Kathmandu: Three international human rights organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Commission of Jurists, on Tuesday issued a joint appeal in the name of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and main opposition leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the chair of Maoist Center, urging them and other relevant stakeholders to take decisive action to appoint and empower a new recommendation committee to complete the work of selecting commissioners, ensure a transparent process including wider consultations with stakeholders, and enable a process that leads to the appointment of independent, impartial and competent people to the transitional justice commissions—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission for the Investigation of Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP).
“Since the end of hostilities in Nepal’s internal armed conflict in 2006, the quest for truth, justice
and reparations for conflict victims has faced significant obstacles, undermining the rule of law
and eroding public trust in state institutions,” they have said. “Nineteen years later, a consensus among political parties on amending transitional justice laws has finally emerged, sparking cautious optimism. We have publicly commended this consensus and acknowledged the positive provisions in the amended law. Despite the law’s shortcomings, appointing competent, impartial, independent, and widely trusted individuals to the commissions can help to ensure a successful process.”
They have further said in the appeal that the government of Nepal has a duty to ensure an effective and just outcome to Nepal’s transitional justice process, that ensures victims and survivors have access to justice and reparations for violations and abuses suffered, reminding the government and relevant stakeholders that this obligation arises from the principles and commitments enshrined in Nepal’s Constitution, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Supreme Court rulings, and Nepal’s international human rights obligations.
On December 16, the two months allotted to the Recommendation Committee to select candidates expired without the process being successfully completed, and the committee recommended that the government form a new recommendation committee.
The recommendation committee published a shortlist of candidates which drew significant objections from conflict victim communities and other members of civil society.
They have said that the recommendation process must aim at selecting members on the basis of their competence in human rights and other relevant areas of international law, proven independence and recognized impartiality, and reflecting gender balance and a pluralist representation of society.
The international human rights organizations have called on the government to form the new committee without delay to revisit this approach, addressing the concerns raised by victims, survivors, Nepali civil society, and international organizations. “Competency, integrity, and public trust in the commissioners is essential for the commissions to deliver their important mandates as envisioned in the law,” they have said. “We call on the Honourable Prime Minister and the leaders of major political parties to ensure a conducive environment for selecting independent, impartial, competent, diverse and widely accepted leadership for the commissions by consulting victims, survivors and civil society stakeholders.”
“Since transitional justice requires adherence to international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law, we call on the Honourable Prime Minister and all relevant stakeholders to safeguard the national and international legitimacy of this process. With two prior failed attempts at transitional justice, the risk of a third failure looms large,” the appeal states. “Such a failure could signal Nepal’s unwillingness or inability to ensure accountability for grave human rights violations including crimes under international law.”
The appeal by the international human rights organizations comes in the wake of the controversies surrounding the decision of the recommendation committee to nominate chief commissioners, commissioners and other officials in two transitional justice mechanisms.
Rights defenders in Nepal have been demanding that the recommendation committee pick qualified and competent persons with high moral integrity to these two commissions, which are tasked to facilitate resolving the insurgency-era cases.
Ever since the recommendation committee made public the names shortlisted for various positions in TRC and CIEDP, human rights defenders as well the community of the insurgency era victims, have been expressing dissent, arguing that the candidates shortlisted by the Committee fall short of displaying impartiality.
The recommendation committee, led by former chief justice Om Prakash Mishra, shortlisted candidates for 10 positions, including eight for the posts of chairpersons of TRC and CIEDP early this month. The committee shortlisted Sudip Pathak, a former member of the National Human Rights Commission, Kashi Raj Dahal, former chairperson of the Administrative Court and Sher Bahadur KC, a former president of the Nepal Bar Association, as possible candidates for heading TRC. Retired high court judges Achyut Prasad Bhandari and Dilli Raj Acharya; Bijay Sijapati, former dean of the Faculty of Law under Tribhuvan University; Bishwo Raj Koirala and Mahesh Thapa, were shortlisted for either of the two commissions.
Soon after, as many as 28 organizations representing the victim communities raised objections to the shortlist and demanded correction in the selection process.
Similarly human rights defenders in Kathmandu raised serious objections to the published shortlist to fill positions in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) and demanded that new names should be included in the TJ shortlist.
Rights defenders have been urging the stakeholders to appoint impartial persons in the TJ bodies. In an interview with The DMN News last week, Nirajan Thapaliya, human rights defender and director of Amnesty International Nepal, raised the need of appointing the right persons in TRC and CIEDP, which remain almost defunct because of the lack of office bearers, to take the transitional justice process forward to a meaningful end. “The role of the commissioners will be pivotal. Empathy, courage, commitment, due diligence, sensitivity, independence, autonomy and integrity are some of the traits a commissioner needs to have to deal with this grave issue,” he said. “The ability to listen to, cry and laugh together with the victims’ pain and sorrow, and to be able to objectively look at facts and circumstances to draw conclusions towards building a body of truth is vitally needed in every commissioner,” Thapaliya added. “We have seen internal bickering, bootlicking of the political masters and so on within the team of previous commissioners that ultimately led to zero achievement over the eight years in their time at the expense of the state’s huge amount of resources and time.”
He further said that the TJ Commissioners should not only be strategic but also clairvoyant so that they should be able not just to listen to the deep wounds and pains of the victims and society as a group but also dare to summon the alleged persons and question them of their wrong doings, seek apologies, facilitate reconciliation and guide a process of healing. “This is possible only at the leadership of a person of grand stature such as Desmond Tutu in South Africa,” he said.
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