Fund Emma's Plane Tickets to Nepal
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I am hoping to travel to Nepal for 3 months this summer to work on a project with a local victims' rights advocate, Ram Bhandari, on transitional justice. You can see more about the work that I hope to accomplish while I'm there below. I will be receiving some funding through the Advocacy Project, but need to raise funds to pay for my plane tickets. There are many other important causes for you to be donating to right now, but please consider giving just a little to help me cover these costs. I really appreciate your support!
More info about the current context in Nepal:
There was a civil war in Nepal between Maoist rebel forces and the state from 1996-2006 during which there were widespread human rights abuses. In the last nearly 20 years, the transitional justice process including the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission to Investigate Enforced Disappeared Persons has been stalled by a lack of political will. Many conflict victims have been fighting to push this process forward and have done work on the ground, particularly with memorialization projects, to realize justice in the ways that they can.
Ram Bhandari, whose own father was disappeared by the state in 2001, is a leading advocate for victims' rights and survivor-led transitional justice in Nepal. He founded the Network of Families of the Disappeared and co-founded the International Network of Victim and Survivor of Serious Human Rights Abuses (INOVAS). I worked with Ram when I traveled to Nepal in January 2025 for an advocacy program through the University Network for Human Rights.
The work that we hope to accomplish this summer:
Our main goal is to open a center on survivor-led transitional justice to facilitate the learning and research of students and academics from Nepal and the international community by the end of 2025. My goals for the summer mostly pertain to the center, but also include some other projects related to transitional justice. This list gives you a brief overview of what I would be working on:
- Developing a mission and vision for the center
- Establishing a partnership with a local university
- Creating program plans for the field based project we hope to engage local and international students in through the center
- Starting a website and newsletter for the center
- Writing blogs for the center and for the Advocacy Project
- Creating a database of academic and university contacts and doing outreach within this network to generate interest in our program and begin building partnerships
- Researching victims' demands for reparations
- Setting up an embroidery training for indigenous Tharu women in Bardiya in collaboration with a quilting group, the Daughters of the Disappeared
- Supporting the Daughters of the Disappeared in their efforts to generate income and memorialize their relatives by selling their tea towels
Organizer
Emma Cohen
Organizer
St. Paul, MN