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Nepal has “mandatory policy” to bar rights violators from UN peacekeeping mission: Acharya

Amid pressure from rights organizations not to send any Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) personnel involved in human rights violations to the United Nations or other international missions, Nepal's special representative to the United Nations (UN), Madhu Raman Acharya, has said that the government had a "mandatory policy" of excluding soldiers involved in human rights violation at home from UN peacekeeping missions, reports said.

Delivering his statement to a meeting of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, Acharya said, "It has been a mandatory policy of His Majesty's Government of Nepal not to include any security personnel, who has been found guilty of human rights violation at home, in any peacekeeping mission of the United Nations."

He claimed there is not even a single instance where security personnel committing a rights violation have not been brought to book.

A report of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal released on February 16 had urged that perpetrators of violations be made accountable within their ranks. "[They] should be excluded from participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations," the report had said.

Commenting on OHCHR report, chief of the legal department of the RNA, Brigadier General B A Kumar Sharma told Nepalnews on February 17 that the RNA has already adopted the policy of not sending its personnel found guilty of human rights violations to the UN peacekeeping missions or any other missions abroad. nepalnews.com pb Mar 02 06