The Legacy of Civil War and the Power of Dialogue in Nepal

The Asia Foundation is celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2024. For seven decades, we have partnered with change-makers from government, civil society, the private sector, and academia to solve some of the greatest challenges facing Asia and the Pacific. To mark this milestone, we are sharing a series of highlights showing the scope and impact of our contributions past and present. We are committed to building on these achievements in the decades ahead.

After 10 years of simmering conflict and open civil war, the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2006 brought a formal peace to Nepal, but it would take years to draft a new constitution that decentralized government and acknowledged the great diversity of the Nepali people. A Constituent Assembly was convened to do the drafting, but it dissolved in acrimony in 2012. When a second Constituent Assembly was convened in late 2013, measures were needed to preserve the fragile peace among restive political actors. The Foundation played a key role in this delicate process, through programs that facilitated community mediation, track 1.5 diplomacy, and all-important dialogue.

The Constitution of 2015 gave Nepal a federal system of government, but divisive issues remained unresolved, particularly boundaries and jurisdictions. Areas that had witnessed conflict among identity-based interest groups (gender, class, caste, and historically marginalized communities), and ethnically diverse areas at the confluence of newly created provinces, were especially at risk of fresh violence. Conflict brewed over natural resources, boundary demarcation, taxation, and the powers and jurisdictions of the new local governments. There was an urgent need for dialogue to defuse these disputes.

Our Nepal Peace Support Project (NPSP), with funds from USAID and SDC, had been supporting the conflict-mitigation efforts of the Nepal Transition to Peace forum (NTTP) since 2009. Drawing from the forum’s model of informal, multi-stakeholder dialogue, our Regional Program Partnership Arrangement with (then) DFID launched a subnational dialogue program in three districts in 2012. The program deployed new peacebuilding approaches featuring a mix of dialogue, mediation, and track 1.5 diplomacy. It mobilized actors who were insiders, but had an impartial reputation, to build bridges among the contesting parties.

The dialogue process relied on continuous in-depth analysis of the issues and extended interaction among the contesting parties. Local facilitators, trained in the process, analyzed the issues before bringing the contesting parties together in a safe space for informal dialogue. The analysis was done throughout the process, and even with the contesting parties, taking account of changing circumstances. The Foundation provided strategic direction, coaching and mentoring for the facilitators, and technical and logistical support to the sambad samuhas (dialogue forums). This facilitated approach helped the parties reach agreement on sensitive and politically charged issues that would produce deadlock in a formal political negotiation.

Since the introduction of federalism in 2015, this informal-dialogue model has evolved into our Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Program. The program has focused on issues of subnational governance, especially jurisdictional disputes, as Nepal devolves authority to the new provincial and local governments. By 2019, the program had expanded to other districts, ultimately reaching more than 20 locations, and by 2022, it was working at the provincial level in five of Nepal’s seven provinces.

When two massive earthquakes struck Nepal in close succession in 2015, the dialogue program made a sharp turn to address contentious issues of relief, recovery, and reconstruction. Since 2017, through our Subnational Governance Program, conducted in partnership with DFAT, these dialogues have resolved 391 issues ranging from use of the commons and the property rights of marginalized communities to reconstruction after natural disasters, local backlash to infrastructure projects, and many others.

Working with local facilitators and sambad samuha across the country, our Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Program has built trust among wary stakeholders and helped develop skills and resources within the local communities to resolve conflicts constructively.