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Participatory Constitution Making in Nepal: Issues of Process and Substance - Post Peace Agreement Constitution Making in Nepal Volume I
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A new Constitution for a new Nepal drafted and adopted by an elected and inclusive Constituent Assembly (CA) is a key element of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of November 2006 that ended a decade long Maoist insurgency. Elections were held under the Interim Constitution of 2007 and inclusive 601 member CA that also functioned as a Legislature Parliament was elected. It included 197 women and representatives from Nepal’s marginalized groups and diverse population. The CPA and the Interim Constitution mandated the CA to draft and adopt a constitution that eliminated the centralized, unitary
state and introduce instead progressive state restructuring, inclusion and the empowerment of Nepal’s excluded communities. The collapse of the Constituent Assembly in May 2012 created a crisis that was not anticipated by the framers of the Interim Constitution. The CA elected in 2008 was expected to continue in office until the adoption of a new constitution and there were therefore no provisions for a second CA election. After months of uncertainty a political consensus was reached by the main political parties in the country that an election for a new CA under the aegis of a special council of ministers chaired by the Chief Justice, was the way to resolve the constitutional crisis. Since there was no Legislature Parliament to amend the constitution, a provision that gave the President the power to issue orders to remove difficulties was used to give legal effect to the political consensus to conduct elections. Nepal went to the polls on 19 November 2013 to elect a new CA to resume the important task of constitution making. This two volume publication seeks to describe and analyse the remarkable and ambitious participatory constitution making process in Nepal and its challenges both with respect to process and substance. It also seeks to critically examine the difficult issues that have prevented Nepal to date from reaching agreement on the substance of the new constitution. Authors were identified so as to capture the range of views and opinions on a variety of constitutional issues that have featured in the national debate on constitutional reform. We hope that the collection of essays will contribute to a more informed debate that will in turn, lead to a successful conclusion to the process.
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Publisher:
UNDP, SPCBN
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(2014
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Type / Script:
Publication
in English
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Keywords:
CONSTITUTIONS, PARTICIPATORY CONSTITUTION MAKING, COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT, POPULAR PARTICIPATION, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION, CIVIL SOCIETY, POLITICAL PARTIES, PEACEBUILDING, POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION, CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS, STATE RESTRUCTURING, SOLIDARITY, MINORITIES, GOVERNANCE, CONSENSUS, SOCIAL INCLUSION, CITIZENSHIP, NATIONALITY, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, CONSTITUTIONAL COURT, JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, DALITS, SOCIAL ISOLATION, MASS MEDIA
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Thematic Group:
UNDP
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Social and Institutional Developoment
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Thesaurus:
01.01.00
- Political Conditions, Institutions, Movements
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Reference Link:
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