Nepal Now: On the Move
We're talking with the people migrating from, to, and within this Himalayan country located between China and India. You'll hear from a wide range of Nepali men and women who have chosen to leave the country for better work or education opportunities. Their stories will help you understand what drives people — in Nepal and worldwide — to mortgage their property or borrow huge sums of money to go abroad, often leaving their loved ones behind.
Despite many predictions, migration from Nepal has not slowed in recent years, except briefly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 1 million Nepalis leave every year to work at jobs outside the country. Tens of thousands go abroad to study. Far fewer return to Nepal to settle. The money ('remittances') that workers send home to their families accounts for 25% of the country's GDP, but migration impacts Nepal in many other ways. We'll be learning from migrants, experts and others about the many cultural, social, economic and political impacts of migration.
Your host is Marty Logan, a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal's capital Kathmandu off and on since 2005. Marty started the show in 2020 as Nepal Now.
Nepal Now: On the Move
Measuring human rights in Nepal
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Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan.
Thanks for joining me for this episode, which, if you’re counting, is #52. You might be wondering what happened to the video version of the last episode, my chat with Sanjib Chaudhary. Well, that’s a good question. I received a rough cut and suggested two changes — and weeks later I’m still waiting for the updated version. I promise to let you know if it ever appears.
If you’ve been listening to Nepal Now for a while you’ll know that I sometimes switch up the usual 1-1 interview format. A couple episodes back I was at a college collecting opinions from journalism students, and before that I twice visited a village in Sindhupalchowk district, to see the state of maternal health.
Today is also different. This episode is based on an interview I first recorded for Strive, a podcast I host for Inter Press Service – or IPS – News. We talked so much about Nepal, as an example, that I thought you might be interested in hearing it too. The focus is human rights, specifically a new approach to assessing countries’ human rights performance.
I’ve been reporting about human rights for many years and I know that more often than not governments will respond to articles about serious violations, including killings, by saying that it didn’t happen that way or even if it did, it was a one-time incident that doesn’t represent a pattern. I think those types of reactions might be happening more often in this age of misinformation and disinformation.
Too often the issue ends there, with no consequences. The great thing about today’s topic, the Human Rights Measurement Initiative’s Rights Tracker, is that it quantifies governments’ performances, based on objective data, in some cases, and on in-depth interviews in others. It’s not a perfect system, as you’ll hear, but combined with the existing ‘naming and shaming’ approach, it could be a better way to ensure that human rights are respected.
Please listen now to my chat with Stephen Bagwell from HRMI and the University of Missouri, St Louis.
Resources
Human Rights Measurement Initiative
Nepal page on HRMI's Rights Tracker
Nepal Now social links
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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.
Music: amaretto needs ice ... by urmymuse (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/urmymuse/57996 Ft: Apoxode
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Music by audionautix.com.
Thank you to Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studio.
