Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to forward to you the following press release from the NGO Federation of Nepal, at the occasion of the review of the Millennium Development Goals in New York. The following demands have been formulated during an interaction programme organised to reflect the views of Civil Society Organisations on “Millennium Development Goals and Poverty”, organised in Kathmandu on 13 September 2010.
Asian Human Rights Commission
Hong Kong
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A Press Release from NGO Federation of Nepal, forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
NEPAL: Political Parties, Government and Development Partners: Be Accountable in Delivering Basic Services to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Nepal
We, the members of various civil society organisations of Nepal, have been active, and engaged in social movements to defend the rights of different social groups and marginalized sections of our people.
In the context that world leaders are gathering in New York from 20 to 22 September 2010 to review the progress on MDGs, and the commitment made by donors and governments in halving the world poverty by 2015,
Considering that Nepal’s three-year development plan (2010-2013) details are being prepared based on the approach paper approved by the National Development Council; and that Nepal is in the process of building new constitution and restructuring the state through federalism in order to guarantee the rights of the people,
Respecting the people’s aspirations for peace and justice during people’s movement 2006 and Constituent Assembly Election 2008; and the expectations of the people towards their rights to development as committed by the politicians and the state,
We call upon the political parties, government and development partners to take following actions immediately.
1. Peace, security and political stability should be considered as the prime issues when addressing poverty and sustainable development in Nepal. Human rights, including rights to development, right to food, education, health, housing and work must be guaranteed by the new constitution. To guarantee these rights, right to resources must be ensured through a larger framework of agrarian reform, especially land reform.
2. Fully funded national plans to achieve universal health, education, life, water and sanitation, rights to food and housing, rights to productive employment amongst others must be a core part of the three-year plan and the annual budget of Nepal.
About 400,000 people enter the domestic labor market every year; if they don’t go for foreign jobs, the majority of them remain unemployed in the country. Ensuring decent work for a dignified life for its citizens must be an imperative policy priority of the government. Malnutrition is a major problem faced by around 50 percent of the children in Nepal. The state should take immediate measures to prevent and control malnutrition to ensure its future citizens able to contribute economically and socially to their country. Every year thousands of lives are lost due to easily curable and preventable water-borne diseases, especially diarrhea. These can easily be controlled if the state becomes responsible and accountable for its peoples’ health and sanitation.
3. Youth population comprises 38% of the total population of Nepal and youth are the most vulnerable population as majority of them remains to be unemployed or underemployed after they enter into labor market. Many of them migrate to foreign country for a low grade job in risky working environment. We urge the government to provide job opportunities for the youth by developing appropriate policies and programmes.
4. Gender and social exclusion audits must be carried out to measure to what extent programmes and whether or not their budgets have reached marginalized communities — particularly women and children, agricultural workers, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, etc;
5. Agrarian reform including land reform is a must in order to guarantee the access to resources, and to recognize the identity of the marginalized and discriminated sections of society. A distributional justice is important in order to achieve MDGs.
6. Nepal, in particular, remote hill districts, has been facing serious food crisis and consequently thousands of people go hungry. This will bring a serious impact on the health of women and children due to malnutrition. Stunted growth in children, maternal and child deaths have become a common phenomenon because of low food intake (availability doesn’t mean that people will not go hungry). We demand the serious attention of the government towards those areas facing food crisis. The present level of food crisis demands both short long term attention and policy of the government in order to reduce poverty and malnutrition. We demand a greater and immediate attention of the government to those areas and communities that face serious food deficit.
7. Priority of the government programme and budget should be directed towards ensuring agricultural and food rights through the promotion of access to resources and local production. Families at the rural areas should be encouraged to produce food sufficient for them by promoting their access to productive resources. The government should develop acts and legislations based on food sovereignty as a fundamental right of the people, a provision made by Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007. Equally, local people’s access to and control over of the forest and water resources must be ensured through new constitution in order to eradicate poverty and ensure economic, social and cultural rights of the people.
8. Since 50 percent people in Nepal do not have access to proper sanitation facilities, it has been a major cause of illness, health hazard and death. Appropriate programs with sufficient funds need to be developed and be implemented immediately. The 2009 epidemic of diarrhea killed thousands particularly in the hill districts of the Mid-western and Far-western Development Regions. Such outbreaks and loss of lives demand immediate responses from the government to save and protect the lives of its citizens by providing basic health services including safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities. The Government should fulfill its obligation to protect the people’s rights to safe drinking water and sanitation as a fundamental human right as recently declared by the United Nations.
9. A credible, transparent, effective and inclusive monitoring and accountability framework at national and local level must be the key part of the development programmes. There must be a broad space for civil society participation in all levels of the monitoring process. The monitoring and accountability framework must address the issues of inequality and discrimination and in particular address the appalling lack of progress on gender equality.
10. All the basic services to be provided to people have been halted due to the changes of the governments at the times when annual programme and budget have to be approved. The advance budget brought by the care-taker government does not cover the budget for development activities and basic services. We call upon the political parties to settle the issues of government formation immediately and resume the development activities that the people desperately need. The development budget must be released on time. The practices of releasing the budget at the very last possible moment of the fiscal year should be scraped. The practices of releasing the development budget just before the fiscal year ends promote corruption and bad governance, not to mention a lackadaisical attitude. Concrete measures to address corruption must be included in the annual plans.
11. Donor commitments towards the attainment of ODA targets must be fulfilled, and the 0.7 per cent committed by many OECD countries must be put in place. Moreover, the commitment of providing 0.15-0.20 percent of GNI of developed countries to Nepal as LDC and LLDC must be fulfilled.
12. Foreign aid must be governed and delivered based on the international commitments made in Paris Declaration (PD) 2005, and Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) 2008. The donors must promote the country ownership and use of country system in delivering their aid and must avoid parallel structures and sub structures in order to increase developmental effectiveness.
13. All illegitimate debts must be immediately cancelled without imposing any conditions.
14. Funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation must be separate from the development funds/ODA, and should not be raised by tapping into the ODA funds. Nepal, with least share of carbon emission, has been affected most adversely by climate change. Governments’ policies and plans must recognize the centrality of emissions reduction to combat climate change and its effects on vulnerable populations, and acknowledge that the most appropriate goal for this is a commitment by world leaders to limit the global average temperature rise at 1.5 degrees; and the position taken by Nepal in this regard needs to be consistently promoted.
15. Local development has been severely affected as there have been no democratically elected representatives at local government. This has resulted into ineffectual provision of the very basic services to the people. Getting back into democratic local governance is of utmost importance in order to achieve MDGs in Nepal.
16. Localizing the MDGs by reflecting the goals with action plan in district development and village development plans of District Development Committee and Village Development Committee is important in order to benefit people at grassroots levels.
List of organizations involved in Citizen’s Campaign for Democracy and Social Transformation (CCDST)
1. NGO Federation of Nepal (NFN)
2. Federation of Community Forest Users Nepal (FECOFUN)
3. National Human Rights Alliance
4. National Federation of Disabled Nepal (NFDN)
5. Federation of Drinking Water and Sanitation Users Nepal (FEDWASUN)
6. Federation of Community Electricity Users Nepal
7. National Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN)
8. National Federation of Irrigation Water Users Association Nepal (NFIWUAN)
9. National Association of VDCs in Nepal (NAVIN)
10. Dalit NGO Federation (DNF)
11. Right to Food National Network (RtF)
12. Association of Youth Organizations Nepal (AYON)
13. Women in Policy Advocacy Alliance (WIPAA)
14. National Youth Organization Federation Nepal (NYOFN)
15. Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC)
16. Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights, Nepal
17. Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO)
18. Youth Action Nepal
19. Nepal Development Initiative (NEDI)
20. Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN)
21. Jagaran Nepal
22. People and Development (PAD)
23. Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP)
24. SHRISTI
25. Nepal Scout
26. Forest Action Nepal
27. Forum of Development Journalists (FODEJ)
For more information, please contact:
NGO Federation of Nepal
Buddhanagar, Kathmandu, Nepal
P. O. Box No.: 7768 (Kathmandu)
Phone No.: +977-01-4782908, 4781368,
Fax: +977-01-4780559
Email: info@ngofederation.org,
Website: www.ngofederation.org
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