Fall / Winter 2006
Nepal Shows Path to Ending War
Alumni Contribute to New Nepal
The groundwork for Nepal’s movement toward peace and democracy has been laid for many years. Since 1998 a total of 34 people from Nepal have studied at the Center for Justice and Peacbuilding, usually at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). Nepalese enrollment peaked at 10 in 2003. Three came to SPI in 2006: Sharda Basnet, Sushil Koirala, and Ravi Aryal. All together, the 34 people in Nepal with CJP training have sent out ripples of conflict transformation, as these brief descriptions show:
• Ameet Sharma Dhakal, MA ’02, is an editor at one of the
most influential newspapers in the country, the Kathmandu
Post. In 2002-2003 Dhakal helped lead a national project
to teach journalists how to report on conflict in a manner
that did not fan the flames. One of his lessons was the
importance of interviewing representatives of the Maoist
insurrection so that they might be able to express their views
in a non-violent manner. This no doubt helped pave the way
for the inclusion of Maoists in the current peace process.
• Hemlata Rai, MA ’04, a former newspaper journalist,
now works for the political and information section of the
delegation of the European Commission to Nepal. Like
Dhakal, Rai is a writer who has sought to keep the lines of
communication open among all political groups in Nepal.
• Yasodha Shrestha, MA ’04, is a consultant to the
Nepalese government officials in charge of education and
sports across Nepal. She has been giving advice on how
to include the principles of conflict transformation and
peacebuilding into the Nepalese education system. She has
also done some work on community mediation.
• Anjana Shakya, MA ’02, is the chairperson for Himalayan
Human Rights Monitors and director of the women and
development program at INHURED International. Recently
she has been working with Nepalis displaced from their
home communities by the violent conflict in the countryside.
She has also focused on preventing the trafficking of
humans.
• Debendra Manandhar, MA ’04, has returned to his
work as a leader of a team working on rural development
in which small groups of rural residents are taught how to
help themselves through saving and pooling small sums
and then lending it to each other (the way American credit
unions might do) to enable investment in income-producing
projects.
One of the most hopeful models for building peace these days is in a country little understood by many Westerners – Nepal.
In the 1900s, Nepal came to the attention of Europe and the U.S. as being a country led by a king, populated by poor, hospitable citizens living in the foothills and valleys of some of the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest.
CJP professor Nancy Good Sider (far left) in Nepal at a trauma workshop alongside CJP alumna Anjana Shakya.
Tourism dwindled in the mid-1990s as a Maoist insurgency gripped the countryside, abetted by people who felt doomed to be at the bottom of Nepal’s socio-economic system.
As a result of historic discrimination and disadvantages, many rural residents were unable to climb Nepal’s educational and economic ladder to a better life.
Today, however, an extraordinary experiment in peacemaking is unfolding in Nepal. Almost a year ago – in November, 2005 – the leaders of seven Nepalese political parties, along with the Maoists, met secretly in India and forged a 12-point pact.
Pact for Peace
In this pact, they agreed that all parties shared a desire for “democracy, peace, prosperity, social advancement and a free and sovereign Nepal.”
“We are committed to ending autocratic monarchy and the existing armed conflict, and establishing permanent peace in the country through constituent assembly elections,” the pact said.
This pact electrified the country, says Kumar “Anuraj” Jha, a Nepalese social development worker who is pursuing a masters degree in conflict transformation at EMU.
By April, millions of previously inactive citizens were swarming into the streets of Nepal’s cities and towns, demanding that the detested king give up his power and control of Nepal’s repressive military and police forces.
“At the clash sites we have been snatching people from the clutches of both police and armed forces, negotiating with both demonstrators and police not to take violent measures, visiting hospitals, walking with demonstrators to reduce police suppression,” Anjana Shakya, MA ’02, e-mailed to CJP.
Jha said that the commitment to nonviolence made by all opposition parties, including the Maoists, emboldened the average citizen toparticipate in the massive political protests. At first the king imposed a curfew with orders for the military to shoot-upon-sight. Hundreds of protesters fell victim to this attempt of repression. But the soldiers could not kill the millions of protesters who defied the curfew orders.
“The more the people were injured, the more they came out of their homes and workplaces to protest,” said Jha in an interview with Peacebuilder.
Faced with overwhelming civil disobedience, the king was forced to reconvene a Parliament that he had dissolved several years previously.
“At a time when there seems to be growing conflict around the world, Nepal has become an example of how a peaceful movement led by grassroots citizens and civil society can bring peace and overthrow even an autocratic minority holding power through military rule,” Jha said. “This is a remarkable achievement.”
No Paradise
Nepal has a population about the size of Texas’ packed into less than one-quarter of the land-size of Texas.
Older readers may remember when most Westerners viewed Nepal as a lovely, unspoiled land that travel magazines touted as one of the best places in the world for mountain climbing and trekking (eight of the 10 tallest mountains in the world are in Nepal).
But Nepal has been no paradise for its native peoples for many decades. It has one of the highest rates of poverty and illiteracy in the world. Three-quarters of the population depend on smallscale agriculture to survive, producing such foods as rice, corn, wheat, and root crops.
Nepal is supposed to be governed by a multiparty democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, led by a king. But a deepening sense of desperation among the impoverished population gave rise to a Maoist insurgency in 1996.
Students from Nepal currently in CJP's masters program (from left): Hem Raj Dhakal, Monica Rijal and Kumar Anuraj Jha.
An estimated 100,000-200,000 people have been displaced from their homes and villages by the fighting between government forces and Maoist rebels.
Nepal has been highly unstable since the year 2002 with elections not being held, parliament being dissolved, the Maoists controlling much of the countryside, and the king pounding dissenters, including killing and jailing human rights workers and other advocates for non-violent change.
Turned Tide?
In the year that Jha has been in the United States, he feels the tide has turned in Nepal towards long-term peace based on the desires and actions of the Nepalese people themselves – not based on powers from the outside imposing a “solution,” or on closeddoor negotiations among a minority of power-brokers.
With a groundswell of the population working for and demanding democracy, Jha believes Nepal’s future is bright.
Fellow student Monica Rijal agrees, though she cautions that Nepal’s structural and social inequalities must be addressed immediately by its elected representatives, or Nepal risks falling into violent instability again.