A very brief history of Nepal's road to democracy

If you are anything like me, the recent history of Nepal might not have been up there with your favourite subjects. Even as a student of international relations with an eager mind and a strong belief in everybodys basic human rights(sieved through a Western sieve but still) and even though I have visited Nepal on a number of occasions, my knowledge is at this stage basic.

But the good news is that it will be remedied right here and now.

If you are learning any Nepali today, Jaana Andolan ii is important as it is the name of the popular uprising against the king in the summer of 2006. The hope was high then, slightly less so now. I turn to a recent interview with Ian Martin, head of the United Nation mission in Nepal(UNMIN)who opened the office of the High Commisssioner for Human Rights(OHCHR)in 2005. He says:

I still think that the process has to be seen extremely positively. It would be very hard to find another peace process where the national actors themselves negotiated an end to a 10-year conflict, the election to an elected Constituent Assembly (CA) and a peaceful transition to a republic. That’s an extraordinary achievement by any standards.

He goes on to talk about how he feels that the role of the UN encouraged people to assert their democratic rights. Then he says something that I personally find very important namely that the UNMIN presence had a value beyond supporting the elections and monitoring arms as an indiacation of the concern of the international community for this process and the fact that the actors themselves were conscious of being observed by the international community.

Yes, the peace process is still fragile between the Maoists and the state. There is a new constitution being drafted as I write this, which is aiming to include all different groups. There are questions to be solved in the democracy process such as the future the issue of former combatants as well as the future of a variety of armed groups. And there are of course the issues of rights and legal processes to come for different victims, sometimes organized in vistims groups but often not.