The big three parties have agreed to move the bill related to transitional justice forward in the winter session of the House.
The meeting of Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) held at the prime minister’s residence Baluwatar on Monday has agreed to cooperate in moving the bill stuck in the parliamentary committee forward in the next House session, according to the secretariat of PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
The meeting also featured legal professionals affiliated with the parties along with the top leaders including NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba, UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and Maoist Chairman Dahal.
Speaking after the meeting UML Whip Mahesh Bartaula said that the parties agreed to formulate laws in a way that the victims felt they got justice.
The bill related to transitional justice is currently in the Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee of the House. The committee had formed a sub-committee on the issue but the sub-committee has not been able to forge consensus in lack of agreement among the top leaders of major parties.
The subcommittee has failed to agree mainly on four issues. The first related to what should be included as serious human rights violations—cruel arbitrary killings or all killings apart from those in armed confrontations.
The second issue is related to qualification for being counted as conflict affected persons. The third issue is about what to do if the victims do not give consent for reconciliation in incidents of human rights violations. The fourth is whether to keep provision to reduce sentence specifying the reasons and grounds, or fix a percentage for reduction in such sentence.
The government had presented the Bill for the Amendment of the Investigation of Enforced Disappeared Persons, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act (2014) on March 19 drawing wide-spread criticism from human rights groups who claimed that the bill did not fully meet the country’s domestic law or international legal obligations and would not provide justice for victims if adopted in that form.
The groups pointed that both the Maoist armed group and government security forces committed serious human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law during the armed conflict in Nepal from 1996 to 2006.
The government has classified human rights violations during the conflict period into two categories in the bill. The bill defines human rights violations as acts targeting unarmed persons or community during the armed conflict or planned actions, and includes murder, sexual violence, physical and mental torture, abduction, extrajudicial custody, thrashing, injuring organs or making disabled, capture and robbery, vandalism and arson of private or public properties, forcibly expelling from house and land, or displacement by any other means, and any act violating international human rights laws as human rights violations.
It similarly includes murder through cruel torture or in a cruel manner, rape, enforced disappearances and cruel or inhuman torture as grave human rights violations.
The current act related to Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons defines grave human rights violations as murder, abduction, rape and sexual violence, physical and mental torture, injuring organs or making disabled, capture and robbery, vandalism and arson of private properties, forcibly expelling from house and land, or displacement by any other means, or any act violating international human rights laws or crimes against humanity.
The government has classified human rights violations into two categories preparing to pardon human rights violations during the conflict period.
The bill states that the TRC will not recommend for clemency in grave violations of human rights which means it can recommend clemency in all the crimes defined as human rights violations that includes murder, sexual violence, physical and mental torture, abduction, extrajudicial custody, thrashing, injuring organs or making disabled, capture and robbery, vandalism and arson of private or public properties, forcibly expelling from house and land, or displacement by any other means, and any act violating international human rights laws.
Human rights activists and legal professionals have protested inclusion of even grave violations in human rights violations that can be recommended for pardon.
