NEPAL: Community threatened with eviction, no alternative housing offered or provided 

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding the threat of forced eviction faced by thousands of slum dwellers. According to the information we received from WOREC and the National Alliance of Women Human Rights Defenders the government is planning to evict thousands of landless slum dwellers living along the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu without having made any plan for relocation of the community. No legitimate procedure including prior notice to and consultation with the community has been followed. Should the eviction go ahead, some of the slum dwellers may be rendered homeless placing Nepal in breach of its international obligations under the international human rights laws and principles ensuring the right to adequate housing and guiding the due process for evictions. Further reports that the police manhandled and verbally abused women, children and elderly people during protests and that the government is deploying thousands of security personnel to conduct the eviction has raised fears that excessive force may be used against the affected persons.

CASE NARRATIVE:

According to a report of a High-Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization (HPCIDBC), a government agency, more than 10,500 people are living alongside the banks of Bagmati River, but slum dwellers’ organizations estimate that there are more than 23,000 persons living there.

For the last three years, the government has been announcing its intention to evict the communities living alongside the banks of the Bagmati River for development purposes. This followed an April 2011 Supreme Court decision in which it directed the government to stop the encroachment of the slum dwellers on public land. In November 2011, the HPCIDBC directed the slum dwellers to leave their settlement within two weeks but did not offer them any alternative housing option. On 27 November, a 17-member taskforce, with the support of all political parties, was established to conduct the evictions. After three ultimatums to the slum dwellers to evict the place, without providing them with alternative housing arrangements, a meeting on 4 December 2011 decided to resort to force to conduct the eviction. The head of the taskforce has since then announced in the media plans to deploy 3000 police and armed police personnel to conduct the eviction.

Five slum dwellers’ organisations filed a writ petition to the Patan Appellate Court to suspend this decision. On 11 December 2011 the Appellate Court, Patan issued a stay order to the three District Administrative Offices of Kathmandu Valley, the Nepal Police and the HPCIDBC to suspend the eviction process until 17 January 2012. The court further ordered the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers to conduct an identification process of the “genuine” slum dwellers and to develop appropriate housing alternatives for them if they are to be evicted. On 27 January, the Supreme Court upheld the government decision to evict the slum dwellers but further ordered appropriate alternatives for them.

In interaction programmes with the representative of the slum dwellers organizations or with the media, the ministers have committed to develop suitable alternative solutions for the slum dwellers. In December 2011, the Minister for Land Reform and Management promised that the government was committed to “managing new places for slum dwellers”. Similarly the government has repeatedly pledged to form a high-level commission to solve the issues of the slum dwellers but such commission is yet to be established.

But according to the same information, the government’s plan to develop the banks of the Bagmati River has not included any provision to provide alternative housing options to the community, nor was the community consulted in the process leading to the decision to evict them. In public, the different government agencies are rejecting the responsibility for finding accommodation for the slum dwellers on each other. The government is offering to provide the landless with a three-month renting allowance but has not made any plan for relocation.

It seems that no proper research was done by the government to evaluate the situation in the slums, including to determine the number of children and elderly who would be affected by the relocation or to evaluate the poverty level of the community. In January the government launched a verification process to determine those who were “genuine” slum dwellers. To be considered “genuine landless slum dwellers” the inhabitants had to prove that they, their fathers and their children did not possess land and that they were not government employees. Around one thousand families only have so far gone through that process, as the majority of slum dwellers feared that the verification process was an attempt from the government to portray them as abusers and to justify their eviction without further process.

Further, the community has not received any formal notification of the eviction which failing has been denounced by Human Rights Watch in an open letter to the government. Instead, the community was informed that they had to evacuate the river within one week through an announcement in the newspapers. This communication does not follow any due process as established in internationally accepted norms and standards such as the UN Basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement.

The slum dwellers have organized themselves in a National Squatter Forum and have organized protests against the eviction without appropriate housing solutions. In January 2012, they forwarded a letter to the Home Minister Gachchhadar and to the head of the High-Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization and of the taskforce, Mahesh Basnet, urging them to develop a relocation plan in accordance with international standards.

A report by The Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition reports that the National Squatter Forum’s request for the government to collectively plan for eviction were “met with continuing harassment and police brutality”. We are further informed that on 17 January, more than 400 persons were arrested for having taken part in the protests organized the previous day. At around 4 am the same morning almost 7, 8 hundred policemen thronged into the slum area in police vans and trucks and arrested every person they found in front of them. The children and elderly people were also manhandled and pushed into police trucks. According to the same information police arrest and manhandling continued for about 4 to 5 hours. After the arrest they were detained in different police detention centers around Kathmandu valley.

The women rights defenders who visited Maharajgunj and Tinkune police station reported that some of the detainees were injured and some women even fainted in front of them. All but 24 detainees were released within after 12 hours of arrest and detention. The police was planning to charge those 24 detainees under public offence but after pressure from national human rights organizations the government released them without any charge. The police further raided the homes of the leaders of the movement which forced them into hiding for several days.

According to the information we have received, in a live interview, the Minister of Land Reform and Management Mr. Bhim Prasad Gautam termed one leader of the movement as a “hooligan”. Under the UN Declaration on human rights defenders, the government has the responsibility to foster a conducive environment for the work of human rights defenders, but by publicly defaming them, the Minister has on the contrary, created an unstable situation, putting them in danger and encouraging further harassment. This has in turn impeded their capacity to defend the rights of the landless community.

In light of the above and keeping in mind that the government is resolute to use force against the slum dwellers and has announced the deployment of 3000 police and armed police personnel, we are concerned that excessive force may be used against the slum dwellers during the eviction process which will place the most vulnerable among them, the women, children and elderly, in danger.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The UN Basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement read “Urban or rural planning and development processes should involve all those likely to be affected and should include the following elements: (a) appropriate notice to all potentially affected persons that eviction is being considered and that there will be public hearings on the proposed plans and alternatives; (b) effective dissemination by the authorities of relevant information in advance, including land records and proposed comprehensive resettlement plans specifically addressing efforts to protect vulnerable groups; (c) a reasonable time period for public review of, comment on, and/or objection to the proposed plan; (d) opportunities and efforts to facilitate the provision of legal, technical and other advice to affected persons about their rights and options; and (e) holding of public hearing(s) that provide(s) affected persons and their advocates with opportunities to challenge the eviction decision and/or to present alternative proposals and to articulate their demands and development priorities. ”

The government has not complied with each of those elements and has therefore failed to abide by international standards of ensuring the community’s right to take part in the decision-making process.

The principles further state “Evictions should not result in individuals being rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights. The State must make provision for the adoption of all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, especially for those who are unable to provide for themselves, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available and provided. Alternative housing should be situated as close as possible to the original place of residence and source of livelihood of those evicted”.

So far, the government has failed to design a plan providing suitable alternative housing to all the landless, in line with its international obligations. Such alternative housing options must be designed, in close collaboration with the community, before giving the order for the eviction.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 

Most of those living in the slums are rural migrants. The first settlers arrived in the 1980s in search of economic opportunities but the skyrocketing property prices in Kathmandu forced them to settle in the riverbanks. In many cases, local politicians or government officials have encouraged the families to settle in the banks of the river, luring them with the promise of free land. This enabled the political parties to develop a substantive electoral base. Some came after being expulsed from their homes because they could not afford to pay their rent anymore. Some fled the violence which stormed their villages during the conflict. Many came after losing their small piece of land in a natural disaster. Some women came here after being abandoned by their husband, left with no income source and facing stigma in their village.

Most of the slum dwellers now work as daily labour, some have opened a small shop in the slum areas and some collect material to be sold afterwards. As the slums have expanded, the community has organized itself and benefited from essential services provided by the NGOs such as free daycare and schools which have been providing meals to the children and allowing the parents to work as labourers. The eviction from the riverbanks, if proper relocation is not guaranteed to the community may cut them from those much-needed services and from the daily labour which guaranteed their survivals. The right to food, the right to health and the right to housing of the families may particularly suffer from such evictions as well as the right to education of the children.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please join us in calling to the government of Nepal to bring to an end the harassment of human rights defenders working with the landless families living in the banks of the Bagmati river and to follow due process of consultation with the affected communities, providing them with alternative housing options before conducting the eviction.

Please be informed that the AHRC will be writing a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights defenders and the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living and on the right to non-discrimination in this context.

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