{"id":90371,"date":"2026-09-07T21:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/90371\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:34:18","slug":"reimagining-transitional-justice-through-survivor-defined-knowledge-and-action-in-nepal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/90371\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining transitional justice through survivor-defined knowledge and action in Nepal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 3-H model\u2019s focus on action and holistic change turn Truth Listening from a technique into a responsibility and show how formal transitional justice can support healing, justice, and empowerment of women survivors. This emphasis on holistic change resonates with gender-transformative approaches to transitional justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nepal\u2019s transitional justice context and the erasure of conflict-related sexual violence <\/p>\n

The 2006 Peace Agreement<\/a> created the political basis for transitional justice by calling for a truth and reconciliation process. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission<\/a> and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons<\/a> were established in 2015.<\/p>\n

For women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, this nine-year delay was part of a wider pattern of erasure. Conflict-era rape, sexual violence, and torture were only weakly acknowledged and addressed<\/a> in Nepal\u2019s formal peace and transitional justice architecture. The Nepal government began the Interim Relief Program<\/a> process soon after the Peace Agreement, with a multi-agency task force formed in 2007 and guidelines approved and implemented in 2008. But survivors of rape, sexual violence, and torture were largely excluded<\/a> from these early relief and recognition processes.<\/p>\n

Nepal\u2019s first National Action Plan\u2014on UN security council resolutions 1325 and 1820 implemented from 2011\/12 to 2015\/16 under the then Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction\u2014did not create a clear pathway for addressing the needs<\/a> of women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. Nepal\u2019s second National Action Plan adopted<\/a> from 2022\/23 to 2024\/25, later created more explicit space for them. Yet the long gap between early relief, the first National Action Plan, and the delay in formal transitional justice left many women survivors unrecognised for years.<\/p>\n

For many women survivors, institutional exclusion was compounded by stigma, gender norms, family and community pressures, and economic insecurity. These conditions made disclosure risky and prolonged the effects of delayed recognition and justice.<\/p>\n

The important role of civil society organisations<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, civil society organisations in Nepal became important spaces for recognition, support, healing, and advocacy for women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.<\/p>\n

A few civil society organisations in Nepal such as Advocacy Forum<\/a>, Human Rights and Justice Centre<\/a>, Nagarik Aawaz<\/a> and The Story Kitchen<\/a>, played a vital role in keeping the demands of women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence visible. Some created safer spaces<\/a> where women could be listened to, begin healing, recognise that the violence was not their fault, and move away from shame. Others advocated for legal recognition of women survivors and provided medical, psychosocial, legal, economic, and leadership support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This role became especially important because formal transitional justice remained delayed, procedural, and mistrusted. Rape and sexual violence were severely underreported to the 2017-2018 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, partly because survivors lacked confidence in privacy, confidentiality, and survivor-sensitive procedures. Survivor organising later made amplification easier.<\/p>\n

The Conflict Victim Women National Network,<\/a> founded in 2020, created a national platform for women survivors of all types of human rights violations during armed conflict to seek rights, dignity, reparations, dialogue, and advocacy. In 2023, the National Association of Conflict Rape Victims<\/a>, later named as Aparajit Foundation<\/a>, also became a visible platform for women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, demanding recognition, health care, and reparations.<\/p>\n

In 2024, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reopened complaint registration, over 4,000<\/a> conflict-related sexual violence cases were registered with the Commission. But its call for registration was criticised<\/a> for lacking adequate confidentiality<\/a>, gender sensitivity, security safeguards, and psychosocial support.<\/p>\n

What can formal transitional justice learn from informal processes?<\/p>\n

Informal survivor-led and civil society-led spaces offer important lessons for formal transitional justice. In Nepal, many women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence experienced formal mechanisms as distant, procedural, and difficult to trust.<\/p>\n

Civil society supported survivor-to-survivor and woman-to-woman spaces are places where survivors could share at their own pace, build solidarity, and say, \u2018I am not alone,\u2019 \u2018my story matters,\u2019 and \u2018what happened to me, it was not my fault.\u2019 My research shows that there is a similar pattern in other nations such as Bangladesh, Colombia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Timor-Leste.<\/p>\n

Truth Commissions, reparations bodies, local governments, and survivor-support mechanisms need procedures built around trust, confidentiality, survivor choice, referral, and follow-up. A survivor-centred process requires trained listeners, safe documentation systems, psychosocial support, health care pathways, livelihood links, and mechanisms for survivors to influence decisions that affect them.<\/p>\n

Truth Listening does not envisage that informal processes should replace formal justice. Rather, it shows what formal justice must learn. Civil society can bring relational knowledge, survivor trust, and community presence. Formal institutions can bring recognition, reparative authority, policy change, and accountability. When these forms of work are connected ethically, transitional justice becomes more responsive to survivors\u2019 lived realities.<\/p>\n

Conflict transformation in Asia<\/p>\n

Truth Listening can contribute to wider debates on conflict transformation<\/a> in Asia, which is concerned with more than the formal end of violence. It asks how relationships, structures, narratives, and power relations<\/a> can be reshaped so communities can move toward more just forms of coexistence. For women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, conflict continues in social stigma, economic insecurity, family silence, institutional neglect, and the absence of meaningful recognition. Transforming conflict, therefore, requires attention to the afterlives of violence.<\/a><\/p>\n

The contribution of Truth Listening lies in its location of knowledge. It begins from survivors\u2019 lived analysis rather than from an imported institutional template. Survivors understand how violence moves through the body, family, community, state, and memory. They understand why silence may protect, why speaking may endanger, and why justice must include recognition, practical support, state accountability, and dignity. Research with women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Rwanda similarly shows that survivors\u2019 justice interests<\/a> extend beyond formal proceedings to include safety, validation, and perpetrators taking responsibility for the harm caused. This knowledge is essential for conflict transformation because it reveals the structures that sustain harm after war has formally ended.<\/p>\n

The Truth Listening framework also speaks to the politics of knowledge production in transitional justice<\/a> where scholars have shown how institutional hierarchies, expert categories and methodological choices<\/a> shape what is recognised as legitimate knowledge. Many transitional justice models have travelled across contexts through international institutions, expert frameworks, and technical language. Their limits become visible when they treat survivors mainly as sources of testimony rather than as thinkers of justice. Rather than a universal formula, Truth Listening offers an ethical orientation: listen slowly, protect dignity, respect silence, and ensure that listening leads to meaningful action.<\/p>\n

Conclusion: From testimony to responsibility<\/p>\n

The question facing transitional justice is no longer only how to create spaces where survivors can speak. The deeper question is how to build institutions capable of listening responsibly.<\/p>\n

For women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, meaningful listening is measured by what follows: recognition, state accountability, practical support, dignity, healing, and change. Research on post-conflict Nepal similarly shows that women\u2019s agency and social transformation<\/a> emerge through everyday negotiations with gendered structures. Truth Listening grounded theory reframes survivors as knowledge builders. Their lived wisdom shows that justice cannot rest on the collection of testimony and verdicts on paper alone. Through Head, Hands, and Heart, survivors define holistic change as empowerment through knowledge, survival, and inner peace. This is the central contribution of action-oriented Truth Listening. It asks transitional justice to transition from extracting testimonials to accepting responsibility.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Main image: Three women walk on a wall in Kathmandu, 2026. Photo by Wietse Jongsma<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 3-H model\u2019s focus on action and holistic change turn Truth Listening from a technique into a responsibility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-90371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-melbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}