No more White Cars

One of the houses burned down during the Kapilvstu riots in 2007 Photo: Mohan Rai

By Torsten Henningsen - Development Worker with KSSC in Kapilvastu

12. August 2008

The civil society organizations in Kapilvastu are fed up with big international donors coming to Kapilvastu as disaster tourists in their big white cars. To build sustainable peace in Kapilvastu it is necessary to build comprehensive dialogue between the stakeholders, especially the local political leaders. Furthermore it is essential to have profound knowledge of the local dynamics in the conflict prone communities, knowledge that international donors can never obtain.

Civil society organizations cannot by themselves build peace in Kapilvastu but they can put pressure on the district authorities and the local political leaders to make them engage in meaningful dialogue, both on district level but also on the more local level. International donors are welcome to support these kinds of initiatives, but should leave the implementation to the local civil society organizations. Outside interference in deeply complex local conflict scenarios are likely to cause more harm than good.

These are the main conclusions from a series of interviews that MS Nepal has been doing in Kapilvastu as a part of developing a program on conflict management and peace building in Kapilvastu. Read the whole report here...