Rai and her family were among the lucky few who experienced no loss of life or property damage. Still, leaving her husband and young son in a city rocked by aftershocks to attend SPI was difficult. The quakes have also complicated an already explosive Nepalese political situation by causing the delay of peace talks that the organization she works for, Nepal Transition to Peace Institute (NTTP), is facilitating.

But despite the sacrifices, Rai, who has worked at NTTP for three years, came ready to learn. A recipient of the , she took classes at SPI to prepare for a new role as program officer when she returns — a role that she hopes will provide opportunities to strengthen her homeland and her family.

“I want to be able to go home and give back to my family for their sacrifice of sending me here,” she said.

Conflict fueled by equal rights movement

When Rai was born in 1981, Nepal was still a monarchy. Nine years later, the popular King Birendra, only the 11th king in Nepalese history, agreed to the limited powers of a constitutional monarch. In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started violently vying for political control – the beginning of a deadly decade-long civil war between the communists and the ruling monarchy.

“The Maoist fight started in search of equal rights for everyone,” Rai says. The one positive to ongoing political instability was that “people are now very aware of traditional caste distinctions and want equal access to rights such as clean drinking water, education and social mobility.”

The key now, she says, is helping Nepal to stabilize by developing and passing a constitution. That’s part of what the NTTP Institute is helping to do though the facilitation of non-partisan dialogue between the major Nepalese political parties to reach consensus on political and social issues, she says.

Despite their efforts, however, the Nepalese government has already missed a self-imposed January 2015 deadline to produce the document. Three months after the missed deadline, massive earthquakes rocked the already stressed country.

Returning to war ‘among, between and around us’

Rai turned 15 around the time Maoists were beginning to challenge the ruling party in Nepal. In 1996, she moved to India alone to finish secondary school and an undergraduate degree in the social sciences. (She later received a master’s degree in sociology from a Nepalese university).

She came back in 2001 to a country deep in the midst of civil war. In the midst of this conflict, King Birendra and most of the royal family were killed during the 2001 palace massacre by the crown prince (the sole surviving son, Gyanendra Shah, was deeply unpopular as a king and the monarchy was dissolved as a concession to Maoist rebels in 2008).

The war left an estimated 16,000 people dead and crippled the already impoverished Nepali economy.

“The fight was among, between and around us,” she says. “It had a big impact on the people.” She says the biggest impact was shattering the traditional caste system. “Even women began to advocate for their rights. It was amazing the transformation that could emerge once people realized they had a voice.”

In India, and during her first few years back in Nepal, she worked as a behavioral counselor for youth, experiences that taught her “how important it is to restore justice and mediate between the victims and the offenders for transforming conflict to peace.”

Dialogues gain traction

Two years after Rai returned, the Nepalese government requested assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to between the various Nepalese political parties and the Communist Party of Nepal. In 2005, the Nepal Transition to Peace Forum was launched.

“The effectiveness of the forum was huge,” she says, explaining that when NTTP first started the politicians from different political parties wouldn’t even look at each other. “Now they are willingly coming to the table and agreeing to disagree or working out their conflict.”

Rai joined NTTP Forum in 2011 as a program associate, working in logistics and program design.

Policy discussions focus on “1.5 Track Dialogue” which emphasizes an intermediary strategy: the number 1.5 symbolizes the often-powerful politicians who are subordinate to a higher-level politician (level 1), but still have direct contact with activists (level 2).

In July of 2014, USAID began a six-month phase-out leading up to the drafting of a new constitution. NTTP Institute is now an independent Nepali-run institute.

SPI training helps to prepare Rai for new role

During her first three years at NTTP, Rai says she has learned that conflict, when managed well, can be powerfully transformative.

“Conflict gives people a way to express their opinions,” she said. “It’s the other things, war, killing of innocents, hunger, that come along with many conflicts that are bad. But what I’ve learned is that peace isn’t about the lack of differences, it’s about respecting the differences that exist.”

After three years in an administrative position, Rai looks forward to playing a more active role that makes a tangible impact.

With the support of her mentor, deputy executive director Sajana Maharjan, she moves into a new role as program officer upon her return to Nepal. (, the current academic home of Mennonite peacebuilder John Paul Lederach, co-founding director of the ).

Rai says her SPI coursework will prepare her for the new role.

“Our vision is to have a peaceful and just place for people to live in. We strive to move towards achieving a place where everyone has equal rights and a dignified life,” she says. “My hope is that my work in some small way makes a difference in achieving this goal.”

“Peace activists tend to be sensitive to interacting with the military and police,” said 91����Ƶ professor , as she introduced the speakers. “We often define security in a different way, focused on ‘human security.’” But she believes the two sides can – and must − work together even in countries where the security forces are part of a repressive government.

“We’ve come a long way in civil society to move from protesting security policies to making policy proposals for how to better pursue human security,” said Schirch, who has been invited to speak at the Pentagon, the Army War College and West Point Military Academy. She noted that several Harrisonburg Police Department officers were guests at the luncheon.

A research professor at 91����Ƶ’s (CJP), Schirch is also director of human security at the , an international network of peacebuilding practitioners and scholars that promotes “sustainable peace and security.”

Schirch and many of the luncheon attendees are currently involved in the final phase of a three-year project: the creation of a master curriculum, including a handbook and training modules, to help security forces and civil society groups learn how to collaborate on human security, community engagement and security sector development. The project, supported by the , partners the Alliance for Peacebuilding with the and the at the University of Notre Dame.

Approximately 30 contributors travelled from 26 countries for the one-week “training of trainers” on the 91����Ƶ campus. The luncheon speakers, who were part of the training session, spoke about their experiences engaging with military and police.

Reforming police practices

Kamal Uddin Tipu started his career as a police officer in Pakistan, eventually rising to deputy inspector general in the city of Islamabad. He came to CJP as a Fulbright scholar in 2004 to earn a master’s degree.

At 91����Ƶ, Tipu focused on restorative justice as a better way to deal with crime, law-breakers and victims. He spoke fondly of his time on campus, his family’s experiences while living in Harrisonburg, and his internship with the police department in Rochester, New York. He returned to Pakistan to implement what he had learned, introducing reforms in local police practices.

In recent years, Tipu went to Africa as a police adviser to the African Union and United Nations. “I saw how we need to focus more on the root causes of conflict,” he said. “I also saw the enormous amounts of money that countries spend on the military.”

A ‘peace general’

Deng Giguiento, a longtime peacebuilding trainer and practitioner, counts two generals as her friends on the Philippine island of Mindanao. As training coordinator for the Peace and Reconciliation Program of , she often interacted with security officials on local situations of conflict.

When a German couple was abducted by anti-government insurgents, for example, she helped negotiate their release alongside an army general. The general had rejected military action, despite opposition from his officers. Afterwards, the general started a class for his officers. His textbook was “The Little Book of Conflict Transformation,” written by John Paul Lederach, founding director of CJP.

“When the general got stuck, he would call me and put me on speakerphone,” said Giguiento, who helped to establish the after attending SPI in 1997.

Moving from protest to proposals

Bernardo Arevalo de Leon, a former Guatemalan diplomat, talked about how his country is still trying to recover from a 33-year civil war between armed rebels and a repressive right-wing government. After 10 years of peace talks, the two sides signed a peace accord in 1996, but the country is struggling to implement reforms that were promised.

“The big task is to transform the way the government uses its security forces,” said de Leon, who was involved in the peace process. “We needed to think differently about the role of the police and the army.”

He also pointed out that civil society needed to move from protest to proposal to engage in the reform of the security sector.

De Leon is now based in Guatemala, where he is director of the Regional Office for Latin America for , a global peacebuilding nongovernmental organization based in Geneva.