Features
April 22, 2008
Nepal | The Power of Popular Mobilization
"By 2004 the human rights situation in Nepal had gotten so extreme that the tiny, mountainous nation topped the world in sheer numbers of reported cases of disappearances and kidnappings."
-The UN's Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
Human rights abuses have been part of political and military policies and practices in Nepal since Britain formally acknowledged the country's independence in 1923 , but their scale and intensity heightened dramatically in 1996 when civil war broke out. For the next decade the Nepalese people experienced unparalleled levels of violence at the hands of the country's monarchy and rival Maoist rebels, with at least 13 ,000 killed and thousands more tortured, raped, and forcibly disappeared.
In April 2006 an extraordinary mobilization by civil society against the government ended the conflict by forcing a military retreat, disempowering the ruling monarch, reinstating Parliament, and bringing the Maoists into the peace negotiations.
In November 2006 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) established the basis for a truth and reconciliation commission, a committee to investigate disappearances, and a commission to investigate abuses committed by the armed forces and the police during the April uprisings. To help build capacity for a just transition, the ICTJ has been conducting a series of workshops and consultations with a broad range of stakeholders in Nepal, including government representatives, victims' groups, international organizations, and donors.
Victims and other marginalized groups, often neglected in the course of the peace negotiations, expressed their deep and urgent need for more information and comparative expertise on transitional justice. Many also expressed concern that the pro-democracy movement could fall short of pursuing real justice by focusing too much on reconciliation activities instead of on other forms of accountability, including prosecutions and reparations.
One of the Center's main challenges has been to ensure that transitional justice initiatives are properly sequenced at the same time that a new political and military structure is being constructed. Human rights violators from both sides of the conflict could obstruct efforts to combat impunity and uncover the truth about past crimes, potentially complicating the processes of demobilizing, disarming, and reintegrating the Maoists and vetting the security forces. These challenges notwithstanding, the political consciousness that catalyzed the popular uprising and the relatively high degree of political will to address past abuses provide Nepal with a sound basis and fertile ground for establishing justice institutions that have integrity and enjoy popular legitimacy.
Since fall 2007, the ICTJ has two full-time staff members in Kathmandu.
