<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b714f9c7e80680e0600c5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1228"/><figcaption>Shilu Sharma presenting news in sign language for Nepal Television. Courtesy: Shuli Sharma/ Facebook</figcaption></figure>In 2013, a government directive required every national television channel that broadcasts news to broadcast it in sign language at least once a day. Seven years later, even the government-owned NTV broadcasts news in sign language only once a week. The other channels don’t bother.The reason given for this is the lack of sign interpreters, and for NTV the lack of the extra camera needed to include sign narration.According to Nepal's laws, sign-language interpreters should be available not just in public offices, but also for budget speeches and discussions in Parliament. Since there are only 20 recognised professional interpreters in the country, however, deaf people are not getting the facilities to which they are entitled.Read also: <a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=39588&amp;preview_nonce=c90fc6f20e&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hearing for the deaf, seeing for the blind</a>, Sewa Bhattaai<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=39565&amp;preview_nonce=bb82a67baa&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sightseeing for the blind,</a> Sanghamitra Subbahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APd7QswuPN4In the first Constituent Assembly, the Parliament secretariat had employed interpreter Radha Bohora to sign for MP Raghav Vir Joshi from NCP (Samyukta). Joshi's private secretary Dinesh Shrestha also worked as an interpreter. But Parliament has not employed an interpreter after that."Even though it is not possible to provide interpretation facilities everywhere, they should be available in crucial places like hospitals, schools, and police stations," says K P Adhikari, president of National Deaf Federation Nepal.The Sign Language Interpreter Association has 60 members. But many of them have since changed their profession. "Interpreters work on a project basis. When projects end, they become unemployed, so there is no professional security for them," explains the group’s Shilu Sharma.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=18239#.XiliXf4zbIU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Deaf like me</a>, Marcus BenignoNanu Shrestha Jayana used to present the news in sign language on Nepal Television. After working for more than 13 years as an interpreter, she quit. "We don't get regular work, so I could not stick to this profession. I still provide the service for free if anyone needs it," she says.Dinesh Shrestha has been working as an interpreter for 12 years, but does not have a certificate to prove his skills. Some countries require interpreters to study for two years and work for a year before being certified, but here there is disagreement about who should be responsible for certification. Interpreter Sanu Khimbaja believes the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare should issue the certificate, but the Ministry has passed the buck to the Ministry of Education.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19539#.XilmaP4zbIU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">License to ride</a>, Mina SharmaThe Nepali sign language also has a limited vocabulary, and interpreters are hard pressed to communicate difficult or subject-specific words and names of people and places. "There are many words for which there are no signs, and that creates difficulties when presenting news on television. We spell these words out, but we are not sure if the viewers understand the spellings," says Shilu Sharma.Interpreter Dinesh Shrestha, who worked for former MP Joshi, also says he found his job difficult because there are no signs for many political and legal terms, and these are difficult to communicate through spelling.The Deaf Federation has been working to further develop Nepali sign language, and five years ago it published a new dictionary with 4,700 words.Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/from-nepali-press/dayaram-maharjan%20-making-disabled-children-more-able,2507" target="_blank" rel="noopener">More able</a>, Sajana Baral

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Listening to the hearing impaired

<figure><img width="1500" height="1010" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b704d9c7e80680e06006fjpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Photo: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>Nepal’s public health system has no mechanism for recording suicides, and the only statistics about suicides can be found in police records. This data shows that about 5,000 Nepalis kill themselves every year. But since only police records are counted and attempted suicides are not reported, the official data gives no sense of the incidence of people trying to take their own lives. Based on police data and projections, the World Health Organisation put Nepal as the country with the 7th highest suicide rate in the world (24.9 per 100,000). Public health experts say that suicide is just the symptom, and that the real disease is poor mental health.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/suicide-by-pesticide-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Suicide by pesticide in Nepal</a>, Sonia AwaleMost people who commit suicide suffer from depression and other mental illnesses like schizophrenia and substance abuse disorders. The Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) is for the first time conducting a nationwide survey of mental health by year-end, and already the picture is not looking good.Do not shy away from seeking help. If you, or anyone you know, would like to speak to a trained mental health professional, please contact:TUTH Suicide Hotline: 9840021600Transcultural Psychosocial Organization-Nepal Crisis Hotline: 1660 0102005Mental Health Helpline Nepal: 1660 0133666“From our pilot survey, we found depression in 3.4% of people, and suicidal tendencies in one out of every ten Nepalis,” says Kriti Adhikari of NHRC.  Most of these people cannot access the counselling and treatment they need since Nepal has only 0.13 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, and most of them are concentrated in urban areas. Nepal Police is the only entity that deals with suicide, and it is more concerned about the criminality of the act than about mental health.“Nepal’s law classifies suicide and abetting suicide as crimes, so our priority is figuring out the criminal element of the cases,” explains police spokesperson Shailesh Thapa Chhetri. “There is no punishment for suicide because the person is already dead. But we investigate to find out if the death was a murder or a suicide.”Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/suicide-watch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Suicide watch</a><a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/down-and-out,3158">Down and Out</a>, Smriti Basnet <figure><img width="1500" height="947" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b704f9c7e80680e060070jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The fact that Nepal Police personnel are not trained in mental health, and that the health system does not record suicides or suicide attempts means that there is no entry for suicide in the Health Information Management System, the database of all patients at government health facilities. This keeps suicides hidden. “The police data on suicide understates the problem of mental health in Nepal,” says Ravi Shakya, a physician at Patan Hospital, which has a mental health department. “We know more men die from suicide than women and they tend to use more violent means. But in fact, many more women attempt suicide and fewer of them succeed. They may come to hospital, recover, and go back home, but that does not mean their mental illness is over.”Except at Patan Hospital, victims of attempted suicides receive no mental health counselling after their physical health improves. But last year the Ministry of Health and Population appointed a focal person for mental health for the first time. This focal person, Phanindra Baral, acknowledges that Nepal has not done enough to address mental health and suicide prevention.Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/suicide-in-nepal">End pain, not lives</a>, Anjana Rajbhandary“There are not enough psychiatrists in Nepal to serve the whole country. So for now, we are training the current health staff in basic mental health issues and counseling,” says Baral. “We are taking the program to 41 districts this year, and hope to serve all 77 districts in the next two years.”For the first time, the Ministry has included mental health as a priority in its proposal to the National Planning Commission, hoping to see that reflected in the next five year plan. But till that happens, there are other things to be done.“Mental health still has a stigma and people are not willing to acknowledge it or seek help. The first step is to raise awareness of mental health and suicide,” says Uden Maharjan, public health researcher and co-author of a paper on suicides in Nepal. “We need suicide helplines and people should be made aware of how to access them so they can open up.”  Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16792#.XhbkgFUzbIU">Self-destruct</a>, Indu Nepal <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/dead-end-of-the-korean-dream/">Dead end of the Korean Dream</a>, Ki Mindo in Seoul <h2>A note on suicide notes</h2> With the spread of social media, police have to contend with suicide notes not just on paper but also on the Internet platforms. But the real challenge of dealing with suicide note is still the same: the mental health. Should the declaration of a dead person be believed? And if the dying declaration blames someone else for that death, how credible is the allegation?Ravi Shakya, a physician at Patan Hospital says that dying declarations are usually held to be credible evidence. “When someone declares that they are want to die and proceed to kill themselves, we have every reason to take such a note seriously,” says Shakya. “However, if they blame another person, we cannot assume guilt based on the allegation. We have to take into consideration that the person who committed suicide could have been mentally ill.”The police also take such suicide notes seriously, but prioritise criminal investigation over mental health. “A suicide note is evidence, so we treat it with utmost care. We analyse the handwriting to make sure it matches the dead person’s. If the dead person blames other people, we consider them under suspicion until they are proven innocent,” says Shailesh Thapa of Nepal Police. The police do not necessarily question the sanity of the person who wrote the note, therefore sidelining the mental health aspect of the suicide.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/dead-end-of-the-korean-dream/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dead end of the Korean Dream</a>, Ki Mindo in Seoul

Nepal’s suicide rate vastly underestimated

Violations of Nepal’s airspace during WWII

In 2025, Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-everest-industry" target="_blank">added six new 8,000m peaks </a>to those listed on its website. These are subsidiary summits of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/kangchenjungas-challenging-confusing-subpeaks/" target="_blank">Kangchenjunga</a> and <a href="https://explorersweb.com/through-the-unknown-to-the-impossible-lhotse-middle/" target="_blank">Lhotse</a>, which some view as insufficiently independent to be called separate peaks. In 2024, the international mountaineering federation (UIAA) responded to a request by the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) and the government to officially recognise these peaks. While recognising that ‘there is no one definition of a “mountain” or a “peak” or a “top” or “point” in topographic terms’, and encouraging further debate the UIAA’s opinion was that the 8,000m peaks should continue to the ‘Classic 14’, first completed by Reinhold Messner in 1986. The degree of prominence and isolation of <a href="https://www.climbing.com/news/new-8000-meter-mountains-nepal/?scope=initial" target="_blank">the six new peaks </a>varies, with Yalung Kang having the strongest claim to being a separate peak with a prominence of 135m, but they are all separate enough to be included on some peak-bagging lists. The UIAA’s own list of 4,000m summits in the European Alps includes Punta Giordani with a prominence of only 6m. Whatever the case for the six peaks being geographically separate mountains, they represent significant climbing challenges. They are not minor tops that can simply be ‘bagged’ on route to a main summit. In the case of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/through-the-unknown-to-the-impossible-lhotse-middle/" target="_blank">Lhotse Middle and Lhotse Shar</a>, no one has ever managed to traverse between them and Lhotse itself.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_881321a6e46818beb7bbd4fe6f21589d89d19bf77ae8218474d373ef7ab0c431.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20260107080144_881321a6e46818beb7bbd4fe6f21589d89d19bf77ae8218474d373ef7ab0c431" data-rendition-name="original" width="2888" height="1590" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Nepal’s 8 existing 8,000ers: Chomolungma 8,848.86, Kangchenjunga 8,586, Lhotse 8,516, Makalu 8,485, Manaslu 8,163, Dhaulagiri 8,167, Annapurna 8,091, Cho Oyu 8,201. Photo: GOOGLE EARTH PRO</figcaption></figure>   <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_27bf905c1a559c46819dc96ca33d22c27fc301d415fc034f26b8acd105c12da7.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20260107080144_27bf905c1a559c46819dc96ca33d22c27fc301d415fc034f26b8acd105c12da7" data-rendition-name="original" width="1750" height="976" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Nepal has listed six additional 8,000ers: Yalung Kang (8,505, Yalung Kang West 8,077, Kanchenjunga Central (8,473, Kanchenjunga South 8,476, Lhotse Middle 8,410, and Lhotse Shar 8,400. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption></figure>  Several fine routes have already been climbed on these mountains, such as Slovenians Andrej Štremfelj and Marko Prezelj’s alpine style ascent of the South-West Ridge of Kangchenjunga South. The six peaks have not yet achieved universal acceptance, but it is possible that climbing an expanded list of 20 eight-thousanders could become a new mountaineering challenge, just as the 14 classic peaks are today. It is therefore interesting to analyse who is currently closest to achieving this goal, using data from The Himalayan Database and other Internet research. The first conclusion of my analysis is that these six additional peaks have received far less attention than the classic 14 eight-thousanders. One of them, Yalung Kang West, has never been climbed or even attempted: probably because it is a subsidiary peak of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/kangchenjungas-challenging-confusing-subpeaks/" target="_blank">Yalung Kang</a> which is itself a subsidiary peak. The other five peaks have seen a total of 138 ascents. Just 101 people have ever climbed one or more of the additional peaks, which compares with 354 people who climbed Everest on a single day: 23 May 2019. Russian Evgeni Vinogradski is unique in having climbed five of the six new peaks. He has also climbed six of the classic 8,000ers, giving him a total of 11 out of the 20 peaks on the expanded list. Vinogradski is now 80 and is unlikely to increase this total. Several other former Soviet climbers have climbed three of the new peaks, having participated in the 1989 traverse of the four main summits of Kangchenjunga. This includes two legends of Soviet climbing: Kazakh Anatoli Boukreev and Ukrainian Sergey Bershov, each of whom has climbed 13 out of the 20 peaks on the extended list. Boukreev died attempting Annapurna in 1997. Bershov, one of the only men to have ever climbed Lhotse South Face, is now 78 and, although he was in good form when I met him in Chamonix last summer, he is unlikely to further extend his tally. The addition of the new peaks does not take any of these climbers beyond the total of 14 peaks achieved by the 76 climbers who have completed the classic ‘Himalayan Crown’. Of those who have climbed all 14 classic eight-thousanders, only one, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/um-hong-gil-s-project-impossible" target="_blank">Korean Um Hong-Gil</a>, has climbed any of the six additional peaks.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_5651fc6445f5e5fd838f28e1eac1da45da136b309a4a00db1e4aafa7d4836251.png" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20260107080144_5651fc6445f5e5fd838f28e1eac1da45da136b309a4a00db1e4aafa7d4836251" data-rendition-name="original" width="2142" height="1310" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Only one mountaineer, Korean Um Hong-Gil, has climbed any of the six additional peaks.</figcaption></figure>  Um climbed both Lhotse Shar and Yalung Kang, giving him a total of 16 summits. He required four attempts to climb Lhotse Shar, including one attempt in which he turned back just 100m from the summit following the deaths of two teammates. He finally succeeded in 2007 via a route up the Lhotse South Face. If a race to climb all 20 eight-thousanders were to begin, Um is currently in the lead. <a href="https://www.himalayandatabase.com/" target="_blank">The Himalayan Database</a> also lists two additional mountains in Nepal not included among the peaks announced by the Ministry of Tourism: Annapurna Central and Annapurna East. If these are included, bringing the total to 22 peaks, a few additional climbers deserve mention. Poles Piotr Pustelnik and the great Jerzy Kukuczka have both climbed all 14 classic eight-thousanders as well as Annapurna East, giving them 15 out of 22. Swiss climber Erhard Loretan climbed all 14 as well, and both Annapurna subsidiary summits, giving him a total of 16 out of 22 peaks. Annapurna East has a greater prominence than some of the 6 new peaks proposed by Nepal, but Broad Peak Central in the Karakoram has the greatest prominence of any subsidiary 8000m summit. Kukuczka has also climbed Broad Peak Central, so if the list is extended to 23 peaks, he has 16, equal with Loretan and Um. Then, there is a case for Shishapangma Central in China, which further complicates the task of coming up with a definite extended list. At the moment, these subsidiary summits are not attracting a lot of attention: of the 138 summit climbs on them, only 12 occurred in the last 25 years and none since 2011. Most climbers like to have some wide recognition of a target before investing time and money in trying to achieve it, and this may make it hard to build interest. But as completing the classic 8,000m peaks starts to become a rather frequent occurrence, some may be attracted to the longer list. If this new challenge catches on, as the Ministry of Tourism presumably hopes, how long will it be before someone passes Um Hong-Gil’s total and how long before someone climbs all 20 or 22 or 23 summits? <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/dispelling-myths-about-climbing" target="_blank">Edward Morgan</a> is a British author and climber based in Switzerland. His first book, Lhotse South Face - The Wall of Legends, has been published in several languages and his second book, Chasing Mallory's Dream is due out in the UK this year.

New 8,000ers may restart peak-grabbing race

One of the few Newa towns situated outside Kathmandu Valley, Panauti still evokes the feeling of a place frozen in time.&nbsp; Largely untouched by haphazard urbanisation, this town 32km east of Kathmandu used to be a kingdom revered for the sacred confluence of the Punyamati and Rosi rivers.&nbsp; The Bramhayani temple is the site of a 12 yearly Makar Mela which is attended by devotees from as far away as India.&nbsp; Panauti’s crumbling monuments were restored in the 1990s by the French government. Temples, resting places, traditional homes were rebuilt and locals trained to revive their craft. Panauti and France marked 50 years of cooperation in September.&nbsp; However, the priceless murals on the temple walls are fading and need urgent restitution. Now, these crumbling wall paintings are meticulously documented in the Wall Paintings of Panauti and Their Context.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090116_31f6acf06ef879037fec8274b85153eab4468566abf71616490679bf8468b85d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260106090116_31f6acf06ef879037fec8274b85153eab4468566abf71616490679bf8468b85d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1596" height="1074" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals"> </figure>  In his foreword, French researcher Gérard Toffin writes about some of the earliest wall paintings from the Malla period in Kathmandu, including a 17th century mural depicting the procession of Rato Machhindranath which has since been restored.&nbsp; Several other pieces still exist but in a pitiful state, defaced by scratches. ‘They were painted on a plaster coating made of soil, husks, or limestone, which were applied to the bricks making up the walls,’ Toffin notes.&nbsp; The book delves into the cult of Asta Matrika among Newa of all castes and classes, the first of which is Bramhayani. These all-pervading deities are linked to Shaktism which focuses on the importance of the female principle and together, combine the forces of life, sex and fertility with that of death and eros. The deities are painted on the wall, carved on the stone or moulded into metallic statues.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090120_836efd2b0a569d8ec0fb2c6651a29b8f2dd8f8f75b72e27bb86b0bfc0ad8461f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260106090120_836efd2b0a569d8ec0fb2c6651a29b8f2dd8f8f75b72e27bb86b0bfc0ad8461f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1074" height="1434" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals"> </figure>  Riddhi Baba Pradhan, former director general of the Department of Archaeology who oversaw the restoration of Panauti 30 years ago, writes that a colourful wall painting depicting Buddha's past life at the Chabahil Chaitya built or restored during the reign of Lichhavi king Vrisdev in the 3rd century might be the earliest mural in Nepal. As for Panauti, a fragment from a 400-year-old scroll which illustrates a scene of Triveni Ghat with Dalinchok Hill in the background is likely the oldest. But that relic is currently at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the United States.&nbsp; Pradhan recalls first encountering wall paintings inside Bramhayani temple which were deteriorated by smoke, leaky roof, dust, vermilion, sprinkles of animal blood and lack of maintenance. The team led by chemist Bhimvar Singh Thapa treated the wall paintings and some of the details were recovered including the paintings of Astamatrika and Asta Bhairav on the east, west and southern walls.&nbsp; PAINTINGS ARE NOT VISIBLE The murals were painted during the reign of the last Malla King of Bhaktapur Ranjit Malla and Queen Viswalaxmi Devi 300 years ago. But 40 years after the restoration, Pradhan notes that the murals are again in poor condition: ‘The paintings are not visible, the plaster is severely damaged and the surface has peeled off … electrical wires hang haphazardly inside the temple.’ The second lot of murals at Ghat Sattal are thought to have been commissioned during the late Malla period or the beginning of the Shah dynasty. Exterior walls depict incarnations of Lord Vishnu as well as Sesh Narayan, Ganesh, a scene of Samundra Manthan, of angels Maya, Moha, Ganga. Their attributes, dresses, ornaments, facial expressions, body postures are all skilfully represented but in a deteriorated condition.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090116_88d06703ae23a271905d81f35056d41df92cbbc4b9966fac3f34821659e585a8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20260106090116_88d06703ae23a271905d81f35056d41df92cbbc4b9966fac3f34821659e585a8" data-rendition-name="original" width="588" height="862" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals "> </figure>  The wall paintings of Bramhayani Dyochhen are 90% degraded even though they were restored and repaired 40 years ago by the Panauti Integrated Project. Compared to other artefacts, wall paintings are more delicate to external factors, and if not preserved an important part of Nepal’s heritage will be lost.&nbsp; Furthermore, most of the wall paintings in Nepal are temperas, and not frescos. Tempera is painted with water-soluble mineral or vegetable pigments fixed with glue on the cow dung clay plaster on the brick walls. While Nepal’s focus has been on the repatriation of stolen artefacts from abroad, religious and cultural objects within the country like the Panauti murals need urgent attention.&nbsp; This slim publication by Panauti Municipality is an important call to begin the work before it is too late.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260101120124_d0efa1e57b2710a206beb37c7e934ac34e694afc278985934eac2fc52124a92c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260101120124_d0efa1e57b2710a206beb37c7e934ac34e694afc278985934eac2fc52124a92c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Wall Paintings of Panauti"> </figure>

Saving Panauti's murals

The American military action in Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro Moros may redefine Nepal’s geopolitics as it juggles between three world powers, India, China and the United States.&nbsp;
Nepal’s interim government is busy preparing for elections on 5 March, and it was late issuing a statement on the American intervention in Venezuela, but the country may have to re-evaluate how it deals with its immediate neighbours and the global power.
“How does Nepal avoid being the next Ukraine or Venezuela? Small countries shouldn’t go around irritating big neighbours. And when big neighbours really get upset, they usually put up a moral fig leaf justifying their miltary action,” says energy economist Dipak Gyawali. “What we see with Venezuela today is bereft of such moral content, essentially banditry which in today’s day and age is unacceptable. Neither the rising new powers nor much of the Global South will take this lying down.”
International relations experts have said that there is now a new world order in which rules-based diplomacy has been thrown out of the window, and the world has been carved into America leading the western hemisphere, Russia is allowed to do what it wants in Ukraine and Europe, and China’s sphere of influence is now the Indo-Pacific.
Foreign affairs expert Nischal Pandey says there is a lesson for smaller nations like Nepal: “We have to be aware of the sensitivities of the major powers in the vicinity.”
There is also a lesson for smaller resource-rich countries not to give an excuse for intervention with poor governance and political instability due to inequity. In Venezuela’s case it was throttling democracy and not using its immense oil-wealth to uplift its people.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s abduction of a sitting president of a foreign government regardless of the dictatorial nature of his regime and Venezuela’s volatile internal politics, is illegal and breaches the international order that has been in place since after World War II and its devastation on humanity.
While Trump’s intervention in Venezuela, and threats against Colombia, Cuba and Greenland have brought international condemnation, here in Nepal it has not been taken as seriously as it should.
Says Amish Mulmi, author of the book All Roads Lead North: Nepal's Turn to China: “Some of the reaction on social media has been that of glee over the fall of a dictatorial Communist government on the other side of the world. However, the government statement about fully respecting the principles of sovereignty and the Charter of the United Nations is a strong statement that makes clear Nepal's position on the matter.”
“The abduction of Maduro is a clear sign of Trump's America ensuring its sphere of influence through might and a warning to toe the line,” Mulmi adds. “It also infringes on the sanctity of borders and the preservation of sovereignty. Trump's actions reek strongly of a bygone era of imperialistic control and resource capture.”
Venezuela has 17% of the world’s reserves of crude oil, even though refining this heavy tar-like oil will be costly, and is possible in only a few places including Texas.
“This has to do with a larger political economy of oil, the unravelling of pax Americana and the post-World war II order. This is USA’s heavy-handed response to remain on the top as well as to partly solve its debt of $39 trillion,” explains Gyawali. “But this is not going to help: China is far ahead, Russia has recovered from its 1990s low point, and manufacturing capital has moved away from America. So controlling only financial capital - and using military power so brazenly - is not going to work.”
The might also be specific lessons for Nepal as a smaller country with vast water resources. While water, unlike oil, is renewable, India’s interest in Nepal’s hydro resources cannot be ignored. Ironically, America’s capture of Venezuelan oil reserves could exacerbate climate breakdown and the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which will put Nepal’s water resources in jeopardy in the coming decades.
The only way to deal with this for Nepal and downstream India will be to build reservoirs on rivers to store monsoon precipitation, and that makes water a strategic commodity for the future.&nbsp;
“If we continue in the current mode of hydropower-biased water resources development ignoring irrigation, flood control, navigation, fisheries, tourism and other benefits, India will get the free benefit of regulated water while we pay the upstream environmental and social costs. History will blame our elected leaders for having undersold our resources,” adds Gyawali, who served as water resource minister in the early 2000s.
As for a larger geopolitical lesson: “We in Nepal are fortunate in having not one threatening hegemon but two superpowers India and China: they don’t agree with each other, but do agree on a peaceful Nepal for their own security. However, our current political leaders are irritating both the neighbours, unlike since the centuries past when our rulers looked solely after Nepal’s core interests and our neighbours knew that.”
American intervention in Venezuela also calls for strengthening of our institutions and diplomatic outreach. Nepal has been a non-aligned state, and for all its history has tried to follow a policy of equidistance between India and China. The difference with Venezuela is that Nepal has to deal with two giant neighbours, and not just one.
Says Mulmi: “It is no more only about balancing great power relations but also about benefiting from them. But that will be increasingly difficult as international law and the principles of sovereignty are encroached upon.”

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