Editorial
Rights priorities
Security agencies, Maoist party should offer war-era dossiers to the TRC bodiesThe transitional justice process has been overshadowed and fallen victim to various events that have taken place over the past year, first the earthquake and later the promulgation of the constitution and the crisis in its aftermath.
Conflict victims and human rights groups have always fought a difficult battle. Over the past year, however, the struggle has become even more difficult. First, the government pushed forward legislation on transitional justice mechanisms in the face of widespread opposition from victims’ groups. Later, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) were formed, there was widespread scepticism, as it was believed that the commissioners to these bodies had been appointed on political grounds and would be beholden to the parties and state actors rather than to the victims.
It now seems clear, however, that the state and political parties are not even willing to extend minimum cooperation to these transitional justice bodies. If it was previously thought that the parties would influence the working of these bodies to their own benefit, it now seems that they are intent on preventing these bodies from functioning altogether.
A case in point is the fact that the government has yet to approve the guidelines of the TRC, even though it received them over five months ago. As a result, the functioning for the TRC has been completely blocked. It has not even been able to collect applications from conflict victims for their cases to be heard.
In fact, there is so much frustration among TRC members that its spokesperson said in public that if the government continued to refuse to cooperate with the body, the TRC would be forced to “internationalise” the issue, thus bringing foreign intervention into human rights issues in Nepal.
There are those who argue that the state has not been ignoring transitional justice deliberately. Rather, consumed with the myriad crises confronting Nepal in recent months, the government has not had the time to deal with the issue. This, however, is hard to believe. After all, the kind of cooperation asked for by the TRC and CIEDP so far requires minimal effort. It seems more likely that the current government is actively trying to sabotage the transitional justice process by deliberately undermining its institutions.
Members of the government will likely dispute this characterisation. However, if the state wishes to appear committed to transitional justice, it will have to cooperate with the TRC and CIEDP to a much greater extent than it has so far. For starters, the state security agencies and the Maoist party should offer their internal documents from the conflict era to the two commissions and the government should approve the working guidelines of the transitional justice mechanisms.