Yet another case involving a Nepali peacekeeper against which a civilian charge is pending in Nepal raises serious concerns about the recruitment process to the United Nations Peacekeeping missions. This new case clearly show that the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) did not draw the lessons from the repatriation of Major Basnet, an Officer formerly serving with the DPKO in Chad, who is accused of rape and murder in Nepal.
Mr. Raj Kumar Mahaseth is a prominent human rights defender and lawyer working for the Advocacy Forum, a national human rights NGO in Nepal. On January 26, 2008 he was monitoring a mass rally launched by seven political parties in Janakpur and documenting the use of force by the police against the demonstrators when he was severely beaten with batons by the Nepal armed police. Kumar was wearing a uniform which clearly distinguished him as a human rights defender.
The Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Mr. Subash Bhandari, the officer having command over the policemen indulging in the beating-up of the demonstrators and Kumar, refused to intervene and further avoided his subordinate officer from being properly identified. As the commanding officer, the Bhandari is accountable for the behavior of his subordinates. He should have prevented his officers from breaking the law and torturing human rights defenders.
Kumar filed a torture compensation case against Bhandari before the Dhanusha District Court on February 29, 2008. On October 13, 2009 the court sent a summons to the DSP asking him to be present in the court. The summons was addressed to the Armed Police Forces (APF) Headquarters.
The APF sent back the summons and informed the Court that DSP Bhandari is serving in Darfur, Sudan under UN Peace Keeping Force till September 27, 2010.
The DPKO prides itself as carrying missions aiming at alleviating human suffering, and creating conditions and building institutions for self-sustaining peace. To achieve this, the DPKO must have procedures in place that the troop and police contributing countries to the DPKO are not exploiting a posting in a DPKO mission as refuge for absconders.
In one of the most infamous case, enormous international pressure forced the DPKO to repatriate Major Basnet, a Nepali peacekeeper who was accused of having illegally arrested, tortured, raped and murdered, Maina Sunuwar, a 15-year-old girl in February 2004. The international community was apparently shocked to discover that an arrest warrant pending against him for a case of murder did not prevent his appointment to the UN peacekeeping mission in Chad.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), as well as other international and local human rights NGOs and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, have been continuously reporting about this case and expressed their serious concern regarding the appointment process to peacekeeping missions. Major Basnet was eventually repatriated on December 12, 2009 but has still not been prosecuted. For more information about this case please see our statement STM-247-2009 and our latest urgent appeal regarding this case UAU-004-2010.
Nepal is a major contributor to UN Peacekeeping Missions. Since 1958, more than 70,000 Nepali personnel have served in UN missions. In January this year, 5,162 Nepalis – members of the army, the police and the armed police force – are deployed in military missions around the world, including in highly vulnerable areas such as the Central African Republic, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia or Darfur. This makes Nepal an important troop-contributing country after Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and India. It is a contextual irony that none of these states have clean human rights records, neither are their army or police officers known for following international or domestic human rights norms. In fact, they are some of the worst in Asia.
The deployment of soldiers with a history of human rights violations in countries whose populations already had to face unimaginable suffering and whose stability is precarious if not inexistent, will affect the credibility of the blue helmets. It will adversely affect the credibility of the UN as an institution that strives to maintain international peace and security. It can also seriously damage the peace process in places where the DPKO deploy troops and could further jeopardize the lives of the civilians they are supposed to protect and that of other troops sharing responsibility in peacekeeping.
The appointment of human rights violators from Nepal in DPKO missions will contribute to the denial of the right to justice of their victims in Nepal. From the victims point of view, peacekeeping missions have become a shelter for their abusers. It allows them to escape prosecutions and legal process.
International human rights law is an integral part of the normative framework for United Nations peacekeeping operations. The right to effective remedy for acts violating the fundamental rights is built into the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, Principles and Guidelines as an unalienable normative framework for the DPKO. By becoming an unintended shelter to those alleged of having violated human rights, the DPKO could be accused of poor internal management and review processes that eventually promotes impunity and encourages further human rights violation.
Taking part in a UN peacekeeping mission is a lucrative assignment for members of the Nepal Army and its Armed Police Forces. This is because of the high pay packages the DPKO offer. It is common for superior officers to demand bribes from subordinates for recommending a nomination to the DPKO mission. Nepal’s troop contribution process to the DPKO is ridden with corruption and nepotism. There is hardly anything that the DPKO can do to prevent this. But had the DPKO implemented effective appointment vetting procedures it could have prevented the embarrassment of having referred to as a safe haven for criminal officers.
Human rights abuses of the Nepal Army and that of its police forces have been widely recorded and reported including by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The High Commissioner’s representative in Kathmandu is involved in documenting and helping prosecution of several of these cases. However, the situation that DPKO has placed itself in by inadvertently harboring some of these criminals raises serious doubts concerning DPKO’s operational efficiency.
The DPKO cannot act as if it was not aware or concerned about the past records of its troops and should therefore take more precautions in accepting troops from countries with poor human rights standards like Nepal. The DPKO must also conduct an immediate screening of the human rights records of its troops
In the past, as evident from Major Basnet’s case the DPKO has been hiding behind the argument that it could not vet all the appointments to its missions. After the decision to repatriate Major Basnet was taken, the Assistant-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Mr. Edmond Mulet, called for the proper observance by the National Army of established norms and procedures including those related to human rights while selecting officers for peacekeeping operations.
It is common sense that an army that continuously refuses to produce those of its members accused of rape and murder before a civilian court, as it has been the case with Major Basnet, and which has been continuously trying to cover-up allegations of human rights violations by its personnel cannot be trusted with this task.
Yet, expecting this important duty to be carried out by the troop contributing state alone is the denial of responsibility. It is also disrespect to the victims of human rights violations and further threat to the civilians where the troops are posted. It is a shameful waste of international resources. In spite of the serious allegations pending against Major Basnet, the Defense Minister of Nepal firmly opposed the decision to repatriate him and said that the Minister would not allow any action to be taken against Basnet.
As early as April 2006 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Louise Arbour, declared that her office was willing to keep the DPKO informed about which Nepalese soldiers and police officers had violated human rights norms. The bureaucratic separation in the UN between peacekeeping missions, political affairs and policing of human rights that prevents the different departments to adopt common stances on a given situation must be overcome to address this crucial issue. Four years latter it is very surprising that little concrete steps have been taken to materialize this offer.
Credibility of any mission works down to the legitimacy of each officer posted on the field, including those from Nepal. In 2005, news that peacekeepers had sexually exploited women in Congo has already tarnished the international reputation of the blue helmets and forced the UN to make strong public commitment against it. It is now high time for the DPKO to show that it can learn from its past mistakes and assume full responsibility for the appointments in its peacekeeping operations.
