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News from Nepal

This week our partners in Nepal and the women they work with are celebrating New Year, so we thought it was a good time to share some of the things they have been working on recently.

Marching against racism

In Nepal, women from low castes such as Dalit are doubly disadvantaged; caste and gender together account for a third of the variation in empowerment and inclusion levels.

Womankind’s partner in Nepal Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO) joined a rally in the centre of Kathmandu to celebrate the 46th International Day against Racial Discrimination. FEDO marched alongside political parties and other Dalit organisations chanting slogans proclaiming Dalit rights.

The rally was followed by an event organised by The National Dalit Commission in Nepal. To start with, people were invited to observe one minute of silence for the memory of the 69 people killed in 1960 in South Africa. Then FEDO’s President Durga Sob talked about the caste discrimination which exists in Nepal.

A Dalit member of the Constituent Assembly, Subash Chandra Nembang, then called for this caste discrimination to be eliminated in the long-awaited new Constitution of Nepal, which is scheduled to be published at the end of May.

Defending the human rights defenders

Women’s rights organisations in Nepal worked together on a submission for the Human Rights Council held in Geneva this spring about the threats faced by human rights defenders in Nepal.

The joint statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) with the support of FEDO, Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC), Jagaran Media Center (JMC) highlights the dangers and difficulties that people face when they speak up to defend the rights of marginalised groups, notably Dalit and women.

They called on the Human Rights Council to:

1. Pay special attention to the situation of people working to protect the rights of vulnerable communities  and the safety of journalists in Nepal
2. Urge the government of Nepal to acknowledge the work of human rights defenders and adopt specific and effective legal mechanisms to ensure their protection
3. Draw the attention of the government of Nepal to the need to address the issue at the policing level by providing awareness-raising training to the police officers on those issues
4. Ensure that specific training is made available, through the OHCHR and any other appropriate vehicles, to human rights defenders in Nepal, in order to provide them with information regarding the different international mechanisms they can resort to

Read the full submission NEPAL: Serious threats to human rights defenders hampering democratization and peace-building