Ram Bhandari is a Nepali activist and academic practitioner with over 20 years of experience in the enforced disappearance, missing, victim and survivor's needs, transitional justice and human rights. His work has focused, amongst others, on: enforced disappearance and missing persons, family associations and victim mobilisation, victim needs, participation and survivor-led movements, transformative transitional justice, and human rights. Research interests have focused on the role of victim movements in transitional justice processes, victim participation, transnational victim movements and solidarity discourses, memorialisation, reparations and prevention. He is founder of Network of Families of the Disappeared in Nepal and co-founder of International Network of Victim and Survivor of Serious Human Rights Abuses (INOVAS). He holds a Master in Sociology and Anthropology from Nepal, a European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation from Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, and PhD in Law from Nova University of Lisbon. Ram is a longstanding victim activist and commentator/columnist in various Nepali news media for over a decade, and has published articles on his area of topics both academically and in mainstream media (online and print). He teaches, trains, and provides mentorship on missing agenda, grassroots activism, mobilisation, survivor organizations, movement building, transitional and transformative justice, and human rights. @RamBhandariNEP

Ram's articles include:

These articles argue Ram's interest in bringing the issues around disappearance, victim rights, memorialization and the role of victims in transitional justice processes. His articles look at the range of victim needs, victim space and agency, also analyses the victim mobilization as transformation and resistance to claim the victim space and rights in their local contexts.

  • Bhandari, R.K. and Robins S. (forthcoming). “Formal but local transitional justice: Memorialisation of the missing by local government in Nepal.” Journal of Human Rights Practice.

  • Bhandari, R.K. 2021. Search for the disappeared and justice for families in transition: the case of Nepal. Venezuela: Human Rights Center at the Catholic University Andrés Bello.

  • Sarkin, J. and Bhandari, R.K. 2020. “Why political appointments to truth commissions cause difficulties for those institutions: using the crisis in the transitional justice process in Nepal to understand how matters of legitimacy and credibility undermine such commissions." Journal of Human Rights Practice 12(2): 444–470. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa001

  • Bhandari, R.K 2020. “A review of Nepal transitional justice process: the perspectives of victims and survivors." CIEDP Journal, Nepal.

  • Bhandari, R.K. (2020). “Why victims have to be at the heart of justice processes: Lessons from Nepal, in English and Arabic." Legal Action, Tunis, Tunisia.

  • Bhandari, R.K. and Robins, S. 2018. “Nepal’s political transition after civil war.” In The Elgar Companion to Post-Conflict Transition, edited by Hans-Joachim Giessmann, Roger Mac Ginty, Beatrix Austin, and Christine Seifert, 70-90.  Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. 

  • Bhandari, R.K. 2020. My Father's Dream. Blogpost of the Advocacy Project. https://www.advocacynet.org/my-fathers-dream/

  • Bhandari, R.K. and Chaudhary, B. 2018. “Social justice for families of the disappeared in Nepal." Practicing Anthropology 40(2): 14-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.17730/0888-4552.40.2.14

  • Bhandari, R.K. 2016. “Transitional justice in Nepal: the perspectives of the victims.” In Nepal Transition to Peace: A decade of the Comprehensive Peace Accord, Kathmandu: NTTP/ USAID.

  • Robins, S. and Bhandari, R. K. 2012. From Victims to Actors - Mobilizing victims to drive transitional justice process: A participatory action research with the families of the disappeared in Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal.