The squatter settlements

Since the rest of the city is so densely populated the riverbanks as well as the floodplains and riverbeds exposed by channelization provide the most accessible area to settle down within the city center. But these areas are permanently contested, since some of them are privately owned and of high value in the booming city of Kathmandu and others are owned by the state of Nepal or local administration and intended for the construction of parks and other public areas. Therefore, the people squatting these lands live in the constant fear of imminent eviction (Rademacher, 2011).

In their analysis of the challenges in the informal settlements of Kathmandu, Manoj Shrestha and Sudha Shrestha (2020) state that the people living in these settlements belong to the most vulnerable members of society, facing health and sanitation issues and social exclusion, while being excluded from public infrastructures and services and don’t have any property rights or a security of tenure, because land ownership forms the legal base for all these rights. Several initiatives have been launched to relocate the people squatting the riverbanks, but as illustrated by the case of a NGO building housing in the peripheral quarter of Ichangu for the inhabitants of the Sankhamul settlement, the monthly rent was simply unaffordable for them and additionally their new homes would have been too far away from their workplaces, wherefor they remained in their squatted settlement (Shrestha & Shrestha, 2020). Another example for governmental intervention is the attempted eviction of the Thapathali squatter settlement in 2012 (Brooks, 2016). The virtually unannounced eviction and demolition of the settlement led to violent clashes between the settlement’s residents and police forces and was followed by the reconstruction of the settlement by its inhabitants, unwilling to move away from the city center.

Fig: Road in front of Balkhu squatter settlement (Source: Authors) Fig: Eviction of the squatters (Source: The Kathmandu Post (Ojha, 2017)) 13 | Bagmati | Urban Rivers and Public Space