SUMMARY
[Note to reader: this Country page primarily contains brief information about state-based violence during the period 1946–1974, and to some extent 1975–1988. For more detailed information on organized violence after 1989, please consult the specific Conflict and Dyad pages available on the left-hand side of this page. These pages contain more detailed information regarding all three categories of organized violence in this country from 1989 and onwards (when applicable), as well as detailed information about state-based violence 1975–1988. The left-hand side menu also contains links to Actor pages for all groups involved in organized violence since 1989 in this country, as well as actors involved in state-based violence 1975–1988.]
Modern Nepal emerged as a unified state in the late 18th century. The country has been a monarchy from its inception but the power of the monarch has fluctuated throughout Nepali history. These power shifts have often been coupled with violent conflicts.
The royal palace’s role diminished for the first time during the century-long Rana era (1846–1951). This period of hereditary prime ministerial governance (where the prime minister was entitled Rana) was characterized as autocratic, highly centralized and isolationist. In 1951 the Rana system was brought down by an alliance of the monarchy and the intellectual elite, backed by Nepal’s powerful neighbor, India. Attempts at parliamentary democracy were made in the ensuing decade, exemplified by the first ever multi-party elections in 1959, which the center-left Nepali Congress Party (Congress) won with a landslide victory.
Eighteen months later, the royal palace declared parliamentary democracy a failure, ousted (and arrested part of) the Congress government in December 1959, and went on to ban political parties. The royal takeover sparked an intrastate conflict with the Nepali Congress Party in 1960–1962. Congress led a guerrilla force of about 3,000 enlisted and the attacks were launched from the Indian border region as Congress had the support of the Indian ruling party led by Jawaharlal Nehru. The centrality of Indian support was also made evident in the way the conflict ended; Congress called off the armed campaign on the request of Nehru, who was facing an interstate conflict with China and needed to garner the Nepali king’s cooperation. With the end of the Congress insurgency, the royal palace was free to instate its new form of governance in 1962 called the panchayat (village councils), a party-less system modeled on some form of ‘guided’ democracy.
The panchayat structure collapsed in 1990 after a watershed campaign launched by a broad-based democracy movement and constitutional monarchy under multi-party democracy was introduced. However, the democratic system was quickly tarnished in the general populace’s eyes as the political elite in the capital squabbled for power and failed to address the structural issues and injustices in Nepal. Against this backdrop, the CPN-M (Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist) launched an intrastate conflict against the government in 1996. As the CPN-M quickly controlled large parts of Nepal’s rural areas and managed to mobilize (some by coercion) a vast number of rebel fighters, the fighting was more or less sustained for a decade. Within the context of this conflict, both the government and the CPN-M have employed one-sided violence.
Citing deteriorating national security, the royal palace unconstitutionally assumed executive power in 2002 and 2005. In 2006, the major political parties, in cooperation with the CPN-M, organized massive countrywide demonstrations for the restoration of democracy, forcing King Gyanendra to relinquish power. On April 24, 2006, the monarch reinstated the parliament with a prime minister from the Nepali Congress Party. Subsequently the new Nepali government and the CPN-M initiated rounds of peace negotiations and in November 2006 a comprehensive peace agreement was signed.
Since 1946 Nepal has experienced the intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.
