FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 18, 2009
ALRC-STM-002-2009
A Statement by the Asian Legal Resource Centre
ASIA: The region to benefit from the High Commissioner’s visit
The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) appreciates the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navanethem Pillay to Nepal and India. During her first official visit to Asia, Ms. Pillay will spend five days in Nepal and two days in India. Ms. Pillay arrived in Nepal today.
In Nepal, Ms. Pillay is expected to meet the Prime Minster, the President, representatives of the National Human Rights Commission and human rights defenders. Nepal has the UN’s largest field presence and is likely to host a regional office of the UN in the future. However, what is more important would be how the country could benefit from Ms. Pillay’s visit, in its attempt to restructure and reshape into a democracy after years’ long turmoil that has affected the life of the ordinary citizen of Nepal. During her short stay in India, Ms. Pillay is expected to meet the Foreign Secretary, the Minister of Home Affairs, members of the judiciary and human rights defenders.
The role of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is more diplomatic in nature, seeking cooperation from member states to protect, promote and fulfil human rights commitments. Both India and Nepal has a lot to benefit from Ms. Pillay’s visit.
Ms. Pillay is the first woman lawyer to open a legal practice in Natal Province of South Africa in 1967. In her personal life and professional career as a lawyer and later as the first non-white woman judge in the High Court of South Africa, Ms. Pillay had to struggle against racial and gender discrimination. Ms. Pillay has commendable experience as a defense attorney who helped victims of custodial torture and discrimination, in a jurisdiction formerly administered by one of the worst regimes of the time, infamous for sparing no resources to insist racial supremacy over the majority black population in South Africa.
State sponsored violence, disappearances, communal hatred, discrimination, poverty and malnutrition are some of the fundamental human rights issues that Ms. Pillay dealt with, for and on behalf of her clients as a lawyer, as a human rights activist and later adjudicated as a judge in South Africa. These are also some of the pressing human rights issues that the governments of Nepal and India are trying to address. In this context, the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Nepal and India is a step forward to coming face to face with issues concerning the rule of law that poses some of the greatest challenge to the protection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights in the region.
Both India and Nepal suffer from institutional failures, particularly of the institutions that deal with the day-to-day dispensation of justice. Impunity resulting from the inability and the failure to investigate crimes, delays in adjudicating cases and often, the absence of a functional legal and institutional framework results in the inability of the state in fulfilling its mandate under common article 2 of the international conventions and covenants. The governments of Nepal and India are fully aware of these problems that affect the protection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights.
Ms. Pillay’s visit is expected to pave way for a better understanding about the above issues faced by the ordinary citizens in Nepal and India, and carrying it back to the UN framework. Ms. Pillay’s visit to these two countries must encourage a productive dialogue between the two governments and the Office of the High Commissioner. It is expected that through dialogues, the governments as well as the United Nations mechanism will be able to find solutions to problems that have defied resolutions so far in these two countries. With this approach, it is expected that Ms. Pillay could take a step forward the work initiated by her predecessor in office, Mr. Kofi Annan.
With her experience in dealing with apartheid in South Africa, caste based discrimination, a burning human rights issue that shames humanity, must not be a strange phenomenon, difficult to understand for the High Commissioner. The only difference is the magnitude of the problem, reflected in terms of the sheer number of the individuals facing caste based discrimination, which is estimated to be double than the total population of South Africa.
Ms. Pillay’s visit will also be an encouragement for human rights activists working in Nepal and India, particularly in the context of increasing demands posed by challenging circumstances, including but not limited to, adverse inferences sometimes made by the government against human rights work in India and Nepal.
The ALRC calls upon the governments of both India and Nepal, to make sensible use of the High Commissioner’s visit and as an occasion to revisit the promises they have made to their citizens and to the UN Human Rights Council. The visit would be an encouragement for the governments to ratify international conventions, for instance, the Rome Statute by the government of Nepal and the Convention against Torture by the government of India, initiatives that could be viewed as additional guarantees for the protection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights in these two countries.
The ALRC expects that the High Commissioner’s visit is a prelude for a better cooperation between the United Nations and the governments of the two countries, which in the days to come, will help the ordinary citizen of the two countries and further will promote the role the two countries could play in ensuring stability and democracy in the region.
