Nepal's Fragile Democracy and the Crackdown on Children

The tear gas drifts slowly, almost lazily, before it burns. In Kathmandu's narrow streets, where vendors usually sell fruit and schoolchildren trail home with worn satchels, the air this week has been carved by smoke and sirens.

- By Thaliba Cader

It is not only the protesters who scatter when the riot police charge. Children, some barely taller than the shields they face, have become unwilling witnesses, sometimes victims, of a state losing patience with dissent. At first, the protests were expected, a familiar churn of voices against rising inflation, unemployment, and corruption. The marches surged through the capital, angry but expectant, carrying the rhythm of civic unrest that Nepal has known before. But then came the batons. Then came the images, teenagers bloodied at the mouth, a child no older than twelve coughing through gas, small hands pressed to burning eyes. The line between protester and passerby collapsed in the chaos, and with it collapsed the government's claim to restraint.

To be a child in Nepal is already to inherit a fragile democracy. Many of today's demonstrators are the sons and daughters of those who once marched against monarchy, who endured war and waited for promises of a republic that too often faltered. These are the same children who should have been in classrooms, in playgrounds, in futures. Instead, they are learning what it means when a state turns its force indiscriminately outward, erasing age, innocence, and the most basic protections. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Nepal more than three decades ago, does not equivocate. Children must be shielded from violence, from exploitation, from the blunt machinery of politics. Yet this week, in Kathmandu's streets, the principles inked into international law dissolved into acrid smoke.

"We were just walking home," one teenager told a local reporter, his shirt still stained from the spray of a water cannon. "They didn't see children. They just saw a crowd."