Transitional Injustice: Failure of Nepal's Transitional Justice System

Abstract

A jurisprudence on transitional justice is developing in Nepal and it has come at a time when several gross human violations are now to be dealt with. For more than a decade Nepal had undergone a conflict between the security forces and the Maoist political movement led by the CPN-M (Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist). This conflict proved to be of a large scale with about 13000 thousand civilian lives that were claimed while 1300 went missing. The conflict ended in November 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and an interim government being established in 2007 which included the CPN-M. Article 5.2.5 of the CPA specifically called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Finally the Act on Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons, Truth and Reconciliation, 2071 (2014) was established to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) after the Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the government to form these two commissions. However it has been an uphill task to obtain justice in a country which is filled with political arrangements at every level and laws which do not conform with Nepal’s obligation under international law. This paper intends to deal with the flaws in the TRC and the CIEDP, the political arrangements that have led to the failure of the Nepalese transitional justice system, approaches to counteract these failures and a possible way forward.