I shall be brief, but I am very pleased to be here. When I was Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, I spent more time talking to victims and organisations representing them than I did talking to politicians, but these days it is the other way around. So it is a pleasure to be with friends from the human rights community as well as with victims of human rights violations.
I want to congratulate Advocacy Forum for bringing these findings to us. Advocacy Forum has been an absolutely consistent champion of victims and the need for justice in Nepal and it is natural that you should be the partner of ICTJ in this survey and report. I cannot praise the International Center for Transitional Justice, because I worked for it for the three years before I came to Nepal. But I will say that it was during the time that I worked for ICTJ that we decided that it was not enough simply to say that the views of victims were crucial to designing strategies for transitional justice, but decided that one way to make that a reality was to ensure that the views of victims and other citizens were surveyed. And I was responsible, I think, for the decision for ICTJ to carry out its first such survey, in East Timor, which I think helped to make it more difficult for politicians to misrepresent the views of victims and ordinary Timorese, and I very much hope that your report will have that same effect in Nepal.
I haven’t read the whole report - I have only begun to read the report. But apart from the summaries, I looked through - as I particularly enjoy doing - the direct quotations from victims themselves. One saying that struck me in particular, by a male Dalit from Baglung, was “Peace obtained through just setting doves free is not a genuine one.” Nepal is on a long and hard road to sustainable peace.
Achieving truth and justice in Nepal is going to be a long and hard road. And the findings of the survey, regarding the mistrust of existing institutions in Nepal, is evidence of that.
If I may offer just one message of my own this evening, it is that there are some things in the field of transitional justice that should be done quickly, and some things that should not and cannot be done so quickly. I think it is important that Nepal has a truth and reconciliation commission, a credible independent truth and reconciliation commission. But I agree with ICTJ, human rights organisations, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which speaks for the United Nations in Nepal on these matters, that a truth commission must be preceded by a very serious period of consultation and reflection if it is to be effective. It is something that can only be done once, and it needs to be done when it can be done in a way that truly serves the interests of truth and justice.
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Publisher:
UNMIN
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(2007
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Type / Script:
Press Release
in English
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Keywords:
CONSTITUTIONS, PEACE, PEACE AGREEMENT, PEACE MAKING, ELECTIONS, POLITICAL CONDITIONS, POLITICAL SITUATION, POLITICAL PARTIES, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION, POLITICAL COOPERATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, FREEDOM, RIGHT TO INFORMATION, PEACE PROCESS, CIVIL SOCIETY, ARMIES, ARMED FORCES, CEASEFIRES, HUMAN RIGHTS, JUSTICE
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Thematic Group:
UNMIN
:
Peace and Conflict through Political Mission
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Thesaurus:
14.02.02
- Human Rights
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Reference Link:
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