Monitoring Political Disorder in Nepal: A Joint ACLED, COCAP, and CSC Report

A Joint ACLED, COCAP, and CSC Report

5 May 2022

ACLED has worked with partners at Collective Campaign for Peace and the Centre for Social Change to complete a supplemental coding project enhancing our coverage of political violence and demonstration activity across Nepal. Drawing on the new data, this joint report examines political violence and demonstration patterns since the first democratically elected government under the new constitution came to power in 2018 and assesses the potential for disorder during the upcoming elections.

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Introduction

Nepal is holding elections across all levels of government in 2022. It is only the second time elections are being held since the promulgation of Nepal’s much-contested constitution in 2015. The outcome of these elections is likely to shape how lingering issues over the constitution and its provision of autonomy and rights for ethnic groups, including the people of Madhesh province, are addressed. Elections for Nepal’s National Assembly, the upper house in parliament, were already held on 26 January in which the Nepali Congress (NC)-led alliance made the biggest gains while the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) (CPN (UML)) lost seats. Local-level elections will be held on 13 May amid concerns that intra-party rifts will pose the biggest security threat for upcoming elections (Kathmandu Post, 6 April 2022).

Rivalries within and between political party factions vying for influence can often lead to violence in Nepal. As no single party holds the majority in parliament, alliances tend to form and splinter throughout election periods. The fragile nature of these alliances and coalitions, along with groups dissatisfied with the incomplete implementation of the restructuring of the state to provide more rights and autonomy to ethnic groups, raises concerns over the possibility of increased political disorder in the coming year. Using new data collected with ACLED’s local partners — Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP) and Centre for Social Change (CSC) — this report examines political violence and demonstration trends in Nepal from 2018 to the present.

Improving ACLED’s Nepal Dataset

ACLED has completed a supplemental coding project covering local partner data and new local and subnational sources. The new supplemental data add over 8,700 events to ACLED’s Nepal dataset (see map below).¹Adding New Sources to ACLED Coverage. ACLED has not yet started a supplemental project for data prior to 2018. The data greatly expand the number of demonstration events captured by ACLED in Nepal, with demonstrations accounting for over 80% of newly added events.

The completion of the supplemental project added over 20 local and subnational sources in the Nepali language, spanning all seven provinces. This allows for more extensive coverage of remote hilly and mountainous districts which are undercovered in the national English language media. Thus, as part of its weekly real-time data collection, ACLED now covers 40 sources for Nepal, ranging from local newspapers to international media primarily in English and Nepali.

ACLED has also drawn data from one of its local partners, COCAP, which established the Nepal Monitor in November 2014. The monitor is an online system designed to alert local organizations about human rights and security incidents in their areas of operation. ACLED has drawn on incident reporting from the monitor to code events at the local and subnational levels.

Researchers from the CSC, a Nepal-based social think tank and ACLED partner, aided in the sourcing and coding of the supplemental data for ACLED.

National Trends: Increasing Demonstrations, Declining Political Violence

While overall political violence²violence against civilians, battles, and explosions/remote violence event types, as well as the mob violence sub-event type of the riots event type. It excludes the protests event type. Political violence is defined as the use of force by a group with a political purpose or motivation. For more on event types, sub-event types, and interaction terms used in the ACLED data, see the ACLED Codebook in Nepal has declined since 2019, demonstration activity has increased year-on-year since 2018, with the highest number of demonstration events recorded in 2021 (see figure below). ACLED records a more than 16% increase in demonstration events in 2021 compared to the year prior, and an increase of nearly 100% compared to 2018.

The increase in demonstration events in 2021 was largely a result of demonstrations concerning the dissolution of parliament, a shift towards mobilizing for demonstrations by the Netra Bikram Chand-led Maoist group, and demonstrations surrounding the ratification of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Nepal Compact. Each of these demonstration issues, along with shifting patterns of disorder, will be explored in greater detail below.

Political Disorder Arising from the Dissolution of Parliament

The new constitution of Nepal came into effect on 20 September 2015, following nine years of transitional governance in Nepal after the 2006 end to the country’s civil war. The constitution transformed the previous system of governance from a unitary state with decentralized local representation to a federal democratic republic with three tiers of government: local, provincial, and federal. The first elections for the newly established local, provincial, and federal legislative bodies were held in 2017. Left-alliance parties, including the CPN (UML) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), the biggest faction of former Maoist rebels, won a majority in the federal parliament, as well as in six out of seven provincial parliaments. Following the victory, in February 2018, the first democratically elected government under the new constitution of Nepal was sworn in and the left-alliance parties merged to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) in May 2018. The party merger ensured that the left-alliance government would enjoy a nearly two-thirds majority in parliament (My Republica, 18 May 2018).

Yet, internal disagreements within the coalition led to the dissolution of the parliament and nationwide demonstrations during 2020 and 2021 (see figure below). Then-President Bidya Devi Bhandari dissolved the House of Representatives on 20 December 2020 on the advice of then-Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, and announced general elections for April and May 2021, at least a year ahead of schedule (Al Jazeera, 20 December 2020). While the prime minister claimed fresh elections were needed to iron out internal conflicts within the ruling NCP, Oli’s critics accused him of corruption, mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic, and shifting support to China away from Nepal’s traditional partner India (Deutsche Welle, 29 December 2020). After the dissolution of parliament, thousands staged daily demonstrations, denouncing the move as unconstitutional (Reuters, 22 January 2021). The demonstrations continued into early 2021. Demonstrations were held by opposition parties, student groups, and a faction of Oli’s own party led by former prime ministers and NCP leaders.

After dozens of petitions were filed against the prime minister in the Supreme Court of Nepal (CNN, 31 December 2020), on 23 February 2021, the judicial body reinstated parliament, terming the dissolution unconstitutional (Reuters, 23 February 2021; New Indian Express, 23 February 2021). Furthermore, on 7 March 2021, the Supreme Court annulled the party registration of the ruling NCP as another party with the same name was already registered with the election commission of Nepal (Kathmandu Post, 7 March 2021). This decision effectively split the ruling NCP into Unified Marxist-Leninist and the Maoist Centre, the same two parties which had merged in 2018 to form the NCP (Kathmandu Post, 7 March 2021). With the reinstatement of parliament and the split of the ruling party, Prime Minister Oli sought a vote of confidence in parliament to remain in power, a vote which he lost (Kathmandu Post, 11 May 2021).

On 21 May 2021, for the second time in five months, the president dissolved parliament, stating that neither the caretaker government nor the opposition had a majority to form a new government (Al Jazeera, 22 May 2021). The move triggered fresh widespread demonstrations by political parties claiming the decision was unconstitutional, and demanding parliament be restored and headed by the main opposition candidate, Sher Bahadur Deuba (Al Jazeera, 26 May 2021). Both supporters of Oli and the opposition rallied for their demands before the Supreme Court ruled on the case. On 12 July 2021, the Supreme Court reinstated the House of Representatives and ordered that Deuba, the chairman of the opposition NC, be appointed as prime minister (Al Jazeera, 12 July 2021).

With the reinstatement of parliament, Deuba formed a coalition government and the constitutional crisis borne out of the dissolutions of parliament subsided (Himalayan Times, 12 July 2021). Despite early disagreement over key ministry portfolios (Nepal Live Today, 13 August 2021), the coalition has held into early 2022, winning 18 out of 19 seats in the National Assembly elections in January 2022.