In the early hours of Saturday, April 25, 2026, the roar of bulldozers broke the silence along the riverbanks of Kathmandu. The Balen Shah government, in coordination with local authorities and state security forces, began the demolition of squatter settlements in Thapathali, Gairigaun, and Manohara. By Sunday, the settlements had been razed to the ground, and all sukumbasi were asked to relocate elsewhere or move to temporary shelters at Dashrath Stadium. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and thousands of people displaced.

What unfolded over those two days was not just the clearing of riverside land. It was a systematic violation of the housing rights of Nepal’s most vulnerable citizens carried out with barely any warning, without verified resettlement plans, and in defiance of both the Constitution and the conditions laid down by Nepal’s own Supreme Court.

The Scale: A Crisis in Numbers

To understand what was destroyed, one must first understand what was there. Approximately 4,000 families live along Kathmandu Valley’s six major rivers, the Bagmati, Bishnumati, Manohara, Dhobikhola, Balkhu, and Godavari, in informal settlements, though the valley wide total including non riverbank sites is estimated closer to 50,000 families.

According to recent government data, around 160,000 to 170,000 families across Nepal are true sukumbasi who do not own any land at all. In addition, around 600,000 to 900,000 families have houses but lack legal ownership documents and are classified as unmanaged settlers. When combined, nearly one million families, representing around four to five million citizens, are affected by land related issues in Nepal, making it a complex national crisis present in almost every district.

In Kathmandu alone, the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority identified 871 unauthorised households across the targeted sites, 476 in Shantinagar, 162 in Gairigaun, 143 in Thapathali, 77 in Gothatar, and 13 in Manohara Tole. After the demolitions, a total of 930 families comprising 3,957 individuals registered for resettlement support. They were temporarily housed in hotels, lodges, and a facility in Kirtipur, with authorities stating that only those found genuinely landless would be considered for permanent resettlement following a strict 15 day screening process.

By early May, the drive had expanded drastically. Thousands more people were displaced as the government intensified its campaign across the Kathmandu Valley, with the eviction drive giving residents only three days to vacate. A second phase began with demolitions in Balkhu, the Bansighat area, and Sankhamul under tight security from Nepal Police, the Armed Police Force, and municipal police. Even the Sange Chhoiling Gumba, a Buddhist monastery in Balkhu, was demolished, with requests from monastery authorities not to demolish on Buddha Jayanti going unheeded.

A Government That Chose Speed Over Justice

On 22 April 2026, shortly after the resignation of Home Minister Sudan Gurung, Prime Minister Balendra “Balen” Shah convened senior security officials from the Nepal Army, Armed Police Force, and Nepal Police, issuing instructions to clear the settlements over the weekend of 25–26 April. The Kathmandu District Security Committee formalised the decision on 23 April. Residents were given virtually no time to prepare.

Public announcements were made informing residents that bulldozers would begin operations from Saturday morning, and residents were asked to remove their belongings and relocate vulnerable individuals, pregnant women, sick people, the elderly, to safer places. These notices came just days before demolition. The ongoing evictions campaign forms part of the government’s 100 point roadmap. It is not a response to a natural disaster. It is a planned political project, executed with military grade force against the poorest people in the capital.

Unconstitutional: What the Courts Actually Said

Nepal’s Constitution under Article 37 guarantees every citizen the right to adequate housing. Nepal’s Supreme Court, in its July 2024 ruling, ordered the evacuation of riverside squatter settlements but conditioned this entirely on the government first providing proper housing to genuinely landless families. Any eviction that proceeds without prior verified resettlement violates the Supreme Court’s own conditions as well as Article 37 of the Constitution.

The Balen government did not meet these conditions. It proceeded anyway. Nepal’s Supreme Court then issued an interim order on May 8 directing the government not to evict or displace squatters without following due legal procedure. This came two weeks too late for the thousands already rendered homeless.

Three UN Special Rapporteurs had written to Kathmandu Metropolitan City as far back as January 2023 expressing alarm at forced evictions without adequate housing alternatives. The Land Related Problems Resolution Commission also warned in early 2025 that evictions without proper resettlement plans violate both constitutional rights and international humanitarian law. All of these warnings went unheeded.

The Mental Health Crisis: A Silent Catastrophe

Among the least visible and most devastating consequences of the evictions is the mental health crisis unfolding among displaced communities and most acutely among their children.

Behind every demolished structure is not just a loss of shelter but a profound disruption of emotional stability, identity, and well being. These settlements had transformed over time into more than physical shelters. They had become places of belonging, familiarity, and psychological security. For families who had spent years escaping poverty, displacement, and lack of opportunity, losing these homes represents a collapse of the psychological foundation of their lives.

The situation is further complicated by the label of “fake sukumbasi.” The lack of a clear distinction between genuine and non genuine cases leads to collective punishment, which not only creates injustice but increases stress among those who genuinely have no alternative. Living under suspicion, combined with the fear of eviction, creates a persistent sense of insecurity and psychological strain.

The treatment of displaced residents has caused widespread psychological distress and fear across communities. Human rights defenders warn that overcrowded and unsafe holding centres expose women, adolescent girls, children, and LGBTQIA+ people to heightened risks of violence, abuse, and sexual exploitation.

Children: The Most Invisible Victims

The suffering of children in the aftermath of these demolitions demands special attention. Many children had their education abruptly disrupted during exam periods, while witnessing the demolition of their own homes caused deep psychological trauma with potential long term consequences.

At the Banepa holding centre, where displaced families have been sent far from Kathmandu, children sit idle with no school to attend and no timeline for return. Eight year old Bandika should have been starting grade 3.

“I should have been buying new books and notebooks by now. I miss my friends the most,” she said. “At the settlement, we were all together. Here, everything is new and strange. If I could just go to school, maybe I could make new friends and feel normal again.”

The psychological toll extends beyond the loss of the classroom. Manika Yadav, who had completed grade 2 in Thapathali, spoke of a deep seated hurt over the labels society puts on her.

“Many people call us ‘Sukumbasi children,’” she said. “It feels bad when they say it like that. It makes us feel like we don’t belong anywhere.”

Manika often asks her mother when they can leave the centre. She said some of her friends managed to move to Kirtipur and have already resumed school.

“Hyubrani is already back in school. But we were sent here to Kavre. No one has told us which school we will go to.”

While families wait, the men continue to commute daily to Kathmandu for wage labour, returning to the centre at night.

These testimonies paint a picture of an entire generation of children experiencing simultaneous educational disruption, social isolation, identity stigma, and the deep trauma of watching their homes demolished by the state. Pregnant women, new mothers, elderly persons, and persons with disabilities face especially severe risks as they are pushed into precarious living conditions in these holding centres.

A Young Nation Watching: Riyab Baniya and the Voice of Nepal’s Youth

The sukumbasi crisis is being watched closely by Nepal’s younger generation, who had placed enormous hope in the Balen government’s promise of change. Riyab Baniya, a 24 year old youth activist who became a prominent voice during Nepal’s 2025–2026 Gen Z movement, warned at the time of the 2026 elections:

“There is a danger to our democracy if we choose populism over capability. Right now, those whose voices are louder are getting popular, but we have to be critical. We have to support people who will take our mandate forward.”

Those words carry sharp resonance now. Young Nepalis like Baniya who visited and observed the conditions in and around the demolition sites and holding centres witnessed first hand a humanitarian situation far removed from the government’s triumphalist narrative. Families crowded into temporary shelters with no adequate sanitation, children weeping outside rubble, elderly residents with nowhere to go. The realities on the ground told a story no government press release could sanitise.

The Gen Z movement that helped bring Balen Shah to power had explicitly campaigned for the rights of ordinary Nepalis. GenZ Red Force Nepal reminded leaders, including coalition partner Rabi Lamichhane, of a specific election campaign promise: that RSP would not remove squatters but would instead stand in front of the bulldozers themselves. Instead, those same bulldozers rolled at dawn, escorted by the Army and Armed Police Force.

The International Community Responds

UN experts expressed grave concern, saying they were “deeply troubled by reports that thousands of people, many of whom are internally displaced and in situations of acute vulnerability, are being evicted without adequate safeguards.”

They stated that such actions risk violating Nepal’s obligations under international human rights law and its own constitutional protections.

“States must ensure adequate alternative housing, compensation, and access to essential services, including healthcare and education, before and after any displacement,” the experts said. “Provision of emergency shelters with only substandard housing conditions does not meet basic human rights standards. This is not a sudden unforeseeable natural disaster but a coordinated eviction drive organised by public authorities.”

Three UN Special Rapporteurs on adequate housing, on internally displaced persons, and on extreme poverty jointly urged Nepal to stop the mass forced evictions.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Commission of Jurists jointly wrote to Prime Minister Shah, flagging the forced evictions as one of the new government’s early actions that raised serious human rights concerns and urging him to bring lasting protections for human rights and the rule of law.

Domestically, a statement signed by 28 prominent civil society members on May 4 declared:

“We are alarmed by the government’s unconstitutional violations and restriction of civil liberties.”

The Death Toll and the Unspoken Losses

The most haunting statistic in this entire crisis is this: at least two of those displaced have died by suicide. Many of the sukumbasi have lost not just a place to live but also their means of livelihood. Even the temporary shelters that have been built do not have enough capacity to house all those who qualify for resettlement.

Two human beings, already among Nepal’s most marginalised, took their own lives in the aftermath of losing everything. This is the human cost that is absent from the government’s 100 point roadmap. It is the cost that cannot be measured in square footage or flood risk statistics.

The Root the Bulldozers Cannot Reach

Around 1985 there were an estimated 2,000 squatters in Kathmandu. By 1992 the number had grown to between 8,000 and 10,000. The Maoist insurgency, which began in 1996, proved a major accelerant. Conflict displaced families poured into Kathmandu and occupied public land along river corridors.

Five percent of Nepal’s population controls 37 percent of all arable land. Dalit communities collectively own roughly one percent of land despite comprising more than thirteen percent of the population. Over 2.1 million people in Nepal live without formal land rights in some form. No number of bulldozers will change these structural facts.

History offers a sharp contrast. In May 2012, when Kathmandu municipality officials and the Armed Police Force bulldozed dozens of homes, 257 homes were destroyed and 844 people were left homeless. Even a primary school with 200 students was demolished. Following widespread criticism, the Prime Minister Bhattarai relented, pledged alternative housing, and initiated the Ichangu Narayan Housing Project, a government owned housing project providing homes to squatters at low interest loans, completed in 2014 with 227 units. The Balen government has made no comparable commitment.

Conclusion: A Mandate Betrayed

A genuine resolution of Nepal’s sukumbasi crisis would require at minimum six things: a single national database of landless individuals verified across government tiers; differentiated policy responses by geography and community type; constitutional compliance as a non negotiable procedural floor; legally binding timelines with independent monitoring; statutory protection of the land commission from partisan interference; and serious engagement with the structural reality that five percent of Nepal’s population controls 37 percent of all arable land.

None of these are present in the Balen government’s approach.

Two people are dead by suicide. Nearly 4,000 individuals remain in temporary shelters with no confirmed path to a permanent home. Thousands of children have missed their exams, lost their schools, and carry the psychological scars of watching their homes be demolished by the state. Eight year old Bandika just wants to buy new notebooks. Manika just wants someone to tell her which school she will go to. The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Nepal’s civil society, and Nepal’s own Supreme Court have all said the same thing: this is wrong.

The sukumbasi of Thapathali, Gairigaun, Manohara, Balkhu, and Bansighat did not choose their poverty. They chose to believe in a government that would finally see them as human beings deserving of dignity. That government has a debt to pay, not just in shelter, but in justice, in accountability, and in the courage to confront the land inequality it has so far chosen to ignore.