Workshop participants, April 2025
How can disaster governance be made more democratic? What role do disaster memories play in making future disaster response more just and accountable?
In April 2025, to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes, which claimed over 9000 lives and caused major disruption to Nepali society, HCRI’s Dr. Nimesh Dhungana and the Accountability Lab Nepal (a youth-based, translocal civil society organisation) came together to organise a participatory workshop.
The workshop drew insights from the interplay between disaster and democracy as well as disaster memory, to reflect on collective lessons learned from the earthquakes and explore practical mechanisms for making future disaster responses more just and accountable. The proceedings and key insights from the workshop are documented in the form of a report, which can be read in English here and Nepali here.*
The earthquake exposed the deep gaps in state-led disaster governance, but also sparked grassroots activism and new forms of democratic engagements. To revisit these lessons, the workshop brought together a range of actors spanning emergency responders, investigative journalists, civil society actors and government officials, including representatives from the Government of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA).
The discussions centred on governance “gaps” and possibilities in the earthquake response, the role of social and political context in shaping earthquake response and recovery. The participants highlighted the importance of transparency and informational rights in disaster response. They called for a major political shift in governing disasters through localised disaster responses and participation of civil society organisations, among other issues.
The workshop was built on Dr Dhungana and Accountability Lab’s long-standing scholar-activist partnership on the theme of “just recovery”, aimed at both critiquing and exploring different approaches to disaster governance in a context increasingly susceptible to disasters, worsened by climate change.
*Full citation: Bimali, P., Dhungana, N. Adhikari, N. 2025. Rethinking democratic governance of disaster through scholar-activist engagements: Revisiting the lessons learned from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. Workshop Report. Accountability Lab Nepal and Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, UK.
Read Report in English
Read Report in Nepali