Well Worth Trip
PRIME MINISTER Girija Prasad Koirala returns
home today after an important trip abroad whose main purpose was to attend the United
Nations Millennium Summit at the UN-Headquarters in New York. On his way back from New
York, he also stopped by in Geneva to speak to Nepalese ambassadors based in Europe.
Seizing the opportunity to interact with world leaders at the Millennium Summit and the
Nepalese envoys in Geneva makes this trip productive. What comes to mind foremost
regarding this trip is his speech to the UN gathering of Heads of State or Government. Two
emphases stood out in his address: a) the need to help the have nots of this world and b)
the need to strengthen the world body. Addressing the gathering on September 8 morning, he
called for measures to be put in place to evenly distribute benefits of globalisation, to
bridge the digital divide, and to open markets in rich countries for products and labour
for poor countries. Premier Koirala was emphatic that the global financial architecture
and global trading regime must be more responsive to the needs of poor countries. Among
the poor countries, countries like Nepal—a Least Development Country and a
land-locked one at that—are confronted with even greater challenges. Such issues do
not always come to the fore in world gathering like this where the voices of the poorest
of this earth’s poor are drowned by the general developing vs. developed
countries’ tug-of-war. Hence, Mr. Koirala did well by drawing the leaders’
attention to the particular plight of countries like Nepal that were, as he put it, too
long in the shadow of the world attention.
How to help developing countries? Mr Koirala
had a prescription too: the developed countries, to start with, should provide duty-free
and quota-free access for the developing countries’ exports. Development partners had
an obligation to help them with adequate resources too. In all this, obviously, UN has to
play the role of a mediator in all this. And this was the second theme he particularly
laid emphasis on. He recommended comprehensive reforms for UN for it to rise to the
challenges of the 21st century, a suggestion he repeated later also in his interview to
Gorkhapatra’s correspondent in United States. The UN should be expanded and its area
of activity should be broadened indeed, for countries like Nepal the hopes for catalysing
the process of narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor countries rest with none
but the United Nations. It is imperative that a strengthened UN becomes the intermediary
in achieving this. Mr. Koirala’s call to Nepalese envoys based in Europe to promote
larger national interests in general and economic diplomacy in particular also has an
added resonance vis-à-vis the need to utilise what little resources we have to mobilise
greater resources. These missions, to maintain which Nepalese taxpayers are forking out a
huge sum, must, by being pro-active, do all they can to promote exports, tourism and
foreign employment opportunities. Mr. Koirala sought to impress this on the envoys. All in
all, Premier Koirala’s visit can be described as having been well worth it in that
he, apart from putting the problems and challenges faced by the least developed countries
like Nepal before the august gathering of world leaders attending the Millennium Summit,
also made known Nepal’s views as to how to make the United Nations more effective and
efficient so that this world organisation will be enabled to overcome the problems and
challenges of this new millennium.
Need Of The Hour
MINISTER of State for Women, Children and
Social Welfare Kamala Pant, speaking in a programme in Kathmandu the other day, said that
the government has given a serious thought to amend the present Children’s Act for
the realisation of the rights of Nepalese children. Nepal, after the restoration of
democracy, has continuously and consistently expressed its commitment both at the national
as well as international level for the protection and promotion of rights of the child.
Nepal ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, enacted
Children’s Act and Children’s Regulation as per its commitment for the
protection and promotion the rights of the child. Additionally, it has ratified several
ILO conventions relating to child labour and child rights. Only recently, Nepal signed two
optional protocols of UN Convention for the Rights of Child seeking prohibition of sale,
trafficking and use of children in prostitution and pornography. These are concrete
evidences of Nepal’s unwavering commitments to human rights and child rights. Much
progress has been achieved in the past ten years in the field of protection of the rights
of the child in Nepal. However, the situation is still far from satisfactory and much
still needs to be done. There are more than 2.6 child workers in Nepal, who are deprived
of their basic rights like education, health, entertainment and opportunities for their
growth and development. Although timely amendments in the existing laws are necessary for
the full realisation of the rights of the child in Nepal, strict implementation of the
existing laws back by appropriate programmes to ensure rights and welfare of all Nepalese
children in general and disadvantaged children in particular, are the need of the hour. |
