Power-Sharing, War Termination and Peacebuilding in Nepal

Abstract

As Nepal is a pluralistic country, it’s believed that power-sharing through federalism can bring sustainable peace to Nepal society. Nepal political elites believed that implementing Lijphart consociationalims model, may reduce the ethnic tension and discrimination between majority and so-called minority groups and indigenous groups. Indeed, it could able to transform Nepal monopoly over political power to democratic mainstream. The main objective of the research was to find the status of power-sharing, war termination and peacebuilding in Nepal and specific objectives were to find how did powersharing contribute to war termination in Nepal? And does the theory of consociational power-sharing apply to Nepal? The research conducted in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The secondary data based on Lijphart conscoiationalism model and other scholarly articles also have been reviewed. As a primary data, the researcher used personal experiences living in Nepal. The data analyzed using qualitative data analysis tool. Even though Nepal has met the featured elements which suggested by Lijphart by his theory of consociational power-sharing which is mostly suitable for multi-ethnic societies, there is no any significant changes in social, economic and political sectors due to major political parties’ disagreement on the model. They haven’t come to an agreement on which kind of federalism going to implement and what are the next steps for durable peace. Nepal is far away from achieving durable peace through sharing power and adopting federalism due to its failure to eliminate all kind of discrimination against humanity through the practice of caste, race and ethnicity-based decimation. It is concluded that this federalization process went ahead promoting peace, development and the absence of threat of peace and jeopardize the stability of the peace in the future