Nepal - Widows Human Rights

Where are the women? Over the past few days newspapers have been littered with pictures showing the violence that is gripping Nepal: the Guardian's centre-page photograph on Friday was of (male) police baton-charging (male) demonstrators who are fighting King Gyanendra's assault on democracy. The picture showed maybe 100 men, with just one lone person who was obviously a woman.

But Nepal is a very different society from the UK. A few days ago I spent an evening in a bar in Kathmandu. The bar was crowded, some of the singers and musicians were female, but I was the only woman sitting at a table there. "Why?" I asked the local journalist who was with me. "Because in Nepal, the women stay at home," he explained.

And yet, in the current upheaval, not all women have stayed at home. A few have come out, on to the streets of Kathmandu, and in other towns away in the districts, to demonstrate - an extraordinary phenomenon in itself, even if it hasn't made it on to the front pages of the western newspapers. And among the many who have stayed at home, a revolution is brewing: a revolution that could yet prove as far-reaching and as important as the protests themselves. Because what the women I met in Nepal are busying themselves with is not the war, but the next stage - the peace. And when peace comes Nepalese women are working to ensure that, unlike their sisters in neighbouring Sri Lanka, and more effectively than those in Afghanistan, they are not just present, but effective, at the negotiations that will set the political agenda for the new Nepal.

Leading light among the female activists is Lily Thapa, founder of an organisation whose rather unwieldy title is Women for Human Rights Single Women's Group (WHR-SWG). Thapa is an elegant woman in her mid-40s who could easily pass for her late 20s, but her youthful visage hides a lot of suffering. Her husband, who was a surgeon with the UN, died in the Gulf war. For Thapa, as for so many women who are widowed in south-east Asia, the fallout was more than mere grief: Thapa lost a husband, but she also lost her status. Her hair was chopped off, her bangles were taken from her arms, the jewel in her nose was removed with a pair of pliers. Not only had she to suffer widowhood, she had to be seen to suffer widowhood.

But Thapa rebelled: today, she wears a multicoloured sari (widows in Nepal traditionally wear black for the rest of their lives) and her hair is once again long. What she wants to do is challenge the misogynistic and outmoded model of widowhood that seeks to make lives like hers a misery. Already she has battled for legislative changes, and widows no longer have to return all property that belonged to their first husband if they remarry. Nor must they have male consent to get a passport, or the consent of their adult children if they want to pass on property. Widows may not have the rights they are yet entitled to, but they have more rights than they used to have, thanks - at least in part - to Thapa.

But it is more than just rights that Thapa is concerned with. It is the future: a future in which, she is determined, the needs and rights of widows and their children will not be overlooked or forgotten. This is a far more important consideration than it might at first seem: a decade of conflict has created millions of widows in Nepal, and countless fatherless children. WHR-SWG comprises 104 single women's groups (the word "widow" in Nepal is too pejorative to be used with dignity) and is represented in 36 of the 75 districts of the country. It has more than 14,000 members, many of them young women; and it is the only widows' NGO in the world to have submitted a report to the UN committee on the women's convention. Perhaps most importantly, the WHR-SWG is the only NGO that crosses the ethnic, political and religious divides in a country torn by conflict; the only organisation, in fact, that unites both rebels and Maoists under one umbrella. So unusual is this that Thapa herself has been taken in for questioning to explain herself: how, asked the security forces, can she have Maoists in her organisation, and not support the Maoists themselves?

Its latest campaign, spearheaded by Thapa, is to ensure that Security Council Resolution 1325, passed at the UN in 2000, is honoured when Maoists and rebels eventually meet around the peace table. It says that all state parties and actors in conflict resolution must ensure that women are active participants in peace negotiations, so that their needs and roles - and those of their children - are properly acknowledged and addressed.

That doesn't always happen. It's not happening in Sri Lanka, and millions of women in Afghanistan and Iraq have yet to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed when new policies are formulated in the reconstruction period. But it will happen in Nepal, if Thapa has anything to do with it. And getting widows around the table, Thapa argues, means getting a huge proportion of women's interests represented.

As long as the violence continues, and as long as men are forced to look further and further afield for work (they often "disappear" as migrant workers), more women will end up alone, or alone with just their children. As a result, the population becomes more female-dominated. All the more reason, says Thapa, why they must be involved in any peace negotiations.

For the women who are left there are many unique needs. They are sole supporters of their children, in a society where traditionally men are the breadwinners. Most of the widows are young women, often illiterate and without the skills they need to generate an income. Traditions discriminate against them; their poverty, coupled with their lack of inheritance rights, make them and their daughters vulnerable to violence perpetrated by their male relatives, to trafficking and to sexual abuse by those in the community, by army and police personnel, and by the Maoists. For Thapa, getting these issues properly addressed in the new Nepal is the number one priority.

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