Kanak Mani Dixit
Kanak Mani Dixit is a human rights defender actively promoting the establishment of a democratic and secular government in Nepal and advocating for various social reforms in the country. In 2006, he played a key role in the formation of the human rights organisation Accountability Watch Committee, where he is currently senior editor. The mission of the organisation is to fight against impunity relating to human rights violations and to promote the rule of law in Nepal. Kanak Mani Dixit is also a well-known journalist with more than forty years of professional experience in this field. He is the founding editor of the Himal Southasian regional review magazine, as well as publisher of the Nepali language weekly Himal Khabarpatrika, where he comments on Nepali affairs.
The situation for human rights defenders has improved since the restoration of Parliament in April 2006 and the Peace Agreement signed in November 2006. However, human rights defenders and journalists have continued to face threats, harassment, and the violent dispersement of peaceful protests by police and security forces. Nepal’s decade-long civil war between 1996 and 2006, in which at least 13,000 people died. Government forces engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances to contain an armed conflict led by the United Communist Party (a Maoist coalition). Those crimes are yet to be prosecuted
