One of MS's partner organisations in Nepalgunj is HimRights, Himalaya Human Rights Monitors. HimRights have a 24 hour HR hot line, was very busy during the conflict, and lots of programmes involving children and youth. I had the opportunity of taking part in their latest programme here in Nepalgunj, a Youth Mock Legislative Parliament.
Around 70 young boys and girls of different castes, religions, ethnicity, minorities, sex etc (inclusion is still the name of the game and of course we have to set a good example) were chosen to play the parliament/government for a few days. After two days training, facilitated by the presence of two real secretaries of parliament, the session of the parliament begun. 14 of the participants were chosen as ministers, speaker and whips, and the rest were all members of parliament. The position holders were trained in how to behave, how to hand over documents, how to raise issues and much more.
The participants divided into boys and girls in order to make the gender balance in the government equal. The girls had no problem finding consensus on who among them should be position holders.
However, after announcement of the government, there were some obligatory discussions regarding how many participants from which group...
It was all solved in a very Nepali way, with some dancing of the facilitators...
After three days of session the parliament closed with a real press conference presenting the declaration that will be sent to the real parliament. All the participants were very active and the declaration was long and full of good ideas for the future Nepal. Improving the infrastructure and the electricity, re-opening radio stations, investigating violations during the conflict and the people's movement, fighting caste discrimination were but parts of the demands. The main one though was to establish a youth ministry, and to start listening to and involving the youth in the creation of tomorrow's Nepal!
