Human rights in Nepal are under threat. Be it serious violations like extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances (during the decade-long Maoist rebellion) or gender inequality, caste-based discrimination and violations of civil rights, Nepalis have consistently suffered at the hands of violators as well as successive governments that have failed to protect their rights. Realising the need to uphold human rights, the National Human Rights Commission was established as an independent statutory body in 2000 and given the status of a constitutional body in the Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007 and the Constitution of Nepal 2015. However, political meddling has crippled this vital public institution over the years, rendering it ineffective.

Otherwise, the NHRC has faced government neglect since its inception. Even though the then Parliament in 1997 had passed a law for its establishment, it was only in 2000 that its members were appointed. As Amnesty International highlights, initially, it couldn’t function as envisioned due to insufficient funding, limited human resources and lack of cooperation from government agencies, including the Defense Ministry, Home Ministry and security forces. Two decades on, the situation remains largely unchanged. Now, the commission is struggling to retain staff, with the state failing to offer them the same perks and facilities as other civil servants. As per the NHRC reports, 11 of the 44 individuals retained in the last fiscal year have left, and those who remain are unsatisfied.

What’s more concerning is the government’s disregard for the NHRC’s recommendations. In the past four years alone, the commission issued 444 recommendations for interim relief, compensation, departmental actions and criminal prosecutions, yet the government has not acted on any of them—with the exception of departmental actions against a few perpetrators. The interim relief funds designated for victims needing immediate relief are yet to be made available as well. Since 2000, the human rights watchdog has made 1,573 recommendations, but only 15.30 percent of them have been fully implemented, with 39.20 percent partially addressed and 45.5 percent left in the lurch.

The goings-on in the NHRC are emblematic of how political meddling ails the country’s public institutions. In 2022, the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) recommended “B” status to the NHRC’s global ranking, a downgrade from its earlier “A” status, because of the unconstitutional appointments of the chair and four commissioners on February 3, 2021, as well as for the body’s failure to comply with the Paris Principles. No wonder common folks have been deprived of their rights for so long. Moreover, even as the commission has held the government responsible for the custodial death of Bijay Mahara and the extrajudicial killing of Communist Party of Nepal leader Kumar Paudel, most of the time, it has chosen to blindly follow the orders of the ruling government, rather than act as the fair arbiter of justice.

Due to constant political meddling and the state’s failure to adequately empower the commission with needed manpower and equipment, the constitutional human rights watchdog is losing its purpose. As the NHRC is currently the only source of hope for hundreds of thousands of victims of human rights violations, this represents a dangerous development for the health of the nascent Nepali democracy. For it is impossible to imagine a functioning democracy without the guarantee of basic rights for all citizens.