It is just over 12 years since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) charted a way forward after a decade of civil war. One feature of the CPA was its explicit recognition of the need for a comprehensive ‘peace process’ that included the establishment of specific institutions dedicated to uncovering the truth about war crimes and human rights abuses during the conflict, to discovering what happened to those who had ‘disappeared’, and to bringing those responsible to justice.

There were already at that time well-known and well-documented examples of atrocities committed during the conflict by the Royal Nepal Army and Nepal Police, the Armed Police Force (APF), the Maoist PLA and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). It was anticipated that other crimes would be discovered and pursued, and instances of disappearance, ill-treatment, torture and extra-judicial killings would be revealed and dealt with, sensitively but with due process.