I arrived yesterday in Kathmandu to cover a week long International Criminal Court (ICC) event organized by 43 human rights organizations, with COCAP playing a major role. The goal is to pressure the Nepali interim government to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC and add Nepal to the list of over 100 countries who are members of the court (but no America of course). They chose this week because it was on July 1, 2002, that the Rome Statute came into force.

I came to the COCAP offices at noon, two hours before the start of a press conference to promote ICC week. I found no press release so we went to work to put something together and had it just in time for the start.

I’m really excited about the program. Some of the highlights will include street plays, sticker and T-shirt distribution, and campus awareness programs to increase visibility for the campaign. Petitions will also be given to the political leaders of the ruling 8-party coalition and there will be a radio program on Friday to spread the word and invite people to attend a demonstration organized with the collaboration of Amnesty International. The march will end the week and if the volunteers’ enthusiasm is any indication, they’ll have made their voices heard. Right now I can FEEL them practicing their different chants in the meeting room downstairs. Wow, is it loud!

Being in Kathmandu will also give me a chance to confer with the COCAP higher ups about a proposal I’m working on. It’s a communications and institutional development proposal that I hope will put at least one computer with internet in every member office (some do not even have a phone line). Perhaps more importantly, it calls for information and communication technology (ICT) training to develop and strengthen the COCAP network and the member organizations themselves.

I talked about it briefly in a previous blog entry, but I’ve gotten a bit more ambitious and I hope to expand the proposal to include the whole Nepal COCAP network (keep your fingers crossed, which incidentally, does not carry over culturally in Nepal). I will also have access to faster internet and reliable electricity, so I hope to post more and much better quality (sorry about that!) photos.

It should be a busy week in Kathmandu before I return to Baglung.