Nepal and Timor-Leste

This research is an ethnographic study of families of the Missing in two low-income states emerging from conflict: one context where no significant transitional process has yet occurred and one where the mechanisms of transitional justice are well advanced. The fact that the two contexts share a number of important characteristics but are dissimilar in the nature of the transitional justice process itself enables the study to have a comparative element. Nepal and Timor-Leste are both small Asian states with dispersed rural and agricultural populations of great ethnic diversity, living in joint families. The people of both states have a traditional spiritual outlook that co-exists with hegemonic faiths that have become a part of national identity. The populations of both Nepal and Timor-Leste were touched by colonialism but most only lightly. Both states are emerging from conflicts driven by alienation from their rulers and, at the time of the research, they had almost identical per capita gross domestic product (GDP). ¹ There are, however, clear divergences in the experiences of the populations of the two states. One conflict was essentially a struggle for national liberation and the other an ideologically driven effort to seize state power. Were this a study of the mechanics of political change, such variables would be crucial; for the families of the Missing, however, it will be seen that, from the viewpoint of the marginalised rural people who constitute most victims in both contexts, the two conflicts looked remarkably similar. Clearly, not all the variables that impact on perceived needs of families of the Missing converge in the two contexts. Efforts are made to test the dependence of needs in both contexts on variables such as gender, wealth, urban against rural populations, permitting the influence of such variables to be understood. The form that transition took in the two states has been quite different: Timor-Leste has been subject to the full machinery of liberal peace and statebuilding, including a hybrid judicial process and two truth commissions; in contrast, Nepal has resisted internationalisation of the transition and élites continue to oppose even domestic judicial process and truth-telling mechanisms.