UN urges action on HR abuses in Nepal
The United Nations Wednesday urged both sides in Nepal's 10-year civil war to do more to bring the perpetrators of human rights violations committed during and after the conflict to justice.
An estimated 1,300 people went missing during the bloody conflict between the Nepal army and the Maoists, which ended in 2006 with a UN-brokered peace deal.
The UN's rights representative here said no one had yet been found guilty of any conflict-related offence, and that many politically-motivated crimes committed since the peace agreement were also unresolved.
"I want to address the need for both sides of the conflict to live up to their commitments to tackle impunity," said Richard Bennett, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)'s Nepal representative.
"Abuses of human rights by non-state actors, in particular the Maoists, and their non-cooperation with accountability mechanisms is contributing to the prevailing culture of impunity in Nepal," he told journalists in Kathmandu.
Bennett said he had met Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal to ask him to cooperate with investigations into atrocities committed by the former guerrillas, including a 2005 bus bombing that killed 39 people.
No one has ever been prosecuted for the attack, and Bennett said police were reluctant to conduct further investigations without the Maoists' support.
He has also written to Nepal's current prime minister urging him to take action on the cases of dozens of people who disappeared after being taken into army custody during the conflict.
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