Rehabilitation in Nepal: unresolved consensus and hidden reasons

Prospects for rehabilitation of millions of conflict affected people have been left in a standstill due to lack of consensus and mistrust among the political leaders at the political level. Although rehabilitation is an important component of peace process, it seems to be getting lost due to hegemony of Kathmandu-centric issues such as election of a new Prime Minister, constitution making and integration of combatants into security forces. This research aims to explore the reasons behind lack of interest/reluctance among Nepal’s policy makers to view rehabilitation as an important issue in current peace process. By doing so, this paper argues that even after the Peace Agreement, the power relations and status quo in Nepal remains unchanged. The power to make decisions for the rest of the country still rests on the hegemony of powerful actors over the less powerful ones and when it comes to fundamental changes of attitudes and behavior towards governance and people needing rehabilitation, political party leaders still demonstrate resistance to structural change and are Kathmandu-centric as it was before the civil war. -- Relevance to Development Studies -- Post-conflict rehabilitation is recognized as a crucial peace-building and development issue at the global, regional and national level. The components that rehabilitation touches upon such as rebuilding society, creating conditions for socio-economic development or establishing institutions to resolve and manage conflicts have become the mainstay of large array of research for development practitioners as well as academic researchers. At the same time, looking at rehabilitation in Nepal from the perspective of political leaders and analyzing this issue from political economy perspective and “conflict syndrome” makes this research significant for further research on rehabilitation in Nepal.