Governments in countries with caste systems should respond to the call from a top UN official to end this form of discrimination.

Ganga Baral is among the first of thousands of Bhutanese refugees who will be arriving in the United States during the next several years. She and her family arrived this Spring in Phoenix from a refugee camp in the farthest eastern reaches of Nepal, a landlocked country known to Americans, if at all, as the location for Mount Everest.

The Maoist-led Nepali government should make accountability for human rights abuses before, during, and after the conflict in Nepal an urgent priority.

The Nepalese government should submit the draft Disappearances and Truth and Reconciliation bills to the Constituent Assembly for consideration to ensure transparency and public participation in the legislative process.

Nepalese authorities should promptly and impartially investigate and prosecute alleged ruling party activists responsible for an attack on journalists on December 21, 2008.

The government’s proposed bill to criminalize enforced “disappearances” and to provide for an independent high-level commission to investigate cases occurring during Nepal’s bloody civil war could be a step toward systematic impunity for human rights violations in Nepal.

The Nepali government should urgently address the widespread torture and ill-treatment of children in police custody.

Under a new law signed today by US President George W. Bush, leaders of military forces and armed groups who have recruited child soldiers may be arrested and prosecuted in the United States.