In Nepal, Indigenous women generate green jobs through lime cultivation

In Nawalpur district, 197 km southwest of Kathmandu, women from the Tharu and Kumal tribes in Madyavindu Municipality worked together throughout the 2021 monsoon season finding ways to adapt and support their communities while adhering to pandemic safety guidelines, demonstrating their inspiring resilience and socio-economic prowess.

Several forest regulations recently introduced by Nepal’s Ministry of Forest and Environment are raising serious human rights concerns among the country’s local forest communities. These provisions, currently under cabinet review, are geared to become part of Nepal’s Forest Act. But local forest communities say they are in direct contrast to the Act’s spirit and violate their rights.

As Nepal wrote a new constitution and laid out guidelines for three tiers of elections, community forest users worried that the new government would leave little room for the voices of traditionally marginalized groups, like rural women and Dalits, a historically persecuted community in Nepal and India. The power to sit at the bargaining table and make important policy decisions, they agreed, had to come from adequate representation, particularly at the local government level.

That’s why women leaders and activists at a civil society organization called FECOFUN decided to run for office.

Does Conservation “Need People”?
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Nature is Speaking, a new campaign from Conservation International, uses celebrity voices to personify natural forces — Penelope Cruz is water, Kevin Spacey is the…

FECOFUN: 5th General Assembly of FECOFUN
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We are very pleased to inform you all that the Fifth General Assembly of Federation of Community Forest Users Group (FECOFUN), an umbrella organization of…

Quarterly Update 2013.4
Quarterly Update 2013.4

2013 saw a lot of serious progress in forest tenure reform: legal judgments that upheld the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; successful local…

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RRI Quarterly Update (July – September 2013)

The crisis of insecure land rights–most immediately felt by the millions of Indigenous Peoples and other local communities who risk losing their lands and livelihoods–profoundly…

FECOFUN: Doti Declaration Paper
FECOFUN: Doti Declaration Paper

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IRIN: Balancing conservation and people's access to land

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