10th Quarterly Report: Community Initiatives for Common Understanding

The project aims to contribute to an environment shaped by trust and strong social ties between communities, including conflicting groups and local authorities, making them resilient to social divides, insecurity, and conflict. The project has three expected results: breaking down barriers to peaceful dialogue, increasing mutual understanding and appreciation of grievances between conflicting groups, and enabling conflicting groups to identify activities for development and reconciliation and collaborate toward their implementation. The project focuses on 9,000 hard-to-reach and at-risk young people, including former combatants, in five districts of Nepal: Kailali, Surkhet, Banke, Bardiya, and Sunsari. Secondary audiences for this project are government stakeholders and decision makers at the district and national level. The project targets 3 VDCs in each district, with a community-based approach. During the reporting period, the context in Nepal was dominated by the formation of the new government in October 2015, the Terai unrest, border blockade, commodities shortages, and violent protests in parts of the central Terai. Madesh-based political parties continued strikes and protests, exceeding 100 days, with major demands including defining provincial demarcation, allowing for electoral constituencies on the basis of population, and proportional representation in the state mechanism. The ruling government views the Madesh movement as an anti-national movement. Increasing mistrust among Madheshi and Pahadi communities has been observed, but it has not yet manifested itself in a way that could create communal violent conflict. However, if the strike and contributing factors prolong, communal conflicts may be likely in the districts. The so-called "unofficial" border blockade has affected the lives of people across the country, with prices increasing and the black market of petroleum products flourishing. Despite the challenging context, progress was made towards achieving Milestone 5, 13, 14, 15, and 16. A longer version of the youth video documentary and a shorter version were finalized, and the five district-level video documentaries will be finalized by the end of December 2015. For Milestones 13, 14, and 15, a total of 25 activities from the RDF Action Plan were implemented, which were largely related to dialogue to enhance community reconciliation and social harmony and advocacy against gender-based violence. Field research was conducted in all five working districts during the reporting quarter to identify informal justice mechanisms in each VDC. The teams collected qualitative data through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and actor mapping. Initial district-wide finding reports have been prepared, and validation workshops were conducted in Banke, Bardiya, and Surkhet.