Author: Prakash Bhattarai, PhD
The context
The Governance Monitoring Centre (GMC) Nepal, a flagship research initiative of Centre for Social Change (CSC), has recorded 706 events related to governance conflict in federal Nepal, between the period of June 2022 and May 2023. These 706 events include volent events, nonviolent events and the gathered data indicates a significant number (42% of the total actors directly involved) of civilians’ engagements in political, ethno-cultural, development, and natural resource related governance conflicts. Most of these governance conflicts (nearly 73%) recorded under the GMC, are nonviolent in nature, but a significant number (nearly 27%) of conflicts were seen to resort to some forms of violence. Additionally, recorded conflict resolution initiatives taken during the monitoring period comprise only 6.40% among the total recorded cases.
CSC’s field-based observations on the topic, further triangulated by GMC data, indicates a huge trust deficit of Nepali citizens towards the state institutions in terms of obtaining basic government services, provision of legal remedies, and a sense of belonging with the existing system. As a result, the public are motivated to take part in different street-based agitations and confrontational actions against the powerholders. The prevalence of structural inequalities and discriminations, despite the existence of a number of legal and institutional frameworks for governing the country, has further contributed to increasing discontents in various segments of society. Also, lack of community owned governance system to address people’s needs, concerns, and grievances have forced people to resist against the state. Political actors’ inabilities even to build consensus and address basic elements of new governance structure such as naming of the provinces, fixing municipality centers, clear division of power between the three tiers of governments, and the adjustment of bureaucracy and security structures as per the new federal governance framework have made the post-constitution political environment fragile. Moreover, the lack of just, sustainable, and ecological friendly governance system have further heightened governance conflicts and fragility in the country.
So, what can be the solutions to the problems mentioned above? This article suggests the need for advancing the idea of ‘peaceful governance’ to make the newly established federal governance structure fully functional and accountable towards the citizen of Nepal. Peaceful governance is not an idea that is borrowed, rather it is envisioned on the basis of Nepal’s governance practices from its past to present, where each governance system has always been challenged by its poor foundation along with its weak operation for addressing the needs of the people.
The basics of peaceful governance
Both academic as well as policy community has defined the term ‘governance’ from multiple aspects. In the simplest form, governance can be understood as an evolution, existence, and functionality of laws, policies, and institutions to address the needs and expectations of a wide array of people living in a particular territory. Governance systems are crafted differently in different countries, that is often guided by the core and established ideology of the governing state. Some governance frameworks have prioritized socio-economic and cultural rights of the people, whereas others are more concentrated towards ensuring the civil and political rights. There are also countries where both civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights have incorporated as core element of their governance framework. The new wave of governance, particularly after the end of Cold War and with the introduction of global goals such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the most recent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have incorporated other elements such as just, inclusive, transparent, accountable, as well as environmentally friendly governance. In truly democratic states, the notion of human dignity, individual freedoms, and a respect for the environment have always been prioritized while crafting a governance framework.
Building on the normative framework of governance, this notion of peaceful governance is a relatively new concept, which can go beyond the idea of good governance. The fundamental idea of peaceful governance is to make the governance structures and policies fair, transparent, and accessible to every citizen, with less confrontational events between the public and powerholders who are governing a community or a nation. Considering the cost of both violent and nonviolent conflicts to the economy and harmony of a nation, peaceful governance is a prerequisite for a country like Nepal. It mainly incorporates five core elements, namely, a) Inclusive and participatory governance processes and structures, b) Just distribution of available resources, c) Ecological friendly and participatory developmental practices, d) Forward thinking/futuristic governance processes, and e) Community owned governance processes. Absence of all above-mentioned elements have been the major source of conflicts between different powerholders, communities, and citizens in Nepal. Thus, adequate thinking and conversations around these topics are crucial to envision a governance process that eventually leads to establish peace and harmony in society.
Ensuring a peaceful governance
Peaceful governance demands a holistic approach where all five indicators mentioned above should be met to its full realization. Thus, some important actions should be taken in this regard.
First, governance is mainly about the adequate existence of functional law, policies, and institutions that drive a society in the right direction. Thus, its prerequisite is to make the existing governing policies and institutions functional with a pro-people approach. It is also important to build new policies and institutions when the existing ones are not sufficient or demand reform to meet the expectations of the people.
Second, governance is also about adopting a certain form of decision-making process that is acceptable to everybody. To ensure peaceful governance, it is therefore imperative to adopt a community-led decision-making practice where voices of all segments of the society are heard and reflected in the decisions taken by all three tiers of governments.
Third, considering the lack of grievance handling mechanisms and processes, citizens are resisting against the state to make their demands heard by the powerholders and take actions that are acceptable to the people. We can imagine several forms of grievance handling mechanisms. One common and powerful mechanism in this regard would be the presence of dialogue making infrastructure from local to the national level. Such dialogue platform can bring citizens and powerholders in a single platform to prevent or minimize the adverse impacts of conflicts and find peaceful solutions to the problems observed at the surface level.
Last but not the least, most of the conflicts observed at the local levels are focused on issues around defending identity and managing local resources for the best benefit of people. Considering these facts, initiatives must be taken upholding the dignity of people from all segments of society. Community-led resource planning and management processes are further required to increase people’s access over the local resources.
The views and opinions expressed in the piece above are solely those of the original author(s) and contributor(s). They do not necessarily represent the views of Governance Monitoring Centre Nepal and/or Centre for Social Change.
Prakash Bhattarai is a governance and peace researcher currently affiliated to Centre for Social Change (CSC), a Kathmandu based research and advocacy institute)
