UN team to visit Nepal to monitor disappearances

December 1, 2004
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December 01, 2004

KATHMANDU: A fact-finding mission of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances-a universal mechanism that deals with disappearances– is arriving Kathmandu next week to monitor the situation of disappearances in the country, UN sources said.

The mission is visiting Kathmandu amid reports that Nepal tops the list of countries in the world where people are reported as disappeared after they are taken into custody. Until three years ago, Columbia occupied that notorious slot.

According to a source at the UN system in Kathmandu, the four-member delegation led by Stephen Toope will arrive Kathmandu on Monday and spend a week meeting top government officials and family of victims, among others.

S.R. Khorashni, Tanya Smith and Younkyo Aha are other members of the delegation.

The Working Group– set up by the UN Commission on Human Rights — does not have any legal powers to compel the government to take action or to stop violating human rights. The group, however, is expected to present specific recommendations to the Nepal government regarding the violations of rights and disappearances of people.

Moreover, the group would attempt to help the relatives of disappeared persons to find out what has happened to their missing family members by raising individual cases with the government here, sources said.

“The group will also meet top security personnel,” the source said.

Since its establishment in 1980, the Working Group has taken up over 50,000 cases of alleged disappearances to over 70 governments, reports say.

Examining cases, which fit the definition of an enforced disappearance set out in the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, the group raises cases of disappeared persons with the governments around the world.

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said recently that it has documented more than 1400 cases of people disappeared from both the parties in conflict in Nepal. Majority of them have been reported as ‘disappeared’ after they were taken into custody by the security forces, the Commission said.