Godawari (Lalitpur) Mar. 10:The government with the joint effort of civil society will outline Nepal’s first National Human Rights Action Plan (HRAP) by the end of this year.

A two-day HRAP consultative meeting that concluded here this afternoon decided to form a joint steering committee within next month to complete the process.

First of its type in South Asia, the action plan would promote and strengthen human rights within the country, said the participants of the meeting jointly organised by the government and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “It is a plan which gives equal attention to civil cultural, economic, political and social rights of people.”

The action plan is being prepared as per the recommendations made by the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, which requires each of the member states to draw up a national action plan and identify steps to improve and protect human rights with the respective states. Nepal is one of the signatories of the Vienna convention.

Following the conference, 11 signatory countries have developed action plans on human rights: Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Latvia, Malawi, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela.

“Though HRAP has nothing to do with the formation of the much talked about Human Rights Commission (HRC), it will certainly support the overall efforts of improving and preserving the human rights situation in the country,” the participants said.

Chief Secretary Tirtha Man Shakya in his closing remarks said that the government would constitute the commission by mid-April. “It will come out any day before April 14,” he said.

HRAP would not prevent the formation of HRC but would assist and facilitate it in its functions, Shakya said. He also showed the necessity of conducting awareness programmes to remove the existing public confusion about the definition of human rights and its spheres.

Henning Karcher, UN Resident Co-ordinator in Nepal, said that the consultation process was a constructive effort to put the plan into practice and had a non-confrontational approach in protecting human rights in Nepal. “It has nothing to do with the HRC formation but will certainly support the overall effort to achieve the goal,” he said. “Nepal has a comprehensive legal framework that supports the formation of HRC.”

He said that the principle aim of the whole process was to incorporate human rights issue into the development process.

During the two-day meeting, NGO representatives said improvements in the rights of women, children and ethnic people should be included in the plan, according to a press release distributed at the closing of the meeting. Officials said that drafting a national human rights action plan was an important way of showing their commitment to the human rights in the constitution and in the international human rights agreements that Nepal has ratified, it said.

The decision to open consultations on what should be in the plan follows regional human rights meeting in Bangkok in 1999 and a meeting between Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and special representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Brian Burdekin, the press release said.