When revolutionaries start to bomb classrooms, it turns Mao Zedong's dictum 'to rebel is a right' into a farce. Such an awesome display of bravery: to treat the most vulnerable section of society as your enemy! And the only reason the comrades are able to get away with it is the equally shameful absence of the state and its failure to provide quality education for the masses.

Even the victims of Maoist atrocities have given up on relief and are camped out in Tundikhel for the past week from sheer desperation. How can a government that can't even win the hearts and minds of people who have been brutalised by Maoists expect to get the rest of the public on its side?

The outside world is getting concerned about our lack of concern. When the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who has been involved in high-profile war crimes trials comes calling it must mean things are seriously wrong here. The UN has set up a bureau of its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kathmandu. This week, the UN's special adviser to Jan Egeland, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, was in the country to assess the situation of the internally displaced. Egeland is said to be acutely concerned about deteriorating conditions in Nepal. The fact that his advisers are here during the Darfur crisis shows just how seriously Nepal is viewed.

On Friday, Prof Walter Kalin, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced People completes his fact-finding mission to Nepal during which he visited Kapilbastu, Dailekh and Biratnagar. These visits come just as the UN Human Rights Commission on Wednesday adopted a resolution allowing monitors and also called on King Gyanendra to reinstate all political and civil rights. All this adds up to rising international concern that the conflict in Nepal is spiralling out of control and the consequences will be untold human misery.

Yet, in official circles we detect a sense of denial. Instead of addressing urgent humanitarian issues, there is knee-jerk defensiveness and wounded pride. Instead of slinking into our xenophobic shell, it will be better to launch pre-emptive intervention to save us from ourselves.

Both the government and the Maoists have said they respect international humanitarian law. The test for the government is how effectively it is going to help the million or so Nepalis displaced by the conflict. The Maoists have to realise that they can't welcome the UN human rights monitoring mission, call for UN mediation to the conflict and in the same breath bomb primary schools.