Nepal Unprepared for Imminent Earthquakes

Nepal now ranks 11^th on a list of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, yet it remains one of the least disaster-prepared nations globally.

Nepal’s President Urged to Reject War-Era Amnesty

The Nepali government is receiving significant national and international blowback for a draft ordinance that rights groups, including ones in the United States, say would allow for a widespread amnesty for some accused of human rights and other abuses perpetrated during Nepal's decade-long civil war.

Nepal’s Female Farmers Fear Climate Change

When Arati Chaudhary’s husband left for India to find work as a migrant labourer, the job of managing farm and family fell on her slender shoulders.

Nepal Misses Pro-Women Constitution

Nepal’s squabbling political parties have squandered an opportunity to pass into law one of the most gender-friendly constitutions ever devised.

NEPAL: Protests Fail to Stop Climate Loans

Nepal will implement five projects with 110 million dollars sanctioned by the controversial Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), ignoring protestors who say this least developed country merits grants rather than climate loans.

NEPAL: Praying Against Climate Change

There are gasps from the audience as a series of shocking images flash across the screen: human hands eaten away by arsenic, the carcass of a cow so emaciated that it looks two-dimensional, a starved child with matchstick legs grasping at the udder of an animal for sustenance.

NEPAL: Community Forestry Unfazed by Political Turmoil

Nepal’s joint forest management system has taken such deep roots that the country’s prolonged political instability has had little effect on it.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Himalayan Nations Yet to Break the Ice

Chungda Sherpa, a former herder from eastern Nepal, has a warning tale ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Durban.

ENVIRONMENT: Nepali Women Live With Climate Terror

Suntali Shrestha wrings her hands in tension and despair as she recounts how she has been spending sleepless nights fearing that the flood alarm in her village would go off while she slept and she would be submerged.

NEPAL: No Brakes on Sex Trafficking

While a Nepalese campaign to stop human trafficking gains recognition by the White House and Hollywood, Nepal continues to be a prime source for sex trafficking, thanks to unsettled conditions created by a protracted political crisis.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Nepali Women Sow a Secure Future

Learning a lesson from crop failures attributed to climate change, Nepal’s women farmers are discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks.

NEPAL: Fasting Against Corruption Spreads

Inspired by Indian socialist leader Anna Hazare’s celebrated public fast against corruption in the Indian capital of New Delhi, starvation protests have sprung up in Nepal to press for a timely new constitution.

NEPAL: Adapting to Climate Change Can be Simple

Saraswoti Bhetwal’s terraced fields stand out in the sub-Himalayan Lamdihi village as a mosaic of shapes and colours formed by beans, bitter gourd, chilly, tomato, lady’s fingers and other crops.

NEPAL: Peace Fails to Stop Female Workers’ Exodus

Six years ago Shantimaya Dong Tamang went to Kuwait to work as an illegal domestic worker, falling for brokers’ tales of how she could earn good money and stand on her own feet.

NEPAL: Improved Wood Stoves Save Health, Environment

When Binita Lamichhane got married she was troubled by her husband's bloodshot eyes. "What happened to your eyes?" the 18-year-old bride asked. "Smoke," came the answer.

NEPAL: Religious Practices Oppress Women

The recent gang-rape of a Buddhist nun and her expulsion from her sect have sparked a debate about the deep-rooted religious traditions and biases that foster discrimination and violence, especially against women, in this South Asian state.

Trekking Trails Lead Nepal Women to Empowerment

Dawa Gyalmo Sherpa’s three sons went to look for blue-collar jobs in Malaysia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, saying Mulkharka, their tiny village in Kathmandu valley, had no livelihood prospects.

NEPAL: Sex Workers Demand a Place in the Constitution

Every time Bijaya Dhakal goes out to meet people and tell them what she does for a living, the simple task becomes an act of courage requiring nerves of steel. Dhakal is the founder of Nepal’s first and only organisation of women sex workers now trying to make the state and society listen to a community long hushed by poverty and discrimination.

NEPAL: Govt Clears Last Minefield but Threats Remain

Nine years ago, Bhagwati Devi Gautam was a field labourer in Rukum, one of Nepal’s worst insurgency-hit districts. Hurrying to attend a programme on the occasion of International Women’s Day, she was forced to halt at a police checkpoint for the mandatory examination of her handbag.

NEPAL: Women Battle for New Constitution

With the May 28 target for a new constitution approaching and Nepal’s coalition government admitting it would not make the deadline, women are pushing for rights they want enshrined in the document.

WOMEN’S DAY: Nepalese Maoists Abandoned by Party and Family

As ‘Flames of the Snow’, a documentary on the ten-year civil war waged by Nepal’s Maoist party played at Kathmandu’s Kumari cinema recently, Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" saluted women who fought in his People’s Liberation Army (PLA).