Peace Building Assistance Needs

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the constitution.

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reconciliation, rehabilitation, and providing physical support to conflict-affected schools.⁴⁴¹

Table 7 Peace Building Assistance Needs

Reconciliation It involves both apology and forgiveness, together with truth, justice, empathy, and mourning, including the space and time which may be necessary for these to take place, and active support for them, from civil society organizations, communities, and the government and parties to the conflict.

Governance Government should have predictability, transparency, and accountability.

Security improvement Empowering individuals and communities. Human security, etc.

Rehabilitation of

infrastructure Restoring, mending, repairing, and regenerating after the destruction, moving from violence and its impact towards

restoration of health, e.g., physical, psychological, social, cultural, and political. Rebuilding schools, buildings, homes, bridges, roads, etc.

Economic recovery Transformation of economic structures from highly exploitative, unjust, centralized, with unequal distribution and control of assets and resources to a people-centered participatory development that is pluralistic, decentralized, and with fairer distribution of land and resources and participation in decision-making.

Assistance for socially

vulnerable population Providing economic and other reparations to victims of the war and those affected, including those tortured, raped, beaten, abused, and crippled, those whose homes were destroyed and/or fields

damaged, people unfairly targeted/dismissed from work, as well as men and women, single parents, children and orphans, and the families of those killed.

Humanitarian

emergency assistance Water and sanitation, medicine, food, and shelter.

Compiled by the author. Source: Literature related to peace building and conflict management.

Points to consider when implementing assistance

 Needs-based

 Organizations should work with religious and local leaders

 Neutrality

 Knowledge of community problems

441 Upreti, Armed Conflict and Peace Process in Nepal, 160-3.

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While working in Nepal, NGO’s should make sure that, their organizations are needs-based, like working with children during the Maoists insurgency. As stated earlier, there were NGOs, which were helping the Nepali children during the civil war, like the Advocacy Forum,

CWIN, National Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace, INSEC, among others.⁴⁴². Organizations should also work with religious and local leaders in order to achieve more results in terms of peace and conflict resolution, as well as to bring development. In case political instability or communal or castes/ethnic issues arise, the organization should learn to work in neutrality and avoid violence, to get to the result of bringing development to the Nepali community, and making all social and political actors to work together.

After 1990, Nepal experienced a widening economic gap between the poor and rich. The expectations of the Nepali people were very high after the political change of 1990, but there was no improvement in bridging the gap between urban and rural areas. The per capita income of Rolpa – the area from which the Maoists declared their rebellion – was less than US$100, and a UN Human Development report of 2001 verified that 38 percent of Nepali people were living in extremely poor conditions and could not meet even their basic needs.⁴⁴³ This includes actors at all levels that are involved in, affected by, and have contributed to the conflict. The economic growth rate of the agricultural sector in 1991–1995 was 2 percent, whereas the growth rate of the non-agriculture sector in the same period was 8 percent.⁴⁴⁴

 Mapping all issues, goals, and interests

The issues are goals and interests of each party, including how observers see them, and how they see them themselves. All political parties have their vested interests and the leaders want to concentrate all powers within their parties.

 Mapping the relationship(s) between them

442 Human Rights Watch Organization, Nepal, Children in the Ranks,2007.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0fVFzXs5klEC&pgis=1. Accessed on June 13, 2015.

443 Thapa and Sijapati, A Kingdom under Siege, 58–9.

444 Source: Ministry of Finance, economic survey of several years.

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Including the relationships between (i) the different actors, (ii) the issues, and (iii) the actors and the different issues.

 Needs-based

Conflict management is an entire political process of every community. Political parties, different social groups who actively participated in the conflicts or were affected by the conflicts, marginal community, indigenous groups, women, and different marginal group are the first-part stakeholders of peace process. Regional and international communities are the second-part stakeholders of a viable peace process. The ideological conflict that lasted in Nepal for a decade had prospered in Nepal endemic poverty, economic inequality and a structural gap that caused the eruption of conflicts. The Maoist insurgency was the most serious political threat the Nepalese state has ever faced. Finally, it became an instrumental tool in bringing structural change in political paradigm.

The political movement of 2006 formally institutionalized a political change in the political structure, which was one of the demands of CPN (M) through the ratification of Interim Constitution by legislature-parliament in 2007. The changes in the power equation need to address the issues of women, Dalits, indigenous communities, and marginalized groups. The political transformation of previous political structure into a new political system can resolve the conflict dealing with the challenges of post-war Nepal, based upon the real needs of the country. For this, the government and political leaders have political accountability to attend to the voices of local people as put forth by the people, themselves.

Prescriptions or “solutions” imposed by external forces often create problems and fail to address the issues adequately, and the top-down peace processes will exclude certain actors – social, national, cultural and other groups. Ian Martin says that “the achievements of Nepal’s peace process are extraordinary,” but that “Madhesis, Janjatis, Dalits, and other marginalized

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groups were nonetheless excluded from almost all stages of peace process negotiations….”⁴⁴⁵ An important element of the peace process is to ascertain the real needs and issues that need to be addressed. The constructive participation of all social groups in the political process itself through local forums can solve the problem properly.

During the time of conflict, the warring group effectively forwards a number of political issues like transformation of socio-political structure of the country in the legislation and other demands like rights of women, right of backward communities and indigenous communities, for example. For this, civil society organizations, NGOs, and the people themselves – in villages, towns, the capital, and areas across the country – can play a vital role in raising their voices, participating actively, transforming conflicts, stopping the

violence, building cooperation and confidence at the local and national level, and working to ensure that their needs and concerns are addressed. At present, Nepal needs to make sweeping political changes to address the problems of structural inequity, economic discrimination and to offer all civil rights to the people to integrate with welfare politics. A good process will be one in which the participation of, and the commitment to addressing the needs of, the

communities and people of Nepal is seen as central to the overall transformation of the conflict and peace building, including both the final outcome as well as the way it is carried out. The success of peace process will indicate how Nepali political leaders can transform the traditional state mechanism into a new mechanism that can make efforts to prompt economic growth and development.