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Communication Campaign in Support of the Peace Process

In the year leading to the elections, Nepal faced many challenges holding the peace process together. Ethnic, political, and communal clashes were common as newly arisen agitating organizations sought to increase their position at the table and address their issues. Week by week, political events unfolded and no one knew what was going to happen as the peace process itself hung in the balance. SFCG, with support from the Rockwool Foundation, worked closely with a range of media-focused organizations: Antenna Foundation, the Far Western Media Development Center, New World, the Nepal Press Institute, and others to mobilize a communications campaign to support the transition. The campaign used radio public service announcements, the production of a peace song, and the mobilization of local talk shows to deliver messages into the media in response to the unfolding dynamics of the country.

Public Service Announcements
SFCG worked with Antenna Foundation Nepal, the Far Western Media Development Center, and New World to produce regular PSAs in various languages aimed at delivering messages on the peace process. PSAs use creative means to address a range of themes, including inter-ethnic relations, political accountability, reconciliation with ex-combatants, democratic participation, and others.

The hear an example in Nepali, click here. [mp3]

Peace Songs

In the four months leading to the elections, SFCG worked with the famous Nepali folk music band, Kutumba, to convene a dialogue process to create a peace song, the center point of the communication campaign. In December, we brought together ex-combatants from both sides of the conflict, current leaders of political and agitating organizations, some peacemakers, the members of the band and the famous poet and lyricist Viplob Pratik. Over the course of four days, we took the group through a process by which we talked about all that needed to happen for the country to come to peace. The participants discussed issues of reconciliation, memory, national identity, security. After the first round of discussions, we took them into a process of developing a song. The first principle that everyone agreed upon was that the song should be inclusive of the vast ethnic, caste, geographic and linguistic diversity of the country. But with over 90 languages, words would prove insufficient and the only way that the participants saw was the use of musical motifs. The song would have to weave the musical traditions of the various ethnic groups of Nepal together into a unified call for peace. The circle of participants drafted 6 songs and we chose the best 2 to work with. In the night, everyone sat around a fire by the banks of the Trishuli River and sang and danced until 3AM. As one person said, “A night like this comes only once.”

Viplop, the poet, took the words that had been written during the retreat and crafted them into a full song. We then invited musicians together from across the ethnic and geographical landscape of the country to contribute to the music itself. For two days, they sat together and worked on the song, intertwining musical motifs from around Nepal together to form the final songs.

What started as a small idea had grown into a small movement, and after months of work with over a hundred people involved, Kutumba released two peace songs. Just two weeks before the definitive elections for the constituent assembly, the process culminated: everyone who had been involved came together for a peace concert and, on national television and radio, made a call to the country peace.

To see a documentary and video from the peace concert, click here.

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Search For Common Ground in Nepal
P.O. Box 24905
Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel: +977 (1) 553 5909
Fax: +977 (1) 553 0171
stripathee@sfcg.org