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“...Disaster Governance and Challenges in a Rural Nepali Community:
Notes from Future Village NGO
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by Osaka University for this research project.
Furthermore^ we gratefully appreciate government officials; NGOs workers; scholars to share their disaster
relief and recovery experiences with us. Finally we are very grateful to the many villagers in our research area
who shared their views on; and experiences of; hope and hopelessness in post-earthquake time.
This perspectives is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies:
http:/ / digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/11...”
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“...the context of
our NGO experience. During our trips to the
region, we have observed and experienced the
difficulties people and organizations are facing
in the reconstruction process. We interviewed
government officials and NGOs that have been
involved in reconstruction, which helped us to
gain insight into broader perspectives on the
community or family-level realities that hinder
rebuilding and community revitalization. We
conclude that by mobilizing earthquake victims,
it is possible to rebuild houses and revitalize
communities. Conversely, little progress can be
expected in Nepal's rebuilding as long as poor
governance and poor coordination between
major reconstruction actors prevails.
Keywords: Nepal earthquake, post-disaster relief and recovery,
governance, NGOs, reconstruction.
HIMALAYA Volume37,Number2 75...”
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“...difficulties people and organizations are facing
as they try to rebuild, and have spoken to several govern-
ment officials and NGOs that have been involved in the
reconstruction.
In this article, we discuss our perspectives on the reasons
why the reconstruction progress in Nepal has been slow;
we focus on how Nepalese government and non-govern-
mental organization actions have slowed the revitalization
process. We argue that the government’s inefficiency to
deliver funding and services to affected people, and its
lack of coordination with NGOs in the aftermath of the
earthquake, are among the main reasons why the recon-
struction progress has been impeded. This paper has
been written based on the observations we made during
our several trips, the discussions we had (as represen-
tatives of reconstruction projects) with government
officials and representatives of other NGOs, and our
first-hand experiences as members of an NGO involved
in reconstruction projects.
This article consists of three...”
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“...the earthquake and later by
the fuel crisis; tourism took a massive hit because of this
double crisis. High transportation costs also limited recon-
struction progress as much reconstruction work had to be
suspended. Facing the increasing social turmoil and politi-
cal uncertainty, many NGOs decided to finish their disaster
relief work in Nepal earlier by December 2015 and gave up
the long-term recovery and reconstruction projects.
Little Gets Done Without a Reconstruction Policy
Effective reconstruction policy must go hand in hand with
good governance, which has been clearly discussed in the
literature on disaster governance. Empirical examples
indicate that effective coordination between the State and
NGOs helps to overcome the relief and recovery challenges
to those resource-poor countries (e.g. the earthquake in
Turkey on August 17,1999). Civil society’s involvement
strengthens the community’s resilience to future disasters
(e.g. the earthquakes in Sichuan on May 12, 2008 and on
April...”
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“...tion is undermined in this
post-disaster time (Chamlee-Wright and Rothschild 2007;
Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2009). Chamlee-Wright and
Storr (2009) also find that the state’s promises are often
unrealistic, which can exacerbate pessimistic expectations
among the affected communities if the rebuilding work is
slow. They conclude that, in contrast with a state where
power is centralized, the coordinated relationship between
key stakeholders, including the state, local NGOs, interna-
tional non-governmental organizations (iNGOs), and local
communities, is the key to better recovery. They argue the
role of the state is to create mechanisms for disaster-af-
fected communities to self-recover by reinforcing their
local knowledge and community resources.
Nepal has faced many governance challenges in the
post-disaster period. Political dysfunction resulted in a
serious delay in the establishment of a reconstruction
authority. During the Donor Conference in June 2015, the
Nepali government promised...”
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“...Fund"
The direct involvement of NGOs and INGOs in housing
reconstruction is very rare. Most NGOs and INGOs in
Nepal have allocated their funds to public infrastructure,
masonry and carpentry training programs, and livelihood
improvement activities. This dilemma was prevalent
among NGOs, and in fact, in February 2016 the NRA
requested that NGOs and INGOs not provide financial assis-
tance or building materials directly to villagers because
such organizations could not comply with building codes.
Later, the NRA clarified that NGOs/ INGOs were welcome
to become involved in the house rebuilding sector with the
understanding that the one-door system meant they must
obtain approval from the NRA and sign a Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) with the government of Nepal
prior to becoming involved. In addition, NGOs were told
that their housing projects should cover one defined and
bounded area (such as a whole village or district). The
NRA also notified the NGOs that no reconstruction proj-
ects...”
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“...The NRA has encouraged NGOs and INGOs to deposit
funds for private house reconstruction in the NRA’s
Reconstruction Fund. During interviews, high-ranking gov-
ernment officials pointed out that the one-door system is
necessary to avoid poor NGO governance in the post-earth-
quake context. While the number of NGOs and INGOs in
Nepal has increased dramatically in the past three decades,
their governance has long been questioned due to their
lack of transparency in the monitoring and evaluation of
project expenses and of their general activities (Dhakal
2007). This explains why the guideline requires at least 80%
of an organization’s total project budget to be allocated to
project activities, not staff salaries and traveling expenses,
which is fair. However, this attempt to avoid corruption
and mismanagement in NGOs has resulted in many NGOs
simply giving up on their house rebuilding plans, or allo-
cating funds to other recovery activities. It is estimated
that less than 2% of the rebuilding...”
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“...by
offering them ‘better deals’ (meaning that no financial
or in-kind contribution from locals would be necessary).
Consequently, we stopped the project and removed all
building materials. As a local and volunteer-based NGO,
we did not have enough human resources to look for a
new beneficial school. This story illustrates that if better
coordination existed among NGOs, we could distribute
resources wisely and widely so that more schools could be
benefited faster.
The sustainability of the top-down reconstruction
approach has been a serious concern. In our two-year
observation, the coordination between the State, the NGOs
and INGOs, as well as local communities, has been very
limited. Instead of simply offering financial resources in
an efficient way, we believe that good governance and
effective coordination will determine whether Nepal can
be rebuild. Our NGO experience in post-disaster recon-
struction clearly demonstrates that there is reason hope
for revitalization as well as immense...”
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“...building codes to receive the next installment of
support. Nevertheless, 20 families eventually decided to
accept the support from our organization; the community
selected those families to receive steel frames in April 2016.
Our organization also approached different government
officials, and despite their promise to support us, nothing
was achieved.
Finally, in April 2016, the Nepali government established a
policy that made it clear that families who had received or
would receive support from NGOs to rebuild their houses
would be ineligible to receive the government’s support.
The new policy resulted in more and more people taking a
wait-and-see attitude: they would not rebuild anything until
the government distributed money. As a result of this policy
most families spent another monsoon season in temporary
shelters.
Around April 2016, it also became clear that NGO’s were no
longer allowed to operate without obtaining an approval
for their reconstruction projects from the NRA. Therefore...”
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“...grassroots
NGO. We have highlighted some of the challenges of
this project, and have interwoven several recommenda-
tions into our discussion for future policy-makers. Our
reconstruction experience clearly demonstrates that the
dominance of government control, bureaucracy, lack of
long-term commitment among NGOs as well as the villag-
ers’ wait-and-see attitudes all undermine the capacity of
the community’s ability to rebound. In a resource-poor
village like Katunge, civic participation from villagers,
NGOs and private sectors are the key for post-disaster
recovery. We suggest that the Nepali government should
have a more encouraging framework to govern NGOs and
an attitude to let the NGOs do what they need to do, so that
they can mobilize others to help the local residents rebuild
their communities.
The more time passes without things being done, the
fewer opportunities Nepali people will have to rebuild
their homes safely. It has been argued that the people are
always happy and satisfied...”
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“...emergency relief, but also implemented long-term disaster
recovery and reconstruction projects.
Varun Khanna is a scholar with interests in Education,
Globalization and Development at the School of Human
Sciences at Osaka University, and a European Commission
fellow with a concurrent position at the Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona, University of Amsterdam, and
University of Oslo. He is also part of the project panel for The
Chance Initiative and Future Village, NGOs in Nepal. He has
previously held other nonprofit positions such as National
Vice President of Stonewall Japan, Vice Chair of Foreign
Citizens'City Council atToyonaka (Osaka), and Global
Ambassador of the University of Tokyo.
Rob Kuipers is an undergraduate student at the School of
Human Sciences of Osaka University, Japan. He recently
completed fieldwork on education in post-disaster Nepal
and is a part of The Chance Initiative by Future Village, a
Japanese NGO.
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