21 April 2005
Expert Team Completes Needs Assessment Of Expanded UN Human Rights Office In Nepal
A United Nations human rights expert team has wrapped up a fact-finding mission on the needs of an expanded UN rights
office in Nepal.
The group, headed by Walter Kalin, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Human Rights of Internally
Displaced Persons, and Dennis McNamara, Director of the UN's Internal Displacement Division, left the Himalayan kingdom
yesterday.
The experts' trip follows the signing last week of an agreement by the UN Geneva-based human rights office and the
Government to set up a regional monitoring operation to help establish accountability for rights abuses and prevent
further violations by all sides in the nine-year-old armed conflict with Maoist rebels.
The UN's goal is to set up regional field offices to ensure rapid responses to violations reports, and to have an
advance team of human rights monitors in Nepal by early May.
Under the agreement, the office will "engage all relevant actors, including non-state actors, for the purpose of
ensuring the observance of relevant international human rights and humanitarian law." Monitors will seek the cooperation
of both the security forces and the Maoists to ensure that all human rights violations, wherever they occur, are
investigated and reported on.
ENDS