Background:
Fourteen districts across the country have been mostly affected by the deadly earthquake of 7.6 Richter scale that hit the nation on 25th April at 11.56 AM and on 26th April, 12th May, 2015 and the intermittent aftershocks that followed. The Government of Nepal (GoN) has declared the state of emergency in the earthquake hit districts. About nine thousand people have met death, hundreds of them have been missing and millions have been rendered homeless due to the devastating earthquake.
The general citizens’ rights to housing and shelter, right to food and right to property have been severely impacted due the massive earthquake. Each class, community and gender of the society altogether has been affected from nightmare caused due the massive earthquake. Among the affected, marginalized class and community, elderly citizens, pregnant women and women in natal period, children and persons with disabilities, inmates including the weaker section of society had to bear severe shocks. The serious attention of the Commission was, therefore, drawn to the human rights situation of the earthquake survivors, rescue and relief indulging the de-facto situation of the inmates serving their terms. Keeping this mind, the Commission has monitored the situation of all affected districts and district based prisons, hospitals, schools and drawn the attention of the government towards this on the basis of the fact found during the entire course of monitoring. The attention was also drawn towards making the arrangement of cleaning the rubbles and debris left due to the destructed infrastructures.
The Commission held discussion with the concerned authorities with regard to the rescue and relief distribution in the post earthquake period. Considering the aftermath of the earthquake in priority, therefore, the Commission had issued a press release on April 27, 2015 urging the GoN, international organizations and agencies, civil society, volunteers and rights defenders to effectively step up the rescue, and treatment of the injured including relief work. The Commission had drawn the attention of the Government to make appropriate arrangement of the shelter for the earthquake survivors in shock and panic sheltering under open sky and their protection. The Commission had also issued directives to the district based Natural Disaster Rescue Committee, District Child Office including the chiefs of the security agencies to advance the rescue work by establishing necessary coordination.
Similarly, having found the relief materials stocked without distributing, the Commission had drawn the attention of the Government to immediately dispatch the relief to the actual earthquake survivors, to rescue the people trapped under the debris of the destroyed houses, to immediately make the relief materials available to the quake survivors, to bring awareness among the communities in order to alert them to prevent and control the possible epidemics, to conduct monitoring on unethical hoarding and black marketeering for profit by the shopkeepers at the time of crisis, to step up the vigilance on emerging incident of theft at the houses left unattended due to the quake survivors taking shelter outside.
The Commission has deployed the monitoring teams led by the Commissioners in various earthquake affected districts. The monitoring mainly focused on whether or not the rescue work and relief distribution was performed in fair manner with the due priority given to those weaker classes of people. Following a series of monitoring accomplished, the Commission has drawn the attention of the GoN by corresponding and issuing the necessary directives to the government through press releases on the basis of the facts found during the monitoring.