Conflict victims meeting on reparation and restorative justice

On 17 March 2023, Nepal Forum for Restorative Justice with coordination of Nispakchya organized an advocacy meeting on reconciliation framework at Sudurpashchim province. The advocacy meeting carried out discussion on two important questions:

• How can reparation be provided to address victims needs and redress harms done to them and their family members?
• What shall be done for reconciliation between all the parties involved and community members?

Victims from different parts of Sudurpashchim province but mostly from Kailali district were presented at the event. Total of twenty-five participants were presented in the hall out of which three were men and twenty-two were women.

When it comes to reconciliation the following were major things listed by the victims:

• Fulfillment of reparative needs of victims (which will be listed in latter part of this report)
• Prosecution of perpetrators
• Acceptance of members of conflicting parties and their families in the communities without stigmatizing them
• Victims of both the conflicting parties should have a dialogue to have a collective voice

Likewise, while answering to the question of what shall be done to address reparative needs of victims, following solutions were listed:

• Financial support and social security provisions for victims and their families
• Declaration of all the people who lost their lives during the conflict as national martyrs
• No discrimination between victims from opposing sides (State and Maoists) and equal treatment to all
• Identity cards to victims based on their categorization as per the harm committed against them
• Accessible higher education provisions through scholarships for children of victims without any age limitation or number limitation: For example, a victim might have more than one child but all of them should have access to scholarships and or free education. Likewise, children of many victims have already grown up and having age limitation or just providing scholarships for primary and secondary level education will make accessibility to educational opportunities challenging for them which eventually will affect their prospect of getting access to employment opportunities.
• Employment opportunities to victims and/or their family members as per their qualification
• Victim oriented need-based training programs for victims and their families
• Recognition of victims through symbolic reparative initiatives like creating memorials in the names of victims, naming the public places on victims, etc.

In addition to voicing these measures, victims also presented their frustration and pain of sharing same thing again and again in different platforms but seeing no actions being taken in order to address their voices even after almost two decades of official end of the conflict.