Shunned by their communities, labelled witches, banned from attending happy celebrations and treated as domestic slaves, in the first of a short series from Nepal, Siobhan Tanner reports onthe struggle of Nepal's widows.

While her husband's corpse was still burning on the funeral pyre, six women came to Lily Thapa's home to perform an ancient Hindu ritual on the grieving young widow.

''I was still crying for my husband when they came, they cut off my bangles, threw away my colourful clothes, washed the make-up from my face and the red dye from my hair. My nose ring wouldn't come out. He'd given it to me when I was 15-years-old, so they came with a big knife to cut it out and I fainted.''

The ordeal marked the beginning of widowhood for the 30-year-old mother whose dress, behaviour, diet and movements would now be dictated by a society that viewed her an outcast.

Historically Nepalese widows were burned alive on their husband's funeral pyre as a testimony to their chastity and devotion. And although the practice was outlawed in 1920, the Hindu superstition around widows prevailed in modern Nepal. ''It's is no longer a physical death but it's a social death for women,'' says Thapa, whose husband was killed working as a UN doctor in the Gulf War in 1991.

For the first year of mourning Thapa couldn't see her parents or brother, use salt or eat more than once a day. Thereafter she had to dress in white or drab clothes - red the colour of matrimony was expressly taboo - while jewellery, make-up and grooming were forbidden as were nutritious and spicy foods. She was expected to sleep on the floor rather than in the marital bed and banished from happy events, including her children's future weddings. Insults of 'boski' witch or 'husband eater' were hurled from once-friendly neighbours who considered her a threat to married women and a bad omen to the village.

Appalled by the ill-treatment that went unquestioned, Lily Thapa began visiting other widows for support. ''Being in a middle class family and educated I still had to go through all this discrimination, you can imagine how it is for women who have no money, no education, no access to any resources - the stories were terrible.''

(Pictured: Sitala Gupta who works as a labourer for about €1 per day to support her in-laws)

Stories of widows being beaten and even raped by their male in-laws, locked indoors and treated as domestic slaves were the norm.

''For those first two years, we just came together and hugged and cried. In the beginning, it was difficult to coax women out of their homes, they would lie to their families, say they were going to the market. We held those first meetings with the curtains closed in a dark room, afraid to expose ourselves,'' recalls Thapa.

Discrimination

Fifteen years on and a five-foot-long sign outside the Kathmandu Park Resort Hotel advertises the second international single women's conference organised by the Women for Human Rights (WHR) founded by Lily Thapa in 1994. Such are the negative connotations of the word widow, the organisation passed a declaration to refer to themselves instead as single women.

Inside the curtains are still closed but this time to keep out the 30-degree monsoon heat rather than the judgement of neighbours. Women who could afford to make the trip to the capital -from 65 of Nepal's 75 districts - fan themselves with printed booklets that give details of their few successes and numerous challenges.

A young woman hammers the pulpit with her fist as she calls for a halt to the spate of witch hunts of dalit-caste widows. Delegates nod knowingly at the story of a widow accused of witchcraft in Makawanpur district, south of the capital, forced to eat her own faeces and beaten to a pulp by her neighbours. And of another evicted from her village in the far west Kalaili district. And another that was killed when the mob went too far. ''A lot done,'' the young speaker says in Nepali. ''More to do.'' And the women nod again.

At its core, the discrimination against widows is economically motivated. A widow's claim to her husband's property poses a threat to in-laws that breeds resentment and intimidation. The Nepali tradition of a woman severing all connection with her maternal home once married including losing her claim on her parent's assets leaves widows especially vulnerable to the whims of those same in-laws.

(Pictured: A funeral pyre at Pashnipath, a sacred Hindu funeral site where royal widows threw themselves on their husband's pyre)

The turning point for Nepal's widows came in 2000 when the WHR began a campaign for the right to wear red. After long hours of intercession from widows, the influential Hindu priest Noren Pokhral declared that Hindu holy text did not support the colour restriction. Across the country, wearing borrowed and newly bought red saris, widows appeared publicly in a show of revolt against the archaic tradition.

Since then the WHR has expanded to a membership of 60,000 women, with groups in 435 villages, each with micro-credit programs and counselling sessions to meditate between widows and in-laws.

Discriminatory laws have been abolished in successive Supreme and District court cases in the last four years. Among them the requirement that widows must return all inherited property in the event of re-marriage and that a widow's property and pension right is conditional on her remaining chaste forever. Widows no longer need the permission of a male relative to get a passport or their children's permission to sell or pass on their own property.

An indicator of the growing force of widows power came last year when the country's Finance Minister introduced an ill-conceived plan to pay 50,000 rupees, about €550, to the man that married a widow. The backlash was immediate when 2,000 widows marched on parliament to demand the policy be revoked, saying it increased their vulnerability. When their protest was ignored the WHR filed a writ against the government in the Supreme Court and on January 19 this year, the court ordered the government to desist with the plan - marking a huge symbolic victory for the group that just 10 years previous had been voiceless.

The current democratisation of Nepal after the 12-year Maoist insurgency which ended in 2006 has contributed to the climate of change for widows. When the Maoists entered government in 2008, 51 widows won seats in the new parliament.

Shunned

But the bloody 'People's War' which claimed 12,000 lives has created a new set of problems for the cause - namely, more widows. According to the WHR surveys, an estimated 67 per cent of Nepali widows are under the age of 30 and of these, a further 60pc have 3 to 4 children. Shunned by their communities and denied access to education and a job, conflict widows and their children are vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse and many face starvation. The WHR also report that a quarter of displaced conflict widows have reported physical harassment and 11pc have reported sexual harassment. Their plight has pushed the widow's agenda in parliament and following the 2006 interim constitution, social security allowances are no longer limited to elderly widows (though the wives of Maoist soldiers receive considerably less than the wives of the government security forces).

The conflict too has created more child widows, known locally as vyaikalyas. Although the legal marrying age in Nepal is 18, child marriage is widespread. In the conservative Terai, the fertile flat lands of the mountainous country, girls are married as young as six-years-old and later sent to the groom's home when they reach menstruation. But child mortality in the region is high with malaria, cholera and snake-bites claiming many young boys before adulthood, leaving behind pre-pubescent widows. The fate of a vyaikalya is worse than that of their adult counterparts, having never met their husband, they have no claim on his property. Stories of child widows being denied meals, clothing, education are common. And in conservative parts of the country they are not allowed to wear shoes, walk on main roads or ever attend any festivities and are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking.

''What we have achieved is just a pin-drop,'' says Lily Thapa from her Kathmandu office.

''Yes, we have a single women's group in 425 villages but there are 3,950 villages in Nepal. In those areas there is nothing for widows. If we tried to approach widows directly in these areas they would be killed. We have to go very carefully through religious channels first, then the families, then we can talk to the widows and slowly gradually change the mindset.''

And while changes to the laws are encouraging, they do not give a true measure of the advancement of widows many of whom, psychologically oppressed, cannot avail of their newfound rights.

Rights

An economics graduate from an upper caste family, Dipa Dhaice was a natural choice for secretary of the single women's group in the Illam district in the far east of the country. Since her husband died seven years ago, the mother of one has become a domestic slave in her in-laws home subjected to daily criticisms and insults. Her brown eyes brim with tears as she flinches at the admission. ''I have to live with them, I have no option.'' She says she handed over the contents of her bank account - 20,000 rupees (€223)

- in a vain attempt to ease the accusations. ''They refuse to speak to me about my property, I will ask them again and if they refuse, then I will go to the lawyer.'' Her voice breaks and she goes silent.

Half way across Nepal in the western Terai village of Kusma, Sitala Gupta, 29, has never thought about property rights. She answers questions unperturbed by the neighbours that crowd at the door of the thatched mud hut she shares with her elderly in-laws and son. Yes, there is some gossiping, yes, she can attend festivities and has some colourful clothes. ''These discriminations are not practised in my village. For me, the hardest part of being a widow is being the only earner in the house, I am tied to the house, to them,'' she gestures to her elderly in-laws, who sit at her shoulder and nod and blink in agreement. ''I cannot take one sick day because there is nobody else.'' Since becoming a teenage widow 10 years ago, Sitala has worked as a labourer for a local landlord for 100 rupees a day to support her immobile in-laws. They have an elder son but he has denied all responsibility and never visits. Will she ever remarry? ''I have that hope in my heart but then what would happen to my son and who would take care of my in-laws?''

(Pictured: Widow and founder of the WHR Lily Thapa)

The number of widows in South Asia has risen dramatically in the last decade due to natural disasters, AIDs and armed conflicts in 54 countries in the region - but as yet no official data exists on widows and the UN have failed to acknowledge them as a marginalised group.

www.whr.org.np

Journalist Siobhan Tanner and photographer Hu O'Reilly travelled to Nepal with the aid of the Simon Cumbers Bursary fund. All interviews with the exception of Lily Thapa were given through a translator.