Nepali youth have migrated for work to the Gulf countries and Malaysia at an unprecedented level. Over 1000 Nepali workers leave the country for foreign employment every day. For many, labour migration is not just a means to overcome economic hardships and accumulate wealth, it has increasingly been pursued rather as a way of life and livelihood.

Dreaming of a better future a girl in her teens from the eastern Nepal decides to venture into a foreign land in search of a job that finally lands her in a destination that in itself has a history of victimized maids. She does not even know how necessary is her identity card i. e. a citizenship certificate, which is issued to any bonafide children of Nepali citizens, who have attained the age of 16 or above. Had she been aware of this, she would not have been lured so easily to make a foreign travel using someone else’s passport.

There are frequent news related to crimes and murders involving African Americans, Hispanics, and Latinos including mentally ill perpetrators in the US. A number of Nepalis have also lost their lives serving at the gas stations and subways when the Blacks/Hispanics/Latinos broke in for money.

One of the biggest prophesies of the century will be tested on the 21st of December. The date has created a wave of curiosity all over the globe. It has been predicted that the world will be lost in darkness. The sun will not shine on that day. The world will end. Newspapers have been flooded with arguments for and against this prophesy. The weird forecast has even created a set of believers. They are waiting for the cosmic clock to strike the final second. The long forecast of the apocalypse has created commotion amongst a large segment of people.

The obligations placed on states, known as States’ Obligations, are crucial to ensuring the enjoyment of all human rights, to addressing gross violations of such rights during conflict, to realising the rights of victims, and to establishing proper justice. They impose a legal duty on state’s parties and provide a mechanism for state compliance, thus assisting the practical enforcement of rights.

Strangely, this doesn’t sound attractive, but ever since the indigenous governance prior to Shah Era till now, Nepal has been a country in a perpetual state of transition. The phases of transition began from its forceful transfer of authoritarian Shah dynasty to Rana’s virtual colonialism, to absolute monarchy and later to the post-1990 multiparty period, which itself has witnessed a series of transitions from constitutional monarchy to living with Maoists’ insurgency and active monarchy that had their own ups and downs in terms of stability of the political system. And so, when Nepal transited to become a republic in 2008, expectations emerged that the new democracy would usher in a new era of peace, stability, and development, whereas now it is struggling with sickening democracy.

Perhaps not, in the opinion of the majority of the most privileged civil servants who have been serving the Nepalese government in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Coincidentally, this scribe has gathered the unique experience of receiving machine readable passports (MRP) for him, his spouse and son as they plan to make foreign trip in the near future.

Professor Hu Shisheng is the director of the South Asian and South East Asian studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, an influential Chinese think tank.