The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) today urged the future interim government of Nepal to reaffirm its commitment to ending and preventing enforced disappearances by signing and ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from provisions of the Convention.

“The ICJ welcomes recent commitments by the Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), but urged the future Interim Government of Nepal to take urgent steps to prevent this heinous crime in the future, investigate allegations of past disappearances and, where evidence is available, bring to justice before ordinary criminal courts those responsible for the crime,” an ICJ statement said.

The Convention was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 20 December 2006. Thousands of individuals reportedly disappeared during Nepal’s ten-year conflict.

“Given the history of enforced disappearances in Nepal, the ratification of the disappearances Convention would be a historic step. It would send a clear political message that this heinous crime is not tolerated by this Government,” ICJ Secretary-General Nicholas Howen said.

Between May 2000 and 13 January 2007, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) registered 2028 cases of disappearance while the whereabouts of people involved in 645 of these cases remains unknown. The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances stated that Nepal was the source of the largest number of urgent action cases in a single country in 2004. Similarly, the UN human rights agency in May 2006 reported that 49 people had disappeared from the Bhairabnath Battalion of the then Royal Nepalese Army in Kathmandu.

Welcoming the clauses in the Interim Constitution that recognising past enforced disappearances and requesting relief to the families of victims, the ICJ also called for proper implementation of the constitutional provisions.