Caste equity and humanitarian aid: Dalit-led NGO perspectives on Nepal’s 2015 earthquake response

This paper examines how neutrality and impartiality operated during Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes and shaped Dalit communities’ access to assistance. Drawing on interviews and organisational documents from ten Dalit-led NGOs, it shows that principles to ensure fairness can, in caste-stratified contexts, reinforce inequality. Neutrality was invoked to sidestep caste discrimination, recasting structural exclusion as a local cultural issue, while impartiality was interpreted as uniform distribution despite unequal losses. Donor practices marginalised Dalit organisations by privileging dominant-caste NGOs, producing tokenistic participation and subcontracted implementation without decision-making power. In contrast, Dalit NGOs developed equity-sensitive, rights-based practices centred on participatory assessment, downward accountability, and reframing relief as citizenship entitlements. The analysis contributes to debates on humanitarian ethics and localisation by identifying mechanisms through which caste hierarchy shapes response, and by foregrounding justice-oriented approaches practised by marginalised actors in Nepal and disaster settings.