ABSTRACT
If the importance attached to human rights in Nepal is to be measured by the resources given to the government ministry most concerned with this issue, then one might only conclude that human rights in Nepal are accorded little importance. Out of the 47 government ministries in Nepal, the Ministry of Law and Justice receives the least money. Its share of the national budget for the 1996-97 fiscal year is only 0.02 per cent. In comparison, this share represents a mere 20 per cent of the Royal Yearly Support Grant (the apanasje or civil list).1 Furthermore, out of the Rs 13,992 million which the ministry receives, all monies must be found from within the regular budget; nothing is available from development funds (provided by foreign grants etc). And perhaps symbolically, the minister himself (a renowned but elderly man who once fought for democracy in the early fifties, and ended up in prison with Koirala) is ethnically a Tamang.2
