a national emergency and the passage of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO). TADO declared the Maoists as terrorists and deployed the Royal Nepalese Army against them. Following political confrontations between members of the House of Representatives and King Gyanendra, several constitution articles were suspended, especially ones relating to freedom of speech, expression, press, movement and rights to peaceful protest. The then prime minister Deuba’s government stayed in office and ruled through government decrees until dismissed by Gyanendra due to a perceived inability to hold elections and quell the Maoist insurgency. Deuba was replaced by Lokendra Bahadur, a former Panchayat politician and Nepalese royalist who failed to negotiate a peace deal with the Maoists and faced the rise of a popular pro-democracy movement joined by major Nepali political parties, including the Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) (UML), Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, Nepal Congress Party (Democratic), United Left Front, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party. After the reappointment of Deuba as prime minister the Nepali Congress (Democratic), UML and Rashtriya Prajatantra Party left the civil movement and joined the government. The TADO legislation was further renewed and has contributed to Nepal’s record numbers of unexplained forced disappearances in 2002 and 2003 (Malagodi 2013, p. 187). Following a brief period of political stability, King Gyanendra dismissed the Deuba government and assumed full executive control over the country through the declaration of a State of Emergency under the laws of the 1990 Constitution. Loktantra Andolan In 1996 the Maoist insurgency launched a violent campaign to overthrow the political-economic status quo, redistribute land and affect a ‘proletarian revolution’ in Nepal. The ensuing civil war caused human rights violations and killings of more than 13,000, as well as a decline in Nepal's GDP growth rate, fuelled by a drop in tourist arrivals and the destruction of infrastructure. Following the assassination of King Birendra and his family in 2001, the multi-party democracy was placed under a State of Emergency by the preceding King, tightly controlling the opposition, censoring news and media organisations, and shutting down telecommunications in parts of the country. The civil war developed into a military and political stalemate that ended in 2005. Protests against the political and economic situation drew an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 in Nepal's capital Kathmandu and 5 million in the entire country. An alliance of seven political parties developed a coalition government, abolished the