Women and Peace in Nepal I+II
by Shelley Anderson

November 25, 2006 - (WPP) POKHARA: There is peace in Nepal now, but the signs of war are everywhere. In Kathmandu, capital of this country of some 22 million people, high walls topped with razor wire surrounded all important buildings, from Nepal Telecom to the Parliament. Soldiers, either in the green camoflague fatigues of the Nepalese Army, or the grey combat uniform of the homeland security troops, are a common sight. There are sandbagged checkpoints in and out of every city and town.

Yet there is also a feeling of cautious optimism for the future among ordinary Nepalese. "I felt relief [after the Agreement was signed]," said one woman, a Kathmandu-based activist. "Of course we had been wanting this peace for a long time." A Peace Agreement was signed between Nepal's major seven political parties and Maoist rebels on 21 November.

"I feel freer. There are no more checkpoints in my neighborhood now," she continued. Before the Agreement, during the 20-minute drive between her home and office in Kathmandu, she was stopped at six different checkpoints. She is especially relieved for her son, a university student. "He would get so angry. Security forces always stopped him and his friends, asking questions, checking their identity documents, sometimes searching them."

Another woman, principal of a private school, also expressed relief. She hopes the Agreement will put an end to unannounced visits from representatives of different political parties to her school. Located in a poor neighborhood in Kathmandu, most of these "visitors" were Maoists, who have a huge following both inside and outside Kathmandu. Whatever party they were from, the "visitors", often teenaged boys, came demanding "voluntary" donations for their political organization.

"They are very well organized," she said. "Once two boys from the Maoists came to tell me 'tommorow you will close your school and send all the pupils and teachers to our demonstration in downtown Kathmandu.' They had big sticks and were very threatening. They were only 16 or 17 years old!"

"I spoke politiely to them. I said, 'you are like my sons. I myself will go the demonstration and I will tell my teachers to go. But I cannot tell my students to go. I will ask them to ask their parents. If their parents agree, only then can the students go.' I gave them money from my own pocket. The next day I went with my teachers to the demonstration. What else could we do? Those boys came up to me at the demonstration. They had a list with all the teachers names on it, and they checked off each name."

There are similar stories of demands for money and threats of violence from outside Kathmandu. The town of Pokhara is a six-hour drive through the winding Kathmandu valley. Home to some 300,000 people, the town is most famous for the beautiful Phewa lake, and as a jumping off point for Westerners trekking the Himalayan mountains. Tourism and agriculture are the town's mainstays. The tourist industry was badly affected by the decade-long Peoples War.

Nicky Chhetri is one of the few Nepali women with her own trekking business. Together with her two sisters she organizes camping and trekking tours, providing guides and equipment for tourists. The Chhetri sisters employ only women as guides. Even more unusal than this, however, is the fact that the three sisters also run a nongovernmental orgaqnization called Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN). EWN trains provides free training in leadership, first aid, map reading and eco-tourism for village women, and helps them set up their own businesses in the tourist industry.

"There was a government security outpost upstairs in our home [during the war]," Nicky said. "Sometimes the officer would tell us 'we have a rumor that the outpost will be attacked tonight [by Maoist rebels]. We would gather all the family and all the girls in our training program and try to rent rooms in town, for safety."

The three Chhetri sisters were lucky, however. "We have many foreign friends who supported our program, so we were able to keep going," explained Nicky.

Other trekking businesses, tea houses, camping stores and guests houses in Pokhara were not so fortunate, and had to close down.

During a recent three-day workshop on "The Constituent Assembly and Restructuring of the State: Women's Agendas and Strategies",in Pokhara, many women participants spoke about a sense of new freedom now that the war is over. "There is more mobility now," said one participant. "the buses could not travel at night, because of the curfew and the chance of attacks. Now we can travel whenever we have to. I feel very free now." Other women spoke of no longer having their packages searched at check points.

While much has changed, much remains the same in Nepal. Poverty is rife. The majority of the populations lives on less than one US dollar a day. Much of the population is also politically marginalized--especailly the female half of the population. Nepal's major seven political parties have now formed an alliance. This alliance and the Maoists form an interim government and have a starnglehold on all political power.

The Peace Agreement has "left most issues untouched," said a male trainer at the workshop. An activist with the NGO Federation, he talked briefly about his own expriences during the war. "We have seen people die in front of our eyes. We have seen bodies cut into little pieces. We need peace, progress and good governance in this country. A lot of money must go to disarmament now. I am worried that there will be less money for good governance." He wants the interim government to make a political space for civil society, and to make provisions for civil society in the new constitution which will be drawn up.

"Women should not keep silent," said a female trainer at the workshop. "The country has given us a big opportunity. But first we must understand what to do. The political parties will not invite women into power. So we must go to them and tell them what we really want. The Constituent Asssembly must be gender sensitive. In the old constitution women were left behind. A new constitution will be formed. Will there be justice for women in this new constitution or not?"

Women and Peace in Nepal II

The woman is speaking enthusiastically in Nepali to a group of 30 other women. Her talk is sprinkled with a few English words: "truth and reconciliation commission", "democracy", conflict management".

The speaker is activist Stella Tamang and she is talking about the roadmap to Nepal's constituent assembly (CA). The historic peace agreement last week between the seven main political parties in Nepal and the Maoist guerillas ended a decade-long war that killed 13,000 and left an estimated million internally displaced. How did the war affect the women and gilrs of Nepal?

What does peace mean to them? And most of all, what will women's role be in building a new Nepal?

These questions and more were being explored at this meeting, organized by the Nepali nongovernmental organization (NGO) Bikalpa, a branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR). The three-day consultation, entitled "Constituent Assembly and Restructuring of the State:

Women's Agenda and Strategies", was supported by the IFOR Women Peacemakers Program (WPP). It brought together women from political parties like the Nepali Congress, local government women, activists in local mother's associations, health care workers, dalits (untouchables), students and village women who had taken precious time away from harvesting the fields.

"Women now have a window of opportunity," Stella said in her talk. "If we do not make use of this opportunity a whole generation of women will suffer. It is time for us to speak up. If we do not, we will stay invisible and men will make all the decisions." She explained that Nepal will have an interim government, which will draft an interim coinstituion. This will govern the country until next year, when elections will be held to form a Constituent Assembly, which will decide the political future for the country. Women must be involved every step of the way in this complicated process of building a new democratic Nepal, she explained.

Analysts and activists alike agree with her. They also agree that, if the current trend continues, women will not be included in shaping a new Nepal.

Only two women were present at the historic peace signing itself. "No one knows who they are or why they were chosen," said a prominent activist in Kathmandu. "They were probably the wives of some of the male politicains."

No women were chosen to be in the drafting committee for the interim constitution, either. After a protest in front of Parliament by women, a few women were hastily included. While Nepal's House of Representatives agreed in May that women should be 33 percent of all decision-making bodies, this promise did not appear in writng in the Peace Agreement. In fact, women were included with children in only one small paragraph in the Agreement.

"Nepal is a patriarchal society," said an activist with a small political party. "Women's leadership is not trusted. Political party men join hands when any woman starts to lead. It's as if their egos or status is threatened. BUt the women's movement here is also not effective. Civil society women must get together and show the parties that they are watching them. Women must come up with a charter, with demands. There has to be networking between civil society women and women in the political parties, and that is not happening right now."

What about United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325? As a member state of the United Nations, Nepal must comply with this Resolution, which mandates women's participation in all issues of peace and security, and the inclusion of women throughout all decision-making bodies. Women in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere, have used this Resolution to gain access to decision making. Will 11325 work in Nepal?

"It's the political parties that have to implement 1325", she replied. "And the partis do not have the committment nor the sensitivity to do this."

Another women's rights activist, and a member of one of Nepal's many indigenous groups, agrees that Nepal's larger women's organizations have been strangely silent during this critical period of nation building. "The mainstream women's organizations are usually chaired by the wives of important politicians. These women are being silent because they are waiting to be appointed to political positions. They don't dare criticize the lack of attention to women in the Peace Agreement or the lack of women in the interim government." An indigenous women's coalition, the Indigenous Women's Republican Front, did critique the Agreement. They are demanding that the government keep its promise of 33 percent of women in the interim Parliament, and in all the critical committee bodies now being established.

As many other activist women, they are also discusssing the need for quotas for women in political positions, and possibly even the possibility of a women's political party. But the Front, like all indigenous groups, is marginalized in Nepali politics.

Back in Pokhara, Stella Tamang is saying, "Women in the fields are freer than women in the political parties! Village women can speak our minds.Women in the political partis are dominated by men. They must do what the men tell them to or be thrown out of the parties." It is up to civil society women to push the government to include more women in the committee that will form the Constituent Assembly, Stella explains, and to make sure the CA itself is at least 33 percent women.

One participant, active in local politics, said, "Immediately after the Peace Agreement was signed, all the parties, and all the NGOs , had board meetings. I went to my party meeting and was the only woman there. I asked, 'am I at the right meeting? where's the 33 percent women? Is this the new Nepal?' The leader told me, 'you should be silent. how can we find women qualified to be leaders? you know most women are uneducated.'"

"It makes me so angry, because everywhere we see uneducated and unqualified men promoted to political positions."

From: http://www.ifor.org/WPP/