The U.S. Department of State released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Thursday, March 11th in Washington, DC. The congressionally mandated reports cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Releasing the report in Washington D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Human rights may be timeless, but our efforts to protect them must be grounded in the here and now. New technologies have proven useful both to oppressors and to those who struggle to expose the failures and the cowardice of the oppressors. And global challenges of our time – like food security and climate change; pandemic disease; economic crises; and violent extremism – impact the enjoyment of human rights today, and shape the global political context in which we must advance human rights over the long term.”
Some highlights of the 2009 Report for Nepal are listed below:
– Impunity for human rights violators, threats against the media, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention were serious problems.
– Maoist militias engaged in arbitrary and unlawful use of lethal force and abduction. Violence, extortion, and intimidation continued throughout the year. Numerous armed groups, largely in the Terai region in the lowland area near the Indian border, attacked civilians, government officials, members of particular ethnic groups, each other, or Maoist militias.
– The Maoists returned some previously seized property as the CPA requires but kept other illegally seized lands and properties in their possession; they also seized additional properties. Maoists and Maoist-affiliated organizations continued to commit abuses during the year in contravention of the CPA. Maoists regularly extorted money from businesses, workers, private citizens, and NGOs. When individuals or companies refused or were unable to pay, Maoist recrimination was violent or implied the threat of violence.
– The fate of many of those who disappeared during the 10-year Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) remained unknown. The government did not respond to an OHCHR report on 49 disappeared persons who had been arrested and detained at the Maharajgunj barracks in Kathmandu in 2003 on suspicion of being linked to the Maoists, nor did it respond to the OHCHR′s report on disappearances in the Bardiya district where at least 170 persons disappeared between 2001 and 2004.
– Delays in the administration of justice were a severe problem.
– Violence against women and trafficking in persons, mainly women and girls, continued.
– Armed groups and political parties deliberately targeted media workers and journalists throughout the country. Female journalists came under particular and increasing threat. Several ethnic and political groups in the Terai seized and destroyed newspapers when the papers declined to publish and highlight protester activities, halt distribution of the newspapers during strikes, or prohibit Nepali-language content in newspapers.
The Nepal chapter of the report can be accessed at the U.S. Embassy website as well as on the Department of State’s main website.
United We Blog 
Comments
One response to “Human Rights in Nepal: from American eyes”
The entire use of ‘media’is to have a foreign ‘fresh’vision….
Societies such as developping countries on their ways to emancipation are going through processes of identity, the magars, the sherpas, and so on…
Then all are very snappy like i cannot understand this.
So there is a need to be understood, heard and be recognized, be respected. The word respect is composed of re ( again) and spectare ( to look). So all these invisible people women, men and children suddenly simulaneously are into their own civil rights.
In my home I have to be a general grandmother, because education is so old fashioned. The materialism created a loss in happiness and ethics this is my personal vision. Ethics may be the road to reconciliation we need to tackle the problems of Nepal, deal with them now. Empathy and compassion are lovely but who wants to be lynched, kidnapped.
There is a strange use of foreign press and watchdogs, because all countries will return to their own language when they can.
The only foreigner they love is the nepalese foreigner who loves my country. I would challenge italians and nepalese to try and love which is not you, what is different.
It does not have to be the hamburger.