I came to Nepal in mid-2005, when human rights violations committed by both sides in the armed conflict, together with Gyanendra’s crackdown on democratic rights as he seized absolute power, led the international community to support a monitoring presence from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. With no end in sight to a war with thousands of civilian victims, and democracy far from the horizon, nobody could have foreseen how Nepal’s people would express their demand for peace and change.