In Nepal, the gender division of labour is highly skewed, especially when agricultural, pastoral and wage labour is combined with household, community and casual labour, and when high rates of men’s out-migration to urban cities, towns and cross-border destinations in the region and beyond, are considered. Recent comparative research on the ‘feminisation’ of agriculture and natural resource management, undertaken by ICIMOD and supported by I...

Maiti Nepal rescues an estimated 2,000 thousand girls each year, including children and women intercepted at borders and victims liberated from brothels and from various forms of abuse and exploitation. It provides them with education, protection and rehabilitation. Current estimates are that Maiti Nepal receives over 4,000 thousand reports of missing young women suspected of being abducted every year. The majority, an estimated 70%, are sold an...

Critical importance is the under-representation of women in policy and decision-making institutions, in dialogue on adaptation to climate change, in the governance of natural resources and in other important livelihood dimensions. Numerous position papers on climate change recognise and argue the importance of integrating gender issues and increasing women’s participation in climate change negotiations and processes (IUCN – The International Uni...

Vulnerability of human populations to extreme climate related events and changes in major climate parameters over the next 30 years.

As numerous studies have demonstrated, women bear the disproportionate burden of the costs of disasters, if their rights are not ensured and if gender, socio-cultural and political-economic inequalities within the context of gender relations and institutions are not addressed (Mehta, 2007). When disasters hit, more women than men die because of lack of information, mobility, decision-making, access to resources and training, gender-based cultura...

Some estimates from Maiti Nepal suggest that trafficking from Nepal may have increased from an estimated 3-5,000 per year during the pre-war times (1990) to possibly 12-20,000 per year in 2010. This includes internal and external trafficking. Internal trafficking increased extensively during and after the ten years of armed conflict in Nepal, though great uncertainty exists about such estimates.

Recent studies focus attention on the radically changed flood patterns, including heavy rainfall that leads to landslides and soil erosion. For example, in Nepal women and men have noted increased frequency and damage caused by the floods over a twenty-year time-span (Gautam et al., (2007). During floods, rivers may cut into agricultural land, inundate crops or wash the fields away in their entirety. Economically poor and marginalised households ...