Rebuilding Nepal’s judiciary means spreading power to the provinces

Replacing lost files and ruined buildings won’t fix Nepal’s judiciary. Only structural reform will.

The fallout from the Gen Z protests of last September has reduced Nepal’s courtrooms to administrative and architectural ruin, exposing their fundamental fragility. The scale of the destruction during the protests is staggering, yet the subsequent standstill of the legal system suggests that the crisis is as much structural as it is physical. If the state is to restore the rule of law, it cannot do so simply by rebuilding the infrastructure. It must radically decentralise the seat of justice.