8 - Women and the Peace Process in Nepal

Summary

Introduction

In the final two decades of the last millennia, there has been substantial increase in political violence (UCDP 2012). Such violence is mostly the product of intra-state rather than inter-state conflicts. This has meant that wars are no longer fought in the traditional sense of the term between states but often within the state and its own people. In this context, a cataclysmic development for women has been the inevitability of war happening in and around their homes. Acts of violence, however, may not always target the civilian populations, but women and children often get trapped in them. For want of ‘security’ from being ‘recruited’ or for the necessity of earning bread, men disappear to distant lands. Women, children, the aged and the infirm are thus exposed to violence from the state as well as from the insurgents or the non-state actors. The routine narrative is that of the silent suffering women are victimized in various ways. This to an extent is true. However, there is another side of the picture too: the agency hood of women. Women become actors in the theatre of war and also in peace.

This chapter aims at not only analysing the impact that war made on the lives of women in the recent violent conflict in Nepal, but also to emphasize on the complexity and multiplicity of women's role in war as well as in peace.