HISTORIC VOTE: After Nepal’s historic vote on 10 April 2008, the former Maoist rebels will become the largest party in the constituent assembly, tasked with rewriting the constitution. The Maoists, seen campaigning here in western Nepal’s Rajapur area, were accused of trying to intimidate voters and rivals during the campaign, but international observers said the election was largely fair.
"TURNING POINT": During the war, the elusive Maoist supreme leader Prachanda took on almost mythical dimensions. After the overwhelming election victory by his party, he pledged that the first meeting of the elected assembly will abolish Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy. “This will be a historical turning-point in our history,” he said in a conversation with the IRC. The Maoists have abandoned many of their leftist policies, such as nationalization, to embrace foreign investment.
BLOWN UP: The scars of the civil war can be seen everywhere. Police stations, often the only bastions of state authority in the countryside, were frequently targeted by the Maoists. This police station, in the Himalayan district of Mugu, was blown up in 2005.
"ALMOST NOTHING": Janak Rokaya, 7, lives high in the mountains in the remote district of Mugu. The boy’s father served in the Maoist army and was killed in battle three years ago. “It is very hard for us to survive,” explains the boy’s grandfather, Dhanasingh Rokaya, clutching his son’s death certificate, issued by the party’s armed wing. “We have almost nothing and we have seen no compensation from the party.”
LUCKY TO REACH 40: Economic growth has taken place almost exclusively in urban areas. The rural economy has been virtually stagnant, especially in the mountainous regions. Life expectancy in the capital Kathmandu is over 70 years. By contrast, in the far western mountain communities, like this village in Mugu district, it is below 40 years. Although the Maoist insurgency found fertile ground in these poor communities, the communist cadres drove tens of thousands of people from their homes in a campaign of terror. After the peace, people gradually started to return following years of displacement.
PROTECTING THE CROP: There is a serious shortage of health services, clean water and nutritious food in Nepal’s western mountain communities. The International Rescue Committee came here to help people restart their lives by providing seeds, agricultural tools, livestock, essential household items and clothing. After receiving equipment and training, Dambar Bahadur Bokara in the remote village of Ludku is now able to protect his wheat crop with pesticides.
RETURNING AND STARTING ANEW: Banchu Rokaya (second from left with her family and IRC assistant protection manager Mohan Acharya) is one of up to 250,000 people who fled their homes during the Nepalese civil war. “In 2005 the Maoist killed my husband,” she says. “I found out that they had shot him and dumped his body in the Karnali River. I was afraid for the safety of my children so we decided to run away.” After almost three years in a camp for internally displaced in the southern city of Nepalgunj, Banchu finally decided to return. Since then, she and her family have been helped by the International Rescue Committee with clothes, household items and tools so that she could repair her broken house.
CHILD SOLDIER: The Maoists were accused of recruiting child fighters. Many are now back in their villages, having lost out on education and vocational skills. The International Rescue Committee helps former combatants go back to school or enrol in vocational training. Nineteen-year-old Padam (right) recently graduated from an electrical training course. Drafted into the Maoist army at the age of 14, he lost his left eye to shrapnel. “Providing former child combatants with vocational training is especially important now, since many of them risk being re-recruited into the fighting forces,” says the IRC’s country director Christina Munzer.
Children served not only as fighters but also as porters, messengers and spies or took part in cultural and indoctrination programmes, says the IRC’s field manager Chandra Nath Sapkota (left, handing out diplomas at an IRC vocational training graduation). “They often joined the rebel movement - sometimes as young as nine - initially as entertainers and political workers, but later ended up in its armed wing,” he explains.
SUPPORT NEEDED: To inform communities about the hardship that the former child soldiers suffered during the years of conflict, an IRC-supported youth group in mid-western Nepal has written a street play about coming back from war. “This is a way to tell people about the plight of the child soldiers,” said Amar Shrestha, a child protection manager with the International Rescue Committee. “They are also victims of the war and must be accepted and supported so that they can be reintegrated into society.”
CATCHING UP AT SCHOOL: Apart from vocational training, the IRC is also helping the many children who were displaced or forced to serve with the armed groups re-enter the Nepalese school system. The IRC is rehabilitating damaged school buildings and providing the most vulnerable children with school fees, supplies, and school uniforms.
BONDED LABOR: In spite of a government ban on debt bondage, hardship continues to be a reality for tens of thousands of former bonded laborers who are among the poorest and most neglected citizens of Nepal. These people, known as Kamaiya, have been given temporary land plots by the government, but live in squalor, like in the village of Chediya. The International Rescue Committee is making life easier for the villagers here by setting up small-scale vegetable gardens and distributing household articles and livestock, such as goats.
“PRISONERS HERE”
Another vulnerable group in Nepal is the Bhutanese refugees, who have lived in refugee camps in south-eastern Nepal for almost 20 years. Some 108,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepalese origin were expelled from Bhutan after the government stripped them of citizenship due to their ancestry. “We are prisoners here,” says Dhana Gautam, 24, (left) who lives in the Goldhap camp in eastern Nepal. “I came here when I was eight years old,” she says. “Refugee life is very hard, we all want to leave.” The US and other countries have now offered many of them homes. Once they reach the US, the IRC is one of nine humanitarian organizations that will resettle the Bhutanese across the country, helping them find housing, employment and access to English language instruction and health services.
FIRE ADDED TO THE DESPERATION: Goldhap – one of seven camps in Nepal for the Bhutanese – is gloomy, its pathways muddy and the majority of the inhabitants are squatting under plastic sheeting after an accidental fire roared through the camp a month ago. Most of the refugee homes were destroyed along with a camp school. The International Rescue Committee helped with hygiene kits, clothing and emergency supplies after the disaster. “The fire just added to our desperation,” says Purushottam Ghimire, one of the refugees. “Under normal circumstances, it’s hard enough to survive.”
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(April 2008) An estimated 13,000 people were killed during the decade-long civil war between the government and the Maoists in Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world. A peace accord was signed in 2006 and recent elections, that will help determine Nepal’s future, were deemed largely fair by observers. But, for most people, life is a daily struggle in the Himalayan nation. Text and Photos: PETER BIRO |
