Recommendations by the Independent People's Tribunal on the Ongoing Ethnic Conflict in Manipur

Sep 01, 2025
By PUCL National

Recommendations by the Tribunal

Regarding Gender-based Violence

  1. Government as well as communities’ leadership needs to provide space for women from all communities, to interact and find way forward to establish peace.
  2. There is an urgent need to establish mechanisms that will provide rehabilitation and livelihood to women specifically, who have been uprooted from their homes.
  3. Intercommunity relationships and families which are torn apart need financial assistance, space, counselling process, to be set up, which they can have access, with their confidentiality maintained strictly.
  4. The policemen on duty who failed in their duty to protect women, from sexual assault must be held responsible, accountable and prosecuted legally. The principle of command responsibility must be evoked to acknowledge and redress the harm done to the survivors of sexual violence.

Regarding the narrative of hate

  1. The state and its leadership should not under any circumstance be fueling the politics of indigeneity that thrives on creating the bogey of illegal immigration and hate propaganda that demonize the ‘illegal immigrants’. This was one of the main driving factors that caused and exacerbated the violence.
  2. In a situation that has been vitiated by hate propaganda, ethnic conflict and misinformation the state and its leadership have to be non-partisan.
  3. There are divergent perceptions and narratives of the history of nativity, indigeneity and immigration. But such perceptions cannot be allowed to influence the state and its politics.
  4. India is yet not a signatory to the Refugee Convention. But India needs to have a clear-cut policy regarding the recognition, registration of the refugees coming into India. They could be refugees fleeing war, conflict or persecution; or economic/climate refugees. Having a clear policy and procedure of recognizing and registering refugees and setting up a humanitarian response plan for refugees would go a long way in stalling the bogey of ‘illegal migration’ and the apprehension of the illegal immigrants.
  5. Militant organizations such as AT and ML have been accused of being on the rampage, engaging in violence with impunity. They need to be held accountable for their actions through serious criminal investigation, prosecution and exemplary punishment.
  6. The regression of Manipur Police into a communal force, acting in a partisan manner at the behest of the respective communities they belong to is a dangerous state of affairs that led to loss of lives, injuries and destruction of property. Looting of the police armoury by civilian outfits cannot happen without complicity of the police and the administration with those outfits at every level. There should be an impartial investigation by a sitting judge of the High Court into how this deterioration of the police force happened, the socio-political factors responsible, the key actors within and without the force that were instrumental in precipitating this failure of security.
  7. During ethnic conflict there should be a mandatory SoP for interventions – to halt violence and provide protection of non-combatant persons, while simultaneously engaging leaders of conflicting parties in peace dialogues. These SoPs should be disseminated widely known among citizens so that they can hold security forces and government officials accountable to the SoPs that they should mandatorily adhere to. Any failure in following SoPs or willful non-adherence should be considered as criminal dereliction of duty and action taken accordingly. Defining command responsibility at the highest levels across the executive is paramount in this regard.
  8. The Manipur Government should refrain forthwith from issuing any notifications changing the status of forests, and the access and control of tribal communities over the forests that they dwell in and around.
  9. The Manipur Government should also set up an impartial tribunal to settle in a fair and just manner, the disputes arising out of the many past contentious notifications that have deprived the tribal communities of their access and control over forests.
  10. There are rumours about the ongoing conflict being orchestrated by vested interests who would want to destabilize the region so that the state-corporate nexus could take control of the hills and the forests to harness (plunder) the natural resources in abundance there. Such clandestine geo-political interventions would be detrimental to the interests of the people of the state. It is important that the state and central governments come out transparently regarding the corporate business interventions that are being planned in Manipur and beyond. Any such interventions should not jeopardize the interests of the people, especially the tribal communities that reside in the hills.
  11. It is established that poppy cultivation and drug trafficking is not carried out exclusively by any one community. There are people from all communities who have been part of it. Nevertheless, there have been efforts to malign and demonize the Kukis alone as the kingpins of poppy cultivation and drug trafficking. The government had failed to dispel false information; and it has been fueling internecine hatred since. It is imperative that the government spearheads a new peace initiative wherein it makes all information transparently available and dispels such hate propaganda and bring the communities in conflict chart out a path of peace and cooperation.

Regarding Relief and Rehabilitation

Having looked at the state of relief and rehabilitation in both Kuki and Meitei camps, it is clear that the situation is as dire as it is complicated. There is great disparity between the quality of life Kukis have compared to Meiteis in their respective camps, even though both groups have been wasting away in temporary shelters that have taken the form of permanent prisons. With the government providing no concrete plan of action to rehabilitate IDPs into new permanent houses or help them relocate back into their original land, a sense of hopelessness and futility hangs heavy in Manipur.

Many important recommendations were made by the Gita Mittal Committee but very little seems to have been achieved on ground, as seen in the observations made post imposition of President’s rule. Therefore, it becomes crucial to end this chapter with two sets of recommendations. One common set of recommendations applicable to all relief camps and another set of recommendations targeting specific relief camps depending on their typology, rather than their ethnic composition. A snapshot of the same is provided in a table below. But before we get into targeted recommendations, we focus on general recommendations.

General Recommendations

  1. A special committee should be formed on direction of the appropriate judicial authority to oversee all matters pertaining to Relief, Rehabilitation and Restoration of every survivor of violence, particularly those residing in relief camps.
  2. The said committee should have experts from the executive and judiciary, alongside subject experts on various fields like education, health, nutrition, livelihood, etc. The committee should also have members from civil society and representatives from both the Kukis and the Meiteis.
  3. The Committee should have sufficient authority to set up a task-force for conducting a comprehensive area-wise, camp-wise survey to ascertain the number of inmates, the loss of property or family that they faced, entitlements awarded or denied under various schemes, etc. and submit a comprehensive report along with recommendations to both the government and the public.
  4. Based on the report, a phase-wise action plan for rehabilitation and resettlement should be created by the Committee and resources should be mobilized for the same. Simultaneously, coordination groups should be set up at village, block and district levels to implement the plan. These groups should consist of the local bureaucracy, civil society and community volunteers from the camps.
  5. Additional steps should be taken by the Committee to align such efforts with the State and Central government’s schemes and national or local-level nonprofits. The Committee should also establish monitoring mechanisms to ensure there is timely redressal of camp-specific or region-specific issues in the short-run, and basis, and a staggered, yet consistent process of relocation and resettlement for IDPs in every camp in the long-run.

A third-party evaluation of the entire Rehabilitation and Resettlement process should be undertaken so that implementation gaps can be rectified and additional post-settlement support programs on education, wellbeing, skill-training, etc can be undertaken on a need-basis.

Regarding health

The following programme and policy measures are proposed to address the immediate and long-term health system challenges identified by the Tribunal. These recommendations draw on testimony, field observations, and expert inputs, with the aim of ensuring equitable, conflict-sensitive, and rights-based health responses in Manipur.

Policy Recommendations

  1. Conflict-Sensitive Health Governance
    • Legally safeguard referral pathways across ethnic lines to ensure access to tertiary care regardless of location.
    • Enact a State Health in Conflict Protocol mandating service continuity, emergency supply chains, and healthcare neutrality protections during crises.
  2. Equitable Resource Allocation
    • Adopt a region-sensitive health budgeting framework to address the hill–valley infrastructure and staffing gap, with ring-fenced funds for underserved districts.
    • Align capital investment and human resource planning with Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) norms, prioritising facilities lacking critical diagnostic and surgical capacity.
  3. Insurance and Entitlement Access for Displaced Persons
    • Amend CMHT and PMJAY guidelines to permit service access without original documents during displacement, using alternative verification methods.
    • Fast-track the re-issuance of lost identity and health cards, and ensure empanelment of facilities accessible to displaced populations in both hill and valley districts.
    • For communities such as the Kuki population, who face barriers to accessing critical care and specialist services in the valley due to territorial boundaries, ensure that travel and treatment in other districts or states is fully covered.
  4. Disaggregated Data on Displacement and Services
    • Establish a robust mechanism for collecting and publicly sharing regular, disaggregated data on internally displaced persons by district, gender, age, disability status, and other relevant indicators.
    • Include data on the number connected to and accessing services—such as health care, mental health support, nutrition, housing, and legal aid—to ensure transparency, monitor equity, and guide targeted resource allocation.
  5. Financial Support from the Centre
    • Provide dedicated central financial packages for rebuilding and strengthening health services, recognising that the conflict has severely impacted Manipur’s primarily agrarian economy and reduced its fiscal capacity.
    • Funding should prioritise restoration of damaged infrastructure, emergency recruitment, procurement of essential supplies, and long-term investments in specialist facilities, tertiary care in the hills, and integrated mental health services.
  6. Accountability and Oversight
    • Establish an independent health rights monitoring body with representation from civil society, medical associations, and human rights institutions to track service delivery, violations of medical neutrality, and equity outcomes.
    • Mandate transparent public reporting of CMHT/PMJAY utilisation, disaggregated by district, ethnicity, and gender during conflict periods.
  7. Reintegration of a Divided Health Workforce
    • Develop a post-conflict workforce integration plan to rebuild mixed-ethnicity teams and re-establish cross-community trust in healthcare settings.
    • Incentivise inter-district postings post-conflict to reduce long-term entrenchment of ethnic segregation in healthcare employment.

The full list of Programme Recommendations relating to health can be viewed in the full report published on the website. These recommendations are classified under Continuity of Essential Health Services in Conflict Zones, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), Human Resources in Crisis Contexts, Urgent Filling of Vacant Health and Allied Positions, Nutrition and Disease Prevention in Displacement Settings, and Women Survivors of Gender and Sexual Violence.

Regarding justice and accountability

  1. A permanent bench of the Manipur High Court should be established in the hill region.
  2. The Supreme Court should appoint an SIT consisting of senior independent officers from states other than Manipur to monitor the cases arising out of the conflict. The SIT should be monitored by the Supreme Court and the SIT should report to the Supreme Court every month.
  3. The Supreme Court appointed SIT should investigate into the role of the armed forces and other security forces in the conflict. There should be departmental enquiry as well as criminal action against those found to have violated the law in any way, not only by direct participation but also by omission to act appropriately.
  4. The SIT should investigate the incidents of hate speeches which occurred directly prior to and during the conflict and arrest and prosecute the perpetrators including political figures and state functionaries.
  5. The State should provide adequate protection to all the witnesses.
  6. All the reports of the Gita Mittal Committee should be uploaded to the Supreme Court website.
  7. The Supreme Court should monitor implementation of the recommendations of the Gita Mittal Committee.
  8. Actions taken report with respect to the recommendations of the Gita Mittal Committee should be filed by the State and made public.
  9. There are numerous instances of cases filed against persons and organisations which engaged in fact finding including the editors guild among others. The State should withdraw these proceedings.
  10. Progress of the Justice Ajai Lamba commission should be made public by the Centre and followed up by the Supreme Court.

(The full list of recommendations is published on the PUCL website here. This includes a comprehensive list of targeted recommendations towards relief and recommendations, that are urgent and specific, and are a reflection of the felt needs that emerged from the testimonies and reports in the report. These are classified by Camp Typology, Community, Access to Resources, and Felt Needs and Vulnerabilities.)