Heart of Nepal, an organization co-founded by Aishworya Shrestha caters to families in rural Nepal. Credit: Heart of Nepal
When protection reaches the last village - an activist's fight for everyday peace in Nepal
Is peace simply the silence that remains when people stop expecting things to get better? For many in Nepal, peace is not a signed treaty or a political speech; it is a lived condition entangled with caste, class and gender.
狈别辫补濒’蝉 formally ended the armed conflict, but many of its promises remain unfinished, from accountability for conflict-era harms to the deeper demands for equality and decentralization that people hoped would reshape the state. Too often, stability becomes a luxury of geography - a peace that only reaches those close enough to be heard.
For 28-year-old Aishworya Shrestha, a young leader who has witnessed 狈别辫补濒’蝉 long struggle for transition - from the Maoist insurgency of her childhood to the Gen Z movement of today - real peace is often mistaken for the silence of the exhausted. She has seen how, when nothing changes, resilience becomes a burden carried by those who have learned that no one is coming to help.
“Real peace shows up before tragedy,” she says. “It shows up as protection: quiet, ordinary, and everywhere.” It could be a guardrail on a narrow mountain road, a clinic stocked with medicine and a world where a child’s potential isn't traded for a meal.
As the co-founder of - an initiative that partners with marginalized Dalit and Janajati communities to co-create solutions in education, nutrition, and collective empowerment - Shrestha believes that to stand with the last remote village, we must invest in an "everyday peace," and give voice to those “who live with its absence in ordinary ways, every day.”
Here’s her peace.
Don't mistake my silence for resilience
When someone asks me if Nepal is a peaceful country, I usually say yes.
I say it the way we say many things in Nepal, carefully, respectfully, as if naming the full truth might invite it back. Our peace often sounds like politeness. But sometimes it is exhaustion, the kind that comes after you've learned that nothing changes, so you stop expecting it to.
I grew up during the Maoist insurgency. I remember getting ready for school, waiting at the bus stop when random groups would come up to us and tell us to go back, that there wouldn't be any school today. Random men knocked on our doorsteps asking for "donations".
The army moved through neighborhoods checking our homes, searching if we were hiding the Maoists. Some of my friends who lived outside Kathmandu were forcibly made guerrillas, while many sent their children to Kathmandu from villages, hoping that would keep them safe. I recall months of shutdowns, fear, and uncertainty, followed by a political transformation that brought enormous hope, the belief that democracy would finally make life better. Over 17,000 people were killed in this war.
Twenty years later, the 2025 Gen Z movement carried the same roots of widening inequalities. Most of Nepal has been conveniently wiped out of political priorities, public discourse, and development.
Everyday systems that decide whether people live or die quietly
My work has taken me across Nepal, and it has taught me that peace is a political condition, a feeling rooted in safety, voice, and dignity, entangled with caste, class, gender, and geography. Too often, what we call "peace" is actually silence mistaken for stability, resilience demanded from people who've learned that no one is coming.
In 2020, I travelled to Jumla, in the mountains of western Nepal. On the drive from the airport to our project area, our driver pointed down to multiple vehicle wreckages scattered below the cliff while casually pointing them like he was describing the weather. No pause. No anger. No "this shouldn't happen." Just the incidents, delivered with the calm of someone who has seen this before and knows he will see it again.
The district of Jumla is a remote, high-altitude district in Nepal's Karnali Province. Credit: Aishworya Shrestha
Jumla is called "inaccessible." In reality, it is two short flights away from Kathmandu. The last stretch is a narrow mountain road carved into a hillside, with no guardrails. Fatal crashes are frequent. People learn to call it normal because they still have to go to the market, still have to get their children to school, and still have to keep living.
We reached our hotel in Patarasi after three hours on that road. Flies swarmed everything; plates baited with poison filled up with dead flies by the hour. A nearby river was used for everything from drinking, washing utensils, washing clothes, flushing the toilet, and defecating.
The same day, my colleague developed severe diarrhea. His cheeks were swollen, eyes sunken. I went out looking for medicine. There was no clinic, and the only local pharmacy had nothing, not even oral rehydration salt. We drove three hours back the same road and paid 15,000 Nepalese rupees one-way to the district headquarters to find basic medicine. Whose lives matter enough for medicines? Whose lives matter enough for access to basic sanitation? Whose lives matter enough for access to clean drinking water?
We left Patarasi, Jumla after a three-month stay. Agriculture there was dwindling due to climate change, there were floods, no higher education, yet people never talked hardships, they were always smiling, always silent.
Peace can mean staying silent, swallowing grief and calling it normal because who do you cry to, when you've only ever known neglect?
I saw the same logic in Bardiya, a semi-urban district in Nepal's plains. We started a sports-for-wellbeing programme with strong participation from girls and boys. Within a week, girls stopped coming. We found that families believed that if girls played sports, their uterus would "fall". Ironically, the same families had no problem with girls carrying heavy loads of water for kilometers or working long hours in fields.
Over the next two years, many adolescents dropped out of school. They were getting married and became pregnant soon after. At first, I blamed "awareness," thinking parents needed to be taught the harms of child marriage. But parents largely agreed with us. The story was messier; teenagers eloped, pregnancies happened, and they fell back into their families without having the means to support themselves. What looked like "culture" was also economics and a lack of services that protect young people.
In Indrawati, Sindhupalchowk, where my organization, the Heart of Nepal, works most closely, I have sat with mothers who skip meals so their children can eat. I have met boys who dropped out because the household needed one more income. I have met girls married off early because it means one less mouth to feed.
The majority of Nepalis live without reliable roads, clean water, clinics, and dignified work, the everyday systems that decide whether people live or die quietly.
Heart of Nepal helps to provide school meals and supplies to support children as well as empowers mothers help break the cycle of poverty and discrimination through its programmes. Credit: Heart of Nepal
Building the infrastructure of everyday peace
I work on the infrastructure of everyday peace—meals at school so children can learn on full stomachs; safe spaces and clubs where girls can speak; savings groups so women can hold money in their own names; small livelihood pathways so families don't have to choose between food today and education tomorrow.
I have seen women earn income for the first time and stand straighter when they talk. I have seen children re-enroll in school because the household pressure eased by even a small amount. I have seen girls return to a field to play because someone stayed long enough to negotiate safety with their families and build trust over time.
This is where my hope lives, in small shifts that accumulate into dignity. For me, peace means protection that reaches the last village. Peace is a guardrail on a mountain road. A clinic with medicine. A school where a child is fed and safe. A life where a girl's body is not treated as a risk to be controlled. A country where gender, caste and poverty do not decide whose suffering is seen.
What can the world do to stand with us?
Stop romanticising silence as "resilience." Invest in the infrastructures of everyday peace, health, education, livelihoods, social protection. Fund work that is local and long-term, not flashy and short. And when you talk about peace, include the people who live with its absence in ordinary ways, every day.
Peace is not something done to us or for us. It must be built with us. Because real peace shows up before tragedy. It shows up as protection: quiet, ordinary, and everywhere.
This story is part of My Peace, an editorial series from the UN's Hear Us. Act Now for a Peaceful World campaign that amplifies the voices of those working for peace in their communities.