Forum (Spotlight Weekly)

People's participation in peace process

By Dr Bishnu Raj Upreti

The histories of war and peace have shown that general public have tremendous potentials and firm ability, far more than anybody else, to enhance peace process. Unquestionable reality is that, creating and maintaining peace requires an active engagement of all actors of society, from ordinary citizens, security forces to politicians. However, civic engagement in peace making and peacekeeping in Nepal has not attracted enough attention. It is very hard to find any genuine effort to promote public participation in peace process in our country. Pragmatically, peace making and keeping is more than merely ending an armed rebellion. It goes beyond that – addressing of root causes of conflict and promoting peace transformation. Therefore, it is both a political and social transformation process as it has to focus on structural changes in governance, security and development, human rights policies and practice and regaining eroded trust. In this respect democratising peace process is extremely essential in Nepal.

If and when public engagement in peace process is ignored, the success is rare or even if, by any chance, success is achieved, it is temporary. General public may not own elite-guided peace negotiation, if people are not actively participated. If the peace talks is brought into public sphere, it promotes transparency and accountability, enhances constructive dialogue and gets public support and ownership. African examples in war and peace sufficiently tells us that peace in war torn society is seldom permanent when real civic engagement is not promoted. Achievement of viable and lasting peace is only possible when capacity of local people are utilized and complemented to the efforts of government, human right organisations, media and other peace actors.

In South Africa, conflict transformation and peace building was the outcome of genuine collaboration between religious people (churches), businessmen, politicians, and civil society. The resolution of conflict in Guatemala was the outcome of sincere efforts of Citizen Assembly composed of several civic organisations, churches, indigenous unions, women's groups, and business people. The Citizen Assembly was able to offer agenda for negotiation between the guerrillas and the government. In Northern Ireland women from different community formed a strong 'Northern Ireland Women's Coalition', which had greatly contributed to achieve the 1998 Belfast Agreement (popularly known as Good Friday Agreement). UK, one of the power centers of the world, was not able to solve the Northern Ireland conflict without engaging local people. One of the elements of John Major's ‘Triple Lock’ was people's approval of the agreement through referendum. This indicates that even 'western', 'democratic' governments cannot resolve conflict and maintain peace if they ignore civic engagement. In the Philippines, indigenous people, churches and local community made marvellous efforts to build peace. They have declared some territories as peace zone where citizen rights were respected. Local communities made similar efforts in Columbia.

Peace cannot be built and maintained without creating and promoting social infrastructures of peace, people's ownership in peace process and abolishing obstacles. A widely held misperception in Nepal is that peace will be achieved when the Maoist and the government negotiate and sign peace agreement. But this will not be the case. There will be numerous obstacles to implement the agreement, if (and when) there is an agreement. So the successful negotiation between the government and the rebels will be only a beginning of peace. It is only a minimum condition. Restoring political tolerance and coexistence, indispensable elements of peace, will be a major unsolved challenge in Nepalese peace process. Unless people own the peace process and be ready to develop feeling of tolerance and coexistence it will be meaningless optimism to restore lasting peace.

At theoretical level there are three approaches of civic engagement in peace process. They are representative participation, consultative participation and direct participation. These different types of participations bring interests, aspirations and values of peace constituencies to peace negotiation. In representative participation political parties represent their constituencies in negotiation. In consultative participation civil society raises views and formulates recommendations for negotiation. In direct participation all stakeholders in peace making involve in developing and implementing negotiation, which was adopted in South Africa and Northern Ireland. In representative participation there is always risk of elite domination. Another direct mode of participation can be referendum where general public are directly involved in decision process. The National Unification Commission and Civil Society Assembly of Guatemala and the Philippines were also part of representative participation. In Columbia Regional Peace Committees were directly involved in localized peace making. Same thing happened in South Africa. In these countries local leaders had facilitated process of involving all interested community members in peace process. In Mali, community decision process has contributed to peace making. In civic participation, churches, religious leaders, business community, media and local leaders played crucial role in war-torn countries to build peace. However, these modes of peace building efforts are not prominently seen in Nepal.

The important question is how to promote people's participation in Nepalese peace process. One of the potential answers would be to promote peace advocacy/lobbying and massive campaigns at local level in a non-partisan way. Essentially, creating a mechanism of local participation is essential to achieve that objective. The impacts of such local efforts could be far more than the westernized, ritualized techniques of five star hotel conferences and seminar in Kathmandu with domination of few elites. Real resources flown to community for peace campaigns would be more meaningful than fashionable, target oriented conferences in cities attended by the same faces in star hotels.

Another mechanism of civic engagement could be to establish a Peace Secretariat, which must be legally bound, endorsed by the government, the Maoists, and the parliamentary parties. It should have full authorities to work for peace. This organization can have mandate to facilitate civic participation, collect public voices and concerns, propose facilitators and mediators to the government and the Maoists, conduct research, design code of conduct and monitor it and monitor the implementation of negotiated agenda. So all activities related to peace process can be facilitated in a coordinated manner. It is very hard to achieve real peace from the current approach and practice. We need a total paradigm shift for successful and lasting peace process.

(Dr. Upreti has done PhD in Conflict Management)