Last month, catastrophic flash floods tore through the Nepal-China border, leaving a trail of widespread destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that continues to upend the lives of thousands of survivors. With more than 5,000 people still unaccounted for after the waters receded, families across the hardest-hit districts are confronting a dual burden: crippling grief over lost loved ones and a suffocating legal and administrative quagmire rooted in Nepal’s outdated civil code.
At Pashupatinath Temple, situated along the banks of Kathmandu’s Bagmati River, grieving relatives have gathered to perform traditional symbolic funerals for their missing loved ones. In accordance with Hindu custom, when a body cannot be recovered, families craft effigies from sacred kusha grass to represent the deceased, allowing them to carry out the necessary last rites that bring a modicum of closure. For Madan Lal Lawat, who lost five relatives—including his brother Mangal, who died warning villagers to evacuate—this ritual is the only opportunity he has to honor his family’s memory, after rescue operations were officially wrapped up.
Lawat survived the disaster because he was driving his bus outside his home village of Betrawati, one of the communities hit hardest by the flood. Footage from the immediate aftermath shows that the raging waters swallowed most of Betrawati in mere minutes, leaving behind nothing but hardened mud and silt. The village’s bustling market was erased, the local school was reduced to rubble, homes were swept away, and even heavy vehicles like school buses were tossed aside like toys. Today, Lawat has no doubt that his five missing relatives are dead, but under Nepal’s current law, that certainty counts for nothing.
Nepal’s Civil Code requires that a person must be missing for 12 years before they can be legally presumed dead. While Section 40 of the code outlines limited exceptions for specific circumstances, it makes no provision for large-scale disasters like last month’s flood. Without a legal declaration of death and an official death certificate, families cannot access the government’s flood compensation funds, transfer property, or settle inheritance claims. Under the current compensation scheme, eligible families can receive up to 25,000 Nepali rupees ($162) for funeral costs, plus 200,000 rupees ($1,302) for the first deceased family member and 100,000 rupees ($651) for each additional loss—none of which can be accessed without the required documentation.
When Lawat attempted to obtain a death certificate for his relatives last week, local municipal officials turned him away, telling him the issue was still under discussion. “There’s so much uncertainty,” Lawat told reporters. “I don’t know how to start over. Police say they’re still searching, but I’m not sure they’ll ever find the bodies.”
Constitutional law expert Bipin Adhikari argues that the current legislation is poorly suited to the reality of 21st-century disasters. The 12-year waiting period, he explains, was originally designed for people who disappeared after traveling abroad and left no trace of their whereabouts. “But technology has advanced now, it isn’t as difficult to send or receive information,” Adhikari notes, adding that “in view of the current disaster, the law is outdated.”
Even for victims whose bodies have been recovered, the process of identification is slow and fraught with challenges. So far, more than 1,400 bodies have been recovered, but Nepal lacks the infrastructure and experience to process DNA identification at this scale. Authorities have adopted the workaround of collecting DNA samples before burying bodies in marked plots, so they can be reclaimed by families if a match is eventually made.
Across the affected region, local officials have echoed the frustration of grieving families. Bidur Municipality, which encompasses Betrawati and has seen more than 3,000 buildings damaged or destroyed—more than any other municipality in the country—has called on the federal government to immediately revise the law. Bidur Mayor Rajan Shrestha says that under current rules, families could be forced to wait a full 12 years before accessing the compensation they are entitled to, leaving all efforts to rebuild “on hold.” Local officials say they are bound by existing legal boundaries to avoid future legal liabilities, even as they acknowledge the overwhelming emotional pain being inflicted on families.
Nepal’s government has acknowledged the scale of the problem, telling the BBC that it is aware of the difficulties created by the existing law in exceptional disaster circumstances, and that it stands ready to amend the legislation if necessary. But for thousands of families already grappling with loss, the wait for a solution is already taking an unbearable toll.
The economic scale of the disaster is staggering. The latest government assessment puts the number of damaged or destroyed private residential buildings at 7,570, displacing nearly 33,000 people. Total damage to personal property alone is estimated at $165 million, averaging roughly $20,000 per affected household. When accounting for destroyed public infrastructure—including schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, hydropower projects, and water treatment facilities—the total reconstruction bill could reach as high as $4.8 billion. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Balen Shah noted that this sum amounts to more than 10% of Nepal’s total gross domestic product, an enormous burden for one of South Asia’s smallest and poorest economies.
Notably, Nepal is one of the lowest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it ranks among the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which are driving increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events. Shah told world leaders that Nepal cannot be expected to shoulder this recovery alone via new debt: “When a climate-driven disaster destroys infrastructure of a poor country, the answer cannot simply be another mega-loan or a patchwork of small grants.” He called instead for substantial international grant-based support to fund the reconstruction effort.
For many survivors like Tisum Ghale, this disaster marks the second time in less than a decade that they have lost everything. Ghale and his family lost their home in the devastating 2015 Nepal earthquake, spent months displaced, and eventually rebuilt their lives in Betrawati. Last month’s flood killed 19 of his relatives, including five of his sisters, and left him homeless once again. Ghale was working on a construction project outside the village when the flood hit, and today he cares for eight orphaned children left behind by his dead sisters. So far, he has received no compensation, and like Lawat, he plans to hold a symbolic funeral with kusha grass effigies while he waits for the law to catch up to the tragedy that has unfolded.
“I have lost everything,” Ghale says. Like thousands of other families across northern Nepal, he just hopes the government will act quickly to change the law, so he can finally get the support he needs to begin rebuilding after a lifetime of loss.