25 July, 2019
On 25 July, representatives from Amnesty International Nepal, Justice and Rights Institute Nepal (JuRI-Nepal), Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC) and National Land Rights Forum jointly submitted a letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) urging it to monitor, investigate and recommend the Government in relation to the violation of the right to unhindered access to their land, right to food and food sovereignty, right to property of peoples affected by the flood and subsequent change of the course by the Geruwa river in Bardiya district. A distributary of the Karnali river, Geruwa was over-flooded in 1983 displacing hundreds of villagers. The river had later also changed its course pushing its banks further west. According to the affected people, a controversial rule that sets the west bank of the river as the border of the Bardiya National Park, has driven them away from hundreds of acres of their own lands with the park authorities now fencing the area. The affected villagers say that they own the land certificates and have been paying the land tax even if they are not allowed to step onto the land where they once farmed.
Download the letter(in Nepali) to know more details of the case.