Attorney General Agni Kharel on Wednesday urged the United Nations and global societies to financially support Transitional Justice’s burden of reparating victims of conflict.

Addressing the international conference on human rights, organised here by the National Human Rights Commission, Kharel said the fund is necessary as a huge amount would be required to provide reparation to thousands of victims of the decade-long Maoist insurgency. His suggestion comes at a time when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is finalising reparation policy.

The TRC has around 63,000 cases while the Commission of Investigation of Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) has over 3,000 cases. Finding out the truth and recommending cases to the AG’s office for prosecution is a major task for transitional justice bodies.

AG Kharel said his office was on the verge of finalising the amendment to the Act of CIEDP and TRC as per the Supreme Court verdict and international standards.

“I have gone through rounds of consultations with different stakeholders before drafting the amendment to the Act,” he said. “There would be strong provisions in place not to give amnesty in severe cases of war era crimes that include extra judicial killing, torture, rape and sexual violence, and enforced disappearance.”

Also speaking on the concluding day of the conference, leaders representing victims’ groups expressed their dissatisfaction over the sluggish pace of investigations over three years since establishing the two transitional justice bodies. They argued that nothing has barred the TRC and CIEDP in seeking the truth and finalising the reparation policy.

Conflict Victims Common Platform Chairperson Suman Adhikari said, “These two bodies have failed to give us any hope. We could have trusted them they had completed investigating some emblematic cases.”

The three-day international conference that heard discussions on different facets of human rights in South Asia concluded on Wednesday with the Kathmandu Declaration.