Human rights committee directs Nepal government to take multiple actions over wartime rape

Posted on by
Reply
2006 People's Movement

Praying for Peace during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal (1996-2006)

Media reports focused on the need to revise rape laws to ensure access to justice but the government must also investigate the arrest, detention and rape by soldiers during the Maoist insurgency

On 21 May the UN Human Rights Committee published a decision about a Nepali woman who was abducted by Nepali soldiers during the Maoist insurgency (1996-2006), taken to army barracks, tortured, raped and forced to work for the soldiers. Then 14 years old, the girl was released six weeks later after her family intervened. Continue reading →

Advertisements

Global support for students’ sounds in Nepal

Posted on by
Reply

Gerwig_Gonzalez_school_keyboard_0519Something a little different. This is an article I wrote for Nepali Times about a musical family from Germany that visited Kathmandu to support music education in Nepal:

The original dream of Gerwig & González was to bring a grand piano from Germany, and fly it around Nepal from one school performance to another using a military helicopter. That idea was not very practical, so they settled on an electronic keyboard to leave behind in Nepal after their visit. Continue reading →

Nourishing post-natal mothers and babies in Nepal

Posted on by
Reply
Mothers_Group_Achham_2018

A child eats during a feeding session of a mothers’ group in Achham district, Nepal, February 2018. Photo: Marty Logan

Here’s a short update on my recent post, New mothers get rice, rupees and a rooster!

A municipality in Bara district, 60 km south of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, is distributing chickens to new mothers and pregnant women. The local initiative to add protein to families’ diets is part of the national Multi-Sector Nutrition Plan, which I’ve written about previously.

Continue reading →

Nepal: human rights champion or foe?

Posted on by
Reply
NHRC_signboard_Republica.jpg

Photo: Republic newspaper.

There’s an important editorial in this week’s edition of Nepali Times. It points out that while the Government of Nepal portrays itself as a human rights leader at the global level, at home it falls distressingly short of what’s required of a rights champion.

Not only have successive governments failed to implement a credible transitional justice process following the ceasefire between government and the Maoists in 2006, current leaders – including former Maoist fighters – are trying to curtail the powers of the National Human Rights Commission. The NHRC’s recommendations have been almost totally ignored by various governments since it started work in 2000.

Read on, from Nepali Times:

Continue reading →

Building up Nepali girls’ confidence to fight patriarchy

Posted on by
Reply
Photo of rows of women and girls observing self-defence moves at a course in Nepal on 29 April.

Women and girls attend a self-defence training organised by a municipal office in Kailali district, Nepal, on Monday 29 April. Photo: THT

Self-defence training for girls in Kailali (District), read the headline in a Nepali newspaper earlier this week. Similar titles appear in the media every few months, and I wonder: What about the boys and men? Why is it that girls and women, who are the targets of harassment and attacks, must also take on the burden of defending themselves?

The easy answer is: no one else is doing it. That’s not to say that authorities in Nepal are ignoring growing reports of sexual violence and harassment – a hotline set up by the Women’s Commission has reportedly counselled 8,000 survivors of violence since December 2017 – but that there’s little evidence of a collective will to address the patriarchal attitudes prevalent here that can result in the targeting of girls and women. Until that happens, it’s better that women and girls are trained to deal with these incidents. Continue reading →

To fix unhealthy diets: activism before ‘an apple a day’

Posted on by
Reply

Marty_Logan_blog_health_environment_070419Kudos to CBC News reporter Kelly Crowe for this article about a recent global health study on the deadly impact of unhealthy eating, in which she goes beyond simply presenting the newest numbers to discuss the ‘why’.

The news itself is shocking: in 2017  poor diets worldwide caused 11 million deaths, concludes the report, published in The Lancet journal. Eating too much salt and not enough whole grains and fruits were the major culprits.

Obstacles to healthy eating

But what Crowe also highlights are those factors that are beyond the control of individuals and are known as ‘environmental determinants of health’. These range from absent or misleading labels on food packages to prominent placement of junk food in supermarkets to the unaffordability of the fruits, vegetables and other healthy food that we’re supposed to be eating more of to prevent those 11 million deaths. Continue reading →

New mothers get rice, rupees & a rooster!

Posted on by
Reply
Bhojpur doo-to-door health campaign

Officials from Arun Rural Municipality in Nepal’s Bhojpur district give a rooster to a new mother on 29 March 2019. The programme to support new mothers started in January.  Photo: The Himalayan Times

Time for me to walk my talk.

Following up on my last post about not dwelling on the negative in Nepal, I’m highlighting a very small but positive development. Municipal officials in Bhojpur district in the country’s east started a programme in January to visit new mothers.

Continue reading →