15^th June 2007

His Excellency

President Jimmy Carter

The Carter Centre

Hotel Soaltee Crown Plaza

Kathmandu, Nepal

Subject: Memorandum to His Excellency President Carter from Dalits of Nepal

Your Excellency,

It is our great pleasure to have you here in our beautiful country and we feel privileged and honored to have an audience with you. Your presence, enquiry, support to the cause of Dalits of Nepal will help immensely to secure social justice and build an inclusive society.

We firmly believe that democracy is a means to social justice. We know that Mr. President yourself and your country want to see democracy flourishing all over the world including Nepal. Since, Dalits of Nepal have been and excluded deprived of social justice for centuries on the ground of religion, social customs and laws, now it is a high time for correcting the crimes that were committed by the state itself. Without addressing the issues of deprivation and marginalization of all excluded groups in Nepal including Dalits democracy can not sustain.

In order to secure social justice and to sustain democracy in Nepal we have set the following political agenda to be addressed by the state while holding election of the constituent assembly, making of the new constitution and its effective enforcement.

1. Proportionate representation of Dalits in to the Constituent Assembly.

2. Constitutional guarantee to have special rights in a form of reparation and apology by the state for the injustices caused.

3. Proportionate representation in all organs of the state at all level.

4. At least 20% reservation in higher education and employment.

5. The National Dalit Commission to be made constitutional and to be equipped with resources to be able to wipe out all forms of caste based discriminations.

6. Ensure proportional representation of Dalits in all forms of state restructuring including federal states.

7. Declare Dalit Development Decade (2007-2017) with a master plan for the overall development of Dalit community.

8. Provide adequate land to ensure rights to housing of landless Dalits.

We as a civil society organization are disseminating civic education to our people so that their participation in the election as voters will be meaningful to elect Dalit and or pro-Dalit candidates. By adopting peaceful means we are leading Dalit movement to influence government and party policies.

After the election and during the constitution making process we will campaign for necessary support required to secure constitutional guarantee to our rights.

During this historic moment our earnest request to President Carter and the Carter Center is to raise Dalit issues both at the national and international level as an issue of social justice.

Through this memorandum we also request you and your country to feature Dalits specifically in all assistance provided to Nepal, as of now Dalits are least featured in most of the US assistance.

We humbly request you to be instrumental form a senate committee at the level of US government to oversee the issue of social justice of Dalits of South Asia (Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh).

We are very much hopeful that your cordial visit will contribute to a lasting peace and strengthening democracy in Nepal.

Thank you very much for granting us your graceful audience.

Yours sincerely,

Bom Bahadur Vishwakarma

General Secretary