Addressing Impunity and Realizing Human Rights in South Asia

Despite the committed efforts of human rights defenders and national human rights institutions (NHRIs) across South Asia, achieving human rights objectives, particularly in the post-conflict setting, remains a daunting task.

Almost all the countries in the South Asian region - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – face common challenges of impunity, endemic violence, and institutionalized discrimination in realizing their human rights goals.

These challenges are further aggravated by the high prevalence of poverty, imbalanced development, political instability, slow economic growth, low literacy, widespread malnutrition and rampant gender-based violence, along with discrimination in education, nutrition, health and employment.

The issues of impunity, endemic violence, forced migration and lack of accountability mechanism have been raised in different regional forums and conferences, including through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). NHRIs have also been playing an important role to advocate for human rights protection and promotion.

Identifying Challenges, Assessing Progress, Moving Forward: Addressing Impunity and Realizing Human Rights in South Asia Is an international conference hosted by the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal.

The conference will facilitate a regional dialogue on the issues of human rights violations and the culture of impunity in South Asia today, along with the challenges around the ratification, enforcement, and monitoring of international treaty agreements in domestic law and political processes.

On the first day, NHRI representatives will outline some of the key challenges and one area of success they have encountered.The second and third days will feature discussions on the following topics, with human rights and impunity as the centre point of each conversation:

• Best practices in collaboration for impact with the government
• Best practices in collaboration for public impact
• Successful methods of regional networking for combating impunity and promoting and protecting human rights, and the outcomes of that networking.

For more information and to register, visit the conference website: http://humanrightsconference.nhrcnepal.org/index.h....