It's August 2025, and Nepal's Bajura district is mournful-even angry. The Himalayan Times this week laid bare how a new generation of Nepalese children starve as their mothers weep by cracked beds in district hospitals, unable to feed or save them. Meanwhile, Kathmandu is a vortex of self-congratulation: international agencies, UN bodies, and 'rights champions' mark their golden and diamond jubilees, raising flutes of sparkling wine to celebrate decades of 'progress.'

This disconnect isn't mere oversight-it's a scandal. After all these years, UNICEF, WHO, and the World Food Programme, flanked by armies of Human Rights experts, have failed Bajura's children. Nepal remains a showcase, not of results, but of what happens when privilege is mistaken for purpose.

Of course, it's not just foreign faces behind the revolving doors of power. Increasingly, Nepal's own high-caste elites have risen to the top within UN agencies and their donor partners. This, we are told, is progress: representation, homegrown leadership, 'local voice.' Yet anyone looking for evidence of impact will soon see the bitter truth – their contribution is indistinguishable from their expat predecessors. Trained for diplomacy, schooled in the art of saying precisely nothing, their mouths open only after retirement. It is a performance so flawless that it has become an international cliché-the third world UN employee who never questions the status quo until the last paycheck is cashed.

Until then, the system is expertly upheld. Nepali UN mandarins endorse every foreign-led initiative, applaud every conference, and remain flawless in their silence about institutional failings. If a new policy is badly designed, if a workshop contributes nothing, if a programme fails to reach Bajura's hungry children-they simply wait out the term, sending their kids abroad for education while singing the praises of partnership and 'sustainability.'

How strange, then, that Bajura's malnourished should serve as the backdrop to Kathmandu's upscale gatherings. The international community returns again and again, setting up panels on climate change, intersectional gender rights and-lately-LGBTQI inclusion. As they network over gluten-free pastries and organic Darjeeling, they are a world away from Santosh and Jamuna Neupane, two children claimed by malnutrition this year alone. Ask anyone in those meeting rooms about Muktikot's tragedy, and you'll get rehearsed answers and hashtags, never action or accountability.

It's a cast of characters as predictable as a poorly written script: UN officials (foreign and Nepali) jostling for promotion, human rights consultants drafting yet another white paper, and a chorus of Kathmandu's upper-caste elites finding creative ways to keep privilege in the family. Nepotism in Nepal isn't a secret-it's a hiring strategy. Agencies become dynasties; cousins replace cousins, contracts pass between cronies, and progress is measured not in children saved but in conference registrations.

If longevity were proof of success, Nepal would be thriving by now. Fifty years for UNICEF, seventy for the World Health Organisation, longer for countless human rights boards. Yet, for all their anniversaries, Bajura's death toll rises; mothers still sell jewellery and livestock to reach the hospital, only to find underfunded wards and officials more interested in poster campaigns than providing food.

Nepal's nutrition policy is a monument to the delusional-the zero-mortality target by 2025 is now so far from reality it seems almost cruel. The policy architects, both local and foreign, deliver speeches in air-conditioned halls, generating recommendations and hashtags. Beyond these walls, children continue to die hungry, powerless.

Let's be frank: the international agencies have become echo chambers. Workshop headcounts and frequent flyer miles are easier to tally than lives improved. The capital's UN staff-overwhelmingly upper-caste, Nepal-bred, and internationally groomed-equate presence with relevance, never realising how little their work touches Nepal's rural poor. Change is not only absent; it is actively blocked by the very people who claim to champion it, content in their acquiescence until retirement sets them free to finally, belatedly, speak the truth.

It would be a sublime irony had it not been so tragic. International agencies pride themselves on multisectoral partnerships, while third world UN employees excel at protecting privilege and endorsing the status quo, right up until the exit interview.

The next UN anniversary in Nepal should not be held at a luxury hotel, but at Bajura's hospital courtyard. No velvet ropes, no self-congratulatory speeches-just a reckoning with the reality of years wasted.

Nepal deserves agencies with conscience and courage, not just credentials. Bajura's coffins should haunt international and Nepali aid workers alike. Until privilege is surrendered and action replaces applause, Nepal will endure the farce of five-star workshops in a country where children starve in silence.

As we approach another decade, with more Nepali elites rising in the ranks, the lesson is sharp: the real legacy of international agencies and their Nepali mandarins is not years of service, but decades of complicity.

If they continue to put comfort above accountability, Nepal's children will keep paying the price. The only workshop worth hosting is 'How Not to Be a UN Employee in Nepal'-before poverty steals another breath.

Prof Peela is a geopolitical and security expert on South Asia and Asia Pacific