Part 1: Overview and analysis of key issues
Case study 2: Continued However, former female Maoist combatants face new types of difficulties in accessing land. Women and men were treated as equals in the Maoist ranks, sharing all the responsibilities from cooking to fighting on the frontline. Women also became accustomed to commanding and training their male comrades. After experiencing these new forms of gender equality, many of the former female ex-combatants now face resistance and rejection from their families, who still largely abide by traditional gender roles. In addition, as part of their political agenda, the Maoists sought to abolish the discriminatory caste system in Nepal by encouraging its members to marry across caste and ethnic boundaries. As a result, many of the former combatants are now in a situation where communities and families reject the social revolution that their marriages represent, making them unable to return to their communities of origin and forcing them to migrate to new regions.42 Both of these phenomena pose problems for female ex-combatants wishing to invest in land, as tradition stipulates that a woman needs the support of a male family member to purchase property. Another obstacle for many female ex-combatants is the lack of legal documents verifying citizenship, which is a common challenge for Nepalese women.43 To address this, the United Nations Interagency Rehabilitation Programme (UNIRP) has been supporting female ex-combatants by helping them obtain legal documents for female family members and their children.44 Additionally, the programme has engaged in largescale family and community-level sensitization in order to create social space for female ex-combatants to fully realize their newly found empowerment through equal access to education and livelihoods.
© NIRANJAN SHRESTHA, AP PHOTO
As a complement to these efforts, the government of Nepal is trying to increase women’s access to land by lowering the taxation on land registered under the name of a female family member. However, this has not been met with much success as many groups oppose women’s land rights based on the fear of losing their traditional farming areas through the transfer of land rights via marriages. Further, in the complex post-conflict political environment, women’s rights have also often lost momentum to “more pressing” issues. Despite these challenges however, some of the former female combatants are using the post-conflict social turmoil as an opportunity to act as ambassadors for gender equality in their communities, advocating for a change in repressive gender norms.
A former Maoist rebel walks with her child inside Shaktikhor Maoist Camp in Chitwan, Nepal. Many female Maoists face significant challenges to reintegrate into their communities, due to the fact that their participation in the conflict required them to break with traditional gender norms
19