Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), recently honored Mandira Sharma, a Nepali lawyer and human rights activist, along with two other advocates from Mexico and Zimbabwe.

Sharma was recognized for representing and defending the Nepali people during the serious political oppression and a bloody civil war led by the Maoists. Her efforts seem even more important today. Reason: Lasting peace and respect for human rights in Nepal may rely on effective monitoring of the peace efforts by neutral and independent groups like Advocacy Forum, which she started in 2001.

Originally from a remote village in western Nepal , Sharma studied law in Kathmandu . She later obtained a Ll.M. degree from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom . Her NGO has been recognized for exposing “disappearances” and indiscriminate attacks against civilians. The annual HRW-sponsored dinner tour on November 2-15 spanned the US , Canada , Mexico , the UK and Germany.

Sharma, who is also an Ashoka Fellow, met with the Nepali community in the US and the Ashoka Foundation in the nation’s capital. She spoke with this writer, stressing the need for a culture of accountability. Highlights of the Q & A follow.

Why did you become a human rights activist? As a girl and being raised in a remote village of Nepal , I saw discrimination from the very beginning…During the Peoples Movement of 1990, I witnessed my friend at the Law College being tortured by the military forces in a detention center. He was completely a different person when he was released from the center after late King Birendra surrendered to the movement and agreed to become a constitutional monarch. He was totally broken. He was no more what a normal human being should be. That incident still pinches me so much. That was perhaps the moment I resolved to become a human rights activist so I could help stop this inhuman atrocity against humanity...I believe peace without human rights is just an illusion.

Tell us more about your US trip. We met with the foreign minister of Canada . Our meeting with officials of State Department and Pentagon were fruitful with regards to letting them know about Nepal ’s human rights situation…We learnt how human rights issues are raised in the developed world and how they are addressed

What methods do you use in monitoring detention centers in Nepal? What is the exact body count so far in this war? Is it 13,000 or 15,000? Our institution basically started documenting the cases of encounters, disappearances and detention of the innocent people by the state and the non-state actors. The task was challenging, as the parties involved would be exposed to the people. We could do that with the help of the training and techniques provided by Advocacy Forum of Asia, which is known for this.

We discovered that people in villages were arrested and their whereabouts were not known to anyone. We trained people in the villages on how to keep a record of all these unwanted events and it turned out to be tremendously helpful in this regard. There are more than 8,000 cases of torture and extra judicial killings. But fortunately we have village-based volunteers who are constantly mobilized to keep informing us about the violations by both the parties in conflict. We visited detention centers and gathered as much information as possible about the atrocities going on in the nation. Unfortunately, our institution does not count the dead. We try to save lives.

Last year, Nepal was branded a country with the largest number of disappearances.  There have been bigger and more dangerous wars in Rwanda and Somalia, for instance, but no reports of so many disappearances. The United Nations Working Group Study Team last year discovered increasing number of new cases of disappearances in Nepal. That could be the reason why Nepal was branded a country with largest number of disappearances. Their figure was 400-plus.

The recent agreement reached between the government and the Maoists had a provision for Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But we all know Nepal’s culture of impunity. Who will account for the Maoists’ excesses and atrocities? My short answer to this question: the commission should work independently to pave ways to end the culture of impunity. The body should be given full authority to discharge its duty.

The royalists branded political party leaders as corrupt and incompetent. Now the political parties are doing the same thing. We don’t have a long history of democracy in Nepal where human rights issues are reflected. History shows that only after 1990 did we enter the human rights regime, when the Constitution guaranteed the people their basic rights and Nepal became signatory to various human rights treaties…But after the Maoist movement started in 1996, human values started eroding gradually.

Fortunately, we had enjoyed a great freedom of speech and press to counter the violation of human rights from both the government and the Maoists side and were open to criticize or defy the leaders who were corrupt. However, the dark side of that era was the government institutions established to safeguard democratic norms and promote the human rights values became handicapped to such political party leaders…All who did corrupt things should be accountable for what they did if the society has to really learn from its senior leaders. The culture of accountability is what is lacking in Nepali politics. 

How was the human rights situation during the direct rule of king Gyanendra? How do you access the human rights situation after the success of the peace talks between the government and the Maoists? Before the April uprising, you could not even count deaths, detentions and disappearances happening in society [caused] by the state agency. The level of terror was so high among the general masses that even our family members would worry about us while we would go out to work. We had to be cautious. We were constantly threatened. Our offices were monitored. We were followed all the time by undercover agents of the then government. Our space was constantly shrinking. However, after April, things changed. We’ve been enjoying human rights. In terms of number, cases of human rights violation have gone down drastically. But the sad thing is that not a single perpetrator has been brought to justice so far.

What are the challenges of human rights activists and movements in developing societies? I think we have a very weak government in the region. The biggest challenge is the culture of impunity which is not contested. We need to end it totally. We need an overhaul in the judiciary as well. We have judges trained before the 1990s and who have traditional mind-set when it comes to discharging justice. They find it difficult to really understand complex human rights cases. They lack knowledge of changing international human rights treaties which were ratified after 1990. Police administration is also the same. They are very much corrupt and are not updated on human rights norms and values.

Politicization of independent Constitutional institutions is another grave challenge. The basic precondition to address these challenges is to establish the culture of accountability in the country. If we start to investigate human rights violation cases and bring the culprits to justice, the other cases of human rights violation will be deterred within no time. A political will to end the culture of impunity is what we need the most in Nepal now. I am sure, international communities will be more than willing to assist Nepal if we start the reform process. We do not have to worry about resources. 

Being a woman, how do you distinguish between human rights and women’s rights? Ideally speaking, human rights should cover all the issues of all the sexes. Unfortunately, it has not happened that way. Women…face discriminations of many sorts. And it is happening in societies simply because they are women. That’s why there is a need to focus on women’s rights within human rights.