UN urges Nepal to end social inequality for lasting stability

Aug 17, 2009, 14:05 GMT

   Kathmandu - A United Nations report Monday urged Nepalese political parties to end social inequality in the country to consolidate the gains of peace.

   The appeal came in the Nepal Human Development report 2009, which was launch in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on Monday.

   The report said the gap between people with access to electricity and other facilities and those without was increasing or had not improved.

   'The Human Development Report records the serious nature of uneven development,' UN resident representative Robert Piper said. 'Although there had been important gains in the development index on the national level, the gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged groups remain the same.'

   Piper said power relations had not changed significantly since the restoration of democracy in 1990.

   'The message of today's report is that absence of war does not ensure either lasting peace or prosperity,' Piper said. 'Nepal's ambitious post-conflict transformation must be addressed to end centuries of discrimination and exclusion so these patterns are broken for ever,'

   The report came almost two and half years after Nepal ended its decade-long communist insurgency.

   Growing inequality, social discrimination and poverty were said to be the main cause of the insurgency in which more than 13,000 people died and more than a thousand others remain missing.

   The report said even after the peace accord the cause of the conflict or its consequences were yet to be addressed.

   'Poverty and discrimination between ethnic groups and casts are the cause of the war,' the report said. 'Ineffective government, internally displaced people and disappointed combatants are the consequences of the war and they are yet to be addressed.'