country report every five years.
Nepal had submitted its preliminary report in 1995, which, too, was three years after the stipulated time. Furthermore, Nepal has also failed to formulate and implement laws for the interest of the children.
The overall situation is that majority of Nepal’s 9.4 million children are deprived of their rights from the lack of implementation of the existing rules and regulations.
“No government since the restoration of democracy in 1991 were committed to ensure the child rights as a fundamental rights to nurture the potential and overall interest of the children,” advocate and child rights activist Bal Krishna Mainali told The Rising Nepal. He, however, said a draft report has been prepared but the final report to be submitted to the UN has not been accomplished yet.
After the ratification of the convention, the provision enshrined in it becomes the complementary part of our law, Mainali said.
The CRC comprises of 54 articles of which the first 41 are related to children’s rights on education, health, housing and all forms of exploitations including sexual; and the remaining articles are related to the implementation of those conformed articles.
Tallying with the spirit of the CRC and the ratification of Nepal towards it, the Children’s Act 1992 is also incomplete in relation to the CRC. It includes only 18 clauses, from 3 to 20, related to children’s rights.
Mainali calls this discrepancy to the haste made while drafting the Act, and that even those clauses included in the Act have not been fully implemented. He said several articles of the act need to be amended to comply them with the CRC. “The UN recommended Nepal to improve the six points (from clauses 30 to 35) mentioned in the preliminary report submitted by Nepal,” Mainali said.
One positive step, however, was the establishment of children’s benches in all the 75 district courts in 2000 to ensure fundamental rights to children. “But it has become toothless. Not a single case related to children has been filed due to lack of clarity in the clauses,” said Mainali.
The act does not include the children rights to form their organisation and register it with the district administration committee. The Supreme Court had, in its verdict to a case, had decided that children’s organisation be registered with the district administration office.
But the government, instead, formed district child welfare committees and made provision that such organisations be registered with the committee rather than with the District Administration Office. As a result, there is no children’s organisation registered with the government, said Mainali.
Mainali further said that the child prisoners are handcuffed and are kept with adult prisoners although both the CRC and the verdict made by the Supreme Court prohibit it.
Moreover, the situation of children in Nepal is worsening due to the terrorist activities of Maoists.
“Many children in the Maoist affected areas are deprived of administering polio drops and many others are displaced from their houses,” adds Mainali. There are also reports of the Maoists forcing children to carry weapons, in terrorist activities, and as human shield in their attacks.