Forgotten emergency - EXPERTS TALK: Crisis in Nepal

FROM: Reuters AlertNet

More than 11,000 people have been killed in conflict between Maoist rebels and the constitutional monarchy of Nepal since 1996. I n February 2005, King Gyanendra sacked the government and took total control of the country, raising the possibility that disaffected political leaders would ally themselves with the rebels to overthrow the monarchy and throw Nepal into chaos.

In a poll of "forgotten" emergencies released by AlertNet in March 2005, aid experts chose Nepal as the world's ninth-worst neglected crisis. Here they explain why.

The world's obsession with Iraq has pushed to the margins many other scenes of mass violence. One good example is Nepal, home of the deadliest conflict in Asia, with some 10,000 killed over the past few years. Before the coup on February 1, 2005, how often did television crews bother to cover the expanding Maoist insurgency there?

How many articles did the Western press carry about the widespread human rights abuses and disappearances at the hands of the Royal Nepalese Army?

Nepal has simply been off the radar screen of the world media, and even now, the coup story itself seems to have appeared only as a rapidly fading blip. Gareth Evans President, International Crisis Group, Belgium 11,000 dead in nine years. Both government and Maoist forces accused of barbarous atrocities. Like Aceh, under-reported and remote and with so much
else going on in the world, feels a bit off the map. But as we've seen with Sudan, conflicts like this fester when the eyes of the world are turned the other way and the news agenda skewed by what's going on in Iraq. Jonathan Miller Foreign affairs correspondent, Channel 4 News, UK
Complex emergency: The eight-year conflict has had a big impact on economic and social activities throughout the whole country and displaced large numbers of people, destroying livelihoods. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world both in economic terms as well as social parameters.

More than 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, while half of all children under the age of five are underweight. Complicating the situation is that fact that Nepal is a highly disaster-prone country, with frequent floods and the very real possibility of a major earthquake striking.

by Ewa Eriksson Desk, officer for South Asia International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.