A memorandum of understanding between the government and the UN on establishing a human rights monitoring field office in Kathmandu was signed on Monday. There has been a mixed reaction to this from various quarters but there can be only one criteria under which we should judge it: will it reduce the suffering of the Nepali people? If the UN is allowed to do its job, we think it will.

Just about everybody is patting themselves on the back. The Europeans who lead the charge in Geneva are happy even though the last-minute compromise allowed Nepal to wriggle out of an Agenda Item 9 resolution that would have put us in the same league as pariahs like Burma and Sudan.

The Foreign Ministry is painting this as a victory for Nepal even though by allowing permanent international observers to monitor and investigate human rights violations it tacitly acknowledged a group it considers terrorists and set a precedence for future external mediation.

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, must be extremely pleased. The UN thinks this is the most effective MoU it has ever signed and is planning to immediately deploy a 50-member field office with branches across the country. Human rights activists are ecstatic that their intense lobbying has paid off. The Maoists fell over themselves to immediately welcome the signing.

After getting away with a slap on the wrist last year, the government was expecting this year's UN session in Geneva to be difficult because of lack of progress on commitments made last year. But what magnified the focus was February First-the royal move turned Nepal into an outcast for dismantling democracy. Signing the MoU was quick footwork to stave off even more severe opprobrium and contain the damage. But this must not be just a time-buying gesture and yet another international commitment that the government fails to live up to.

Even so, the terms of the MoU make it harder for state security and the rebels to get away with impunity and violations of international humanitarian law. The possibility that investigated violators can face punishment at the International Court of Justice should be a further deterrence. The Maoist threat to close schools in the new year will be seen as a massive human rights violation. All this offers a ray of hope for long-suffering Nepali people who have been trapped in the middle between the two forces.

Finally, the MoU also opens up the possibility of outside mediation to the conflict that could lead to closure of this sad and wasted chapter of our nation's history.