This campaign, aims to enhance the capacity of community to take leadership for promoting culture of peace and human rights.
In an effort to initiate peace campaign nationwide, two-day regional assembly series entitled ‘Conflict, Displacement and Migration: Challenges for Peace and Development’, were held in Dang, mid-western region of Nepal on February 23-24th, and Baglung, western region on March 3-4th, 2004. Prior to the western region assemblies, we had held an eastern regional workshop in Biratnagar in November. The overall objective of the workshops was to initiate a peace building process involving all sectors and initiating grassroots campaign. The specific objectives were to conceptualize conflict, its impact on different broad sectors such as youth, women's health, education, media, human rights, and to marginalized groups as well as daily lives and look for ways to resolve them collectively. The assemblies held allowed forum for the community people to voice their opinions who have fallen aprey to the dire situation of the violent conflict from the state as well as rebel force.
Preliminary site visits were made both to the mid-western and western regions by WOREC staffs to identify local partners and involve the community people in the planning process. The idea was to take the assembly in a participatory manner from the very first step. It was in those preliminary visits that the community people and local leaders showed immense interest and took ownership. The determination for making the assemblies a success, making financial as well as logistic contributions, and bringing people together were also made during the prior assembly meetings. It was only with such positive interest and welcome from the local level that we were able to take the idea forward.
The Civic Assembly comprised of a series of programs over two consecutive days. The structure of the program remained same in all the three regions with a slight variation on the issues, which were region specific chosen by the local community. The first day events consisted of inauguration activities, and the presentation of the paper on conflict by key speaker in the morning. In the afternoon session, five simultaneous issue related symposiums were held with a paper presentation, panel discussion, and working group activities on each. On the second day moderators from each symposium presented summary of the issue based workshops, and group work regarding subject matter, attempts being done to resolve the issues, and recommendation/strategy for future directions.
Challenges, difficulties and predicaments were shared by the participants in all the assemblies. The issues were many but overall concerns remained similar.
The security forces are limited only in the district headquarters and few rural areas. The community lives in an extreme state of fear, terror and insecurity. People are dying in lack of health services due to bandhs, absence of health personnel in the villages or lack of transportation for timely check ups. Women have become widows, semi-widows, children orphans and all groups are facing harassments, torture of inhumane nature. The ruling leaders in the capital and the government representatives continue to claim that they have arranged security as well as service delivery systems throughout the nation, but the stories shared by the community people proves that the reality is otherwise. In some cases participants were even reluctant to openly talk about their situations due to fear of the ramifications it could result upon their return to the community by the Maoists and/or security forces. Youth of the village are forcefully recruited by the Maoists, and even if they refrain from joining Maoists they are instead harassed by the security personnel for harboring Maoists. The villages are being vacant due to forced displacement as a result of violent conflict. Inhumane and inappropriate behaviors by the security personnel during security check ups are very insensitive. The daily lives have been crippled due to harassment from both sides, declared and undeclared curfews, bandhs, and lack of security in the communities.
A story shared by a local resident, a guest of honor and a conflict victim Ms. Jasoda Sharma in Baglung held the mass in awe and sympathy. Her husband was taken from the house 2 years ago by the local army but unfortunately even to this day the husband is neither released nor Ms Sharma knows any other news regarding him including the status of his life. She further adds, "Worse, I don't even know what I could tell my children when they ask me whereabouts of their father"
Similarly, there was another poignant story shared by a woman in Dang. Her husband was kidnapped by Maoists. The tragedy being not enough, she was raped by both the maoists as well as policemen in group. She has further been harassed verbally, physically as well as threatened to be killed. She has sought help from a multiple sectors but to no avail. There were a number of such inhumane and atrocious testimonies shared by the participants.
Over 600 participants in both the assemblies had one voice in common--"We urge the state and the insurgents to immediately halt the violent conflict that has accelerated with a dire consequence of infringement of fundamental human rights including extra-judicial killings, rampant torture and involuntary disappearances. The state and the insurgents should immediately declare ceasefire in honor of the long-cherished popular thirst and refrain from protracted conflict keeping in view that dialoguing is the only alternative to enhance just peace, human rights and equitable society"
The local community responded enthusiastically for holding assembly of this scale in heavy conflicted areas such as Dang and Baglung. However, in Dang security personnel were reported to have harassed the partner organizers upon the completion of the program. In Dang despite a Bandh scheduled right after the assembly, people from remote villages and 15 districts made it to the venue to appeal for a need to restore peace in nation. Similarly, in Baglung despite a blockade imposed by the Maoists on food supplies in place and transportation blockade scheduled ahead, participants from 16 districts including remote areas came to actively partake the assembly.
The assembly was able to generate a 14-points and 18-points Declaration for Action in Dang and Baglung respectively based on the presentations, panel discussions, and working groups' outcomes. The assembly concluded with a mass peace rally in Dang whereas in Baglung the program began with a massive peace rally.
Overall, the assembly was able to achieve the objective it had set forth. Significant and common accomplishments for both the assemblies include formation of youth peace network, determination of women's group to pressure the state as well as the rebel parties to bring a violent conflict to an end, strong recommendations for future direction on each region specific issues and the declaration for action for each region.