Governance Conflicts And Cooperation In Federal Nepal | Report 2024

Governance Conflicts and Cooperation in Federal Nepal – A Report

However, not all conflicts are inherently harmful. Under right conditions, conflict may lead to positive social transformations, by excavating issues that may have been overlooked and fostering constructive channels of conflict transformation or resolution.

In the past two years, Centre for Social Change (CSC) through its flagship research initiativeGovernance Monitoring Centre (GMC) Nepal has invested into understanding the relevant factors, actors and circumstances that hinder effective governance and located that these elements play a key role in bearing and extending governance conflicts, amassing multiple actors with their respective agendas, especially since the promulgation of new Constitution in 2015 and adoption of a federal governance structure.

With the main aim of fostering a thriving space for peaceful governance, GMC Nepal through mixed methods of research has shed light on the challenges that federal Nepal currently faces in achieving effective governance, mainly in four areas, i.e., Natural resource, Development, Political and
Ethnocultural governance. GMC Nepal has disseminated the research findings through study reports- Triggers of Governance Conflicts in Federal Nepal, Quest for Peaceful Governance and Governance Watch, a bimonthly report series and various local, province and national level dialogues.

Captivating the findings gathered from the ongoing research initiative, this report comprises of three sections. The first section provides readers a snapshot of the existent governance conflicts in Nepal relevant to natural resources, development, ethnocultural and political governance, documented through events and cases, using media monitoring as an approach. It summarizes the findings of nine reports yielded under ‘Governance Watch’ series. The following section then gives an overview of the horizontal and vertical dynamics of intergovernmental conflicts in federal Nepal, i.e., amid the local, provincial and national tiers. The third section then delves into governance conflicts that have extended beyond the frontier of three government tiers and affected the citizens, focusing on how such governance conflicts have fueled the citizen’s dissatisfactions and civil unrest. By and large, this report highlights the potential of governance conflict transformation through cooperation among multiple layers of state and non-state actors.

GMC Nepal would like to thank each person for their contribution to this study, from its conceptualization to execution. Consultations with a handful of relevant experts and scholars have also guided this endeavor. We truly appreciate their input and especially of CSC team at Kathmandu, Rupandehi, Sunsari and Bara districts of Nepal.