CJ for judicial awareness

Kathmandu, Sept. 24: Chief Justice Dilip Kumar Paudel said on Friday that the nation needed to improve the traditional legal regime to ensure justice to the society, to protect the rights of the victims and to punish the wrongdoers.However, only the enactment of laws was not the ultimate solution to combat problems that include criminal activities such as trafficking of women and children. Fighting these problems need the generation of strong judicial awareness amongst people, Paudel added.Speaking at the inaugural session of three-day long workshop of South Asian Judges on ‘Combating Trafficking on Women and Children’ organised by National Judicial Academy (NJA), Paudel said that due to economic disparity, illiteracy, and unemployment, children and women were being trafficked day by day.It was time for making multilateral efforts to combat trafficking of women and children by formulating legal provisions and strengthening regional action plans, he said. “Being an organised crime, human trafficking has transnational impact and it affects the whole global governance system”.“Judges of the 21st century have to be more serious in deciding cases concerning human trafficking and particularly women and children,” Paudel said.The world and regional community should join hands for developing tools to combat such heinous crime. “It is necessary for the SAARC countries to amend national laws in line with the international human rights instruments.”Adoption of the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking of Women for Prostitution at the SAARC Kathmandu Summit was a timely initiative in combating and preventing trafficking of human beings, he said.But, Nepal is yet to ratify the agenda of women of the eleventh SAARC convention held in Kathmandu.Justice Kalyan Shrestha said ‘our sensitivity is not matching the reintegrating, rescuing, and rehabilitation of the victims’. The Supreme Court has directed the government to enact proper laws on gender equality and to address the issues of women and children, he added.Chandani Joshi, regional programme director of United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), said that the highest level of judiciary and those involved in women’s movement had to come together to understand the women’s human rights and to explore avenues by which the system can respond the pandemic violence against women.Senior justices of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal participated in the workshop.Senior most justice of the Supreme Court Kedar Prasad Giri presided over the programme, which was supported by UNIFEM.