Nepal

 STATE TRANSFORMATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
  

The end of the Cold War worldwide generally moved the focus of armed conflict from clashes between states to tensions within them. Preventing and averting civil war requires allowing all citizens to resolve their differences through representation and participation in the various fora of state and society from the local through to the national level. Redressing exclusion and inequality requires vastly different approaches to roaches to varied sets of circumstances – political, cultural, social, economic, and those created by gender. This report focuses especially on the structure of the state, emphasizing the importance of inclusion as a trigger for the improvement in other dimensions as well.

As this Report argues, representation can become a catalyst for creating a society that offers greater equality and justice to all in a number of spheres. And a significant change in political representation demands active, equitable involvement of those now excluded from the processes of framing and implementing policy. This calls first and foremost for opening state structures to participation by groups that have never before engaged in governance. It means transforming the State and Nepali society as the vast majority of the country’s inhabitants have known it through most of their lives. This report explores how reform of the electoral system, enhancement of the democratic culture of political parties, and greater decentralisation can widen and deepen the quality of representation and participation, and thus democracy.

Nepal has only recently emerged from a decade of civil war and is navigating a fragile peace. Protecting these vital achievements requires managing popular expectations through rule of law, transitional justice, improving access to services by the poor and excluded, fostering a sense of national community and creating a new constitution. It also will entail managing a nation-building process alongside a state restructuring project.

With the Comprehensive Peace Accord as a starting point, the Nepal National Human Development Report 2009 attempts to explore the relationships between inclusion, human development and the role of state transformation as a means to these ends. It argues that if inclusion is to be sustained in future, it also requires the fair political representation and integration of various cultural groups and regions in nation building. The Report invites all Nepali stakeholders to engage in the debate on the structure of the state, the modes of democracy they want, and the ways in which they can reconcile their differences harmoniously.

Without peace, human development is not possible, and without human development, peace is not sustainable.

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