Making Voices Heard and Count in Nepal

 

The Leave No One Behind coalition in Nepal was founded in 2018. Since then, the country lead organisation is VSO Nepal.

Current members (June 2024) are:

  • ActionAid Nepal
  • ADRA Nepal
  • Beyond Beijing Committee
  • CARE Nepal
  • CBM Nepal
  • Islamic Relief Nepal
  • Plan Nepal
  • VSO Nepal (Lead)
  • World Vision Nepal
  • WWF Nepal

The country coalition has delivered a project pilot, focussing on young women and girls. Target SDG was SDG 5.

The scaled up project aimed to improve the quality of evidence from marginalised communities and implement pro-poor and citizen-responsive advocacy strategies. The project aimed to bring citizens’ voices to bear on the progress of SDG targets under specific national indicators using various participatory tools, including focus group discussions, multi-stakeholder dialogues, and various social accountability tools, including community scorecards. 

Emphasis was placed on ensuring access for marginalised groups in evidence generation, advocacy, and other activities. The development of an online community indicator platform was planned to facilitate the collection of evidence and data for robust analysis and visualisation for advocacy. Finally, capacity building components were planned to improve data quality. 

Evidence from the various processes was collected, analysed and validated for use in advocacy and ultimately shared in local, provincial, national and international fora to raise the voices of marginalised groups and influence Nepal’s policy development process. 

The country coalition’s work has been recognised both locally and internationally, with findings cited in Nepal’s VNR 2020 and representation at global platforms such as the UN ESCAP Expert Dialogue and the UNSD Expert Dialogue. 

Key achievements include: 

– SDG tracking and toolkit development: The coalition worked with national partners to track progress on the SDGs, with a particular focus on marginalised groups. From this experience, they developed a toolkit to support civil society organisations (CSOs) in SDG monitoring, highlighting the importance of volunteering and youth engagement. 

– Youth engagement in climate advocacy: Various events were organised to increase youth understanding of climate advocacy and data leadership. These events equipped youth with advocacy skills to engage with decision-makers and influence policy, including provincial and national youth caucuses. 

– Knowledge Sharing and Resource Production: The coalition conducted events focusing on climate disaster resilience, the Community Scorecard and Citizen Generated Data (CGD) evidence for policy recommendations. They also published and disseminated the CGD toolkit to ministries, youth advocates and other relevant organisations. 

– Representation at global platforms: The team represented and presented at various global platforms, amplifying their voice, and contributing to the global dialogue on the SDGs and related issues. 

Direct beneficiaries of the project included representatives of youth-led civil society organisations, media volunteers, community volunteers and youth activists/advocates. Indirectly, we reached a further 818 people through the dissemination of the CGD toolkit. 

Looking ahead, the coalition recognise the need for continued efforts to engage with target populations and government agencies. They plan to increase human resources and scale up activities, while fostering collaboration with key stakeholders.  

Pilot Project

Country PublicationsTargeted SDGs

Data Tracking Site

Nepal Pilot

SDG Targets

  • 5.1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere;
  • 5.2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls;
  • 5.3: Eliminate harmful practices;
  • 5.4: Recognise and value unpaid care work;
  • 5.5: Equal opportunities in decision making;
  • 5.6: Sexual and reproductive health.

Target groups

    Young women and girls.

How did we engage marginalised groups in SDG monitoring?

    LNOB partners worked with Local Women’s Major Groups in nine wards of three municipalities belonging to different three provinces (2, 5, 6). These groups used community scorecards to lead citizens and service providers in a participatory process to monitor SDG Goal 5 in their local area. Citizens monitored performance on 41 indicators, including the official government indicators for the relevant SDG targets, as well as a set of supplementary indicators.

Ways target groups are left behind

    Some of the aggregate findings from the community scorecards were:

  • Women earn lower wages than men – and wage discrimination varies between local areas. Few public agencies are meeting the national target to put in place local laws to prevent discrimination. However, the laws are yet to come into effect.
  • Though awareness on violence against women and girls (VAWG) as a crime is high, there are still more efforts required to address GBV and harmful social norms.
  • Child marriage is still very high; and municipalities score badly on actions against those responsible for carrying out early marriage and harmful practices.
  • Municipalities score badly on having provisions for gender responsive social protection (like maternity leave, child care).
  • Lack of fully functional gender responsive budget allocation and inclusive data at ward level.

What is missed in national reporting?

  • National gender equality data fails to capture diverse results at municipal level – it is not able to show where change is needed.
  • National indicators only show part of the picture – the supplementary indicators in this research highlight key implementation gaps holding back achievement of SDG 5.

National advocacy impact so far

    In Nepal, service providers and citizens in the nine municipalities have developed future targets to improve in each of the 41 areas of gender equality measured in the community scorecards. These targets form a benchmark that citizens can now use to hold service providers to account.

Recommendations

  • Effectively implement practical and policy level interventions to combat violence against women and girls (VAWG), and improve gender equality, including:
    • Introduce gender responsive social protection provisions for women and interventions addressing issues of child marriage.
    • Introduce gender responsive budgets system at Municipality level (available already at national and province level) and follow-up mechanism on implementation
    • Increase women’s participation in decision making processes and positions
    • Enhance reproductive health knowledge and awareness through various awareness programs, including programs targeting harmful norms (such as menstrual taboos, child marriage)
    • Empower women economically by engaging them in enterprise development and income generation activities
    • Increase women’s awareness on their legal rights and services and complaint mechanisms available for combating issues of VAWG.
  • Improve the capacity of national statistical systems to collect disaggregated data by sex, age group, geography, caste/ethnicity, ability and poverty status + improve monitoring of Goal 5:
    • Enhance the capacity of local officers to standardise the data management system in public agencies on VAWG
    • Implement gender mainstreaming scorecards, focused at different levels of government, and include SDG 5 indicators in public institutions’ regular result matrices
  • Increase investment in science, technology, research and innovation in productive sectors and provide an enabling environment for private sector investment.
  • Create enabling environment for civil society and support in strengthening their solidarity and internal good governance promotion for increased interventions on gender equality.
  • Improve awareness on laws, policies and guidelines among service providers and strengthen mechanisms for monitoring and accountability of service delivery. Encourage public and local authorities to use community-led monitoring tools.
  • Empower women and marginalised communities so that their participation in local level development planning can be ensured and voices will be heard.

 

Country PublicationsTargeted SDGs

Data Tracking Site

Nepal Ongoing Project

Nepal Publications

Policy Brief: Promoting CGD to Achieve the Agenda of Leave No One Behind

The LNOB coalition in Nepal has produced a policy brief for duty bearers in the country to promote the use of citizen generated data to achieve the 2030 agenda of leaving no one behind.

Visit

Learning Report Leave No One Behind Partnership Nepal (2018-2022)

This report from LNOB coalition in Nepal presents key achievements, major insights and main lessons learned that have emerged from LNOB Nepal initiatives in Nepal conducted between 2018 and 2022.

Visit

National CGD Toolkit Nepal

This toolkit is prepared for the wider use by civil society in the public policy discourse on the SDGs. It presents both the theoretical concept of citizen-generated data (CGD) and its role in the overall development discourse, coming out of people’s voices, experiences and life stories.

Download

Islamic Relief Nepal Citizen-led Sustainable Development Goals Monitoring

The VSO-led LNOB Nepal consortium, including Islamic Relief Nepal prepared this report for documenting the progress against the SDG indicators and proposed actionable recommendations that contribute towards Nepal’s policy development process and tracking the SDGs progress over time.

Download

Making Voices Heard and Count in Nepal: Youth-led SDG Monitoring

Learn more about LNOB Nepal's project on youth-led SDG monitoring in this new fact sheet (2022).

Image shows the logo of the Leave No One Behind Partnership

Download

Trapped in the Intersection: Youth, Gender Inequality, and Discrimination in Surkhet District, Nepal

This article highlights findings from a recent report from the Leave No One Behind Consortium in Nepal, which uncovers how gender discrimination continues to restrict access to higher education and vocational skills training for girls.

Picture of a Group of people around a table in Nepal attending an orientation and Capacity Building meeting for Right Holders on SDG and Social Accountability tools

Visit

Report: LNOB Nepal Citizen-Led SDG Monitoring

This report highlights the processes, findings and learning of Birendranagar Municipality Ward no. 9 & 10 and Lekhbesi Municipality Ward no. 8 & 10 of Surkhet district on SDG monitoring, adopting the Community Scorecard approach.

Image shows the logo of the Leave No One Behind Partnership

Download

Community Score Card Report: Janakpur, Nepal

This report shares findings from the community-driven data generated in Janakpur in 2021 using the community scorecard tool.

Download

Nepal VNR - Citizen's Report 2020

This publication is a joint effort by wider civil society networks, including the LNOB consortium in Nepal, and is recognised by the National Planning Commission in Nepal's official VNR report in 2020.

Visit

Nepal Pilot Summary

This document outlines the findings from the Nepal LNOB coalition's work during the pilot phase 2018 - 2019

Visit

Our Target SDGS in Nepal

Click on the SDG to reveal more information

4. Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning
4. Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning

4. Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning

Obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. Major progress has been made towards increasing access to education at all levels and increasing enrolment rates in schools particularly for women and girls. Basic literacy skills have improved tremendously, yet bolder efforts are needed to make even greater strides for achieving universal education goals. For example, the world has achieved equality in primary education between girls and boys, but few countries have achieved that target at all levels of education.

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment under the Millennium Development Goals (including equal access to primary education between girls and boys), women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world.

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.

Providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large.

Related Nepal Targets

5.1

End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere

5.2

Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation

5.3

Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation

5.4

Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate

5.5

Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life

5.6

Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

The international community has made significant strides towards lifting people out of poverty. The most vulnerable nations – the least developed countries, the landlocked developing countries and the small island developing states – continue to make inroads into poverty reduction. However, inequality still persists and large disparities remain in access to health and education services and other assets.

Additionally, while income inequality between countries may have been reduced, inequality within countries has risen. There is growing consensus that economic growth is not sufficient to reduce poverty if it is not inclusive and if it does not involve the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental.

To reduce inequality, policies should be universal in principle paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations.

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Climate change is now affecting every country on every continent. It is disrupting national economies and affecting lives, costing people, communities and countries dearly today and even more tomorrow.

People are experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, which include changing weather patterns, rising sea level, and more extreme weather events. The greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are driving climate change and continue to rise. They are now at their highest levels in history. Without action, the world’s average surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century and is likely to surpass 3 degrees Celsius this century—with some areas of the world expected to warm even more. The poorest and most vulnerable people are being affected the most.

Affordable, scalable solutions are now available to enable countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies. The pace of change is quickening as more people are turning to renewable energy and a range of other measures that will reduce emissions and increase adaptation efforts.

But climate change is a global challenge that does not respect national borders. Emissions anywhere affect people everywhere. It is an issue that requires solutions that need to be coordinated at the international level and it requires international cooperation to help developing countries move toward a low-carbon economy.

To address climate change, countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015. The Agreement entered into force shortly thereafter, on 4 November 2016. In the agreement, all countries agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and given the grave risks, to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius. You can learn more about the agreement here.

Implementation of the Paris Agreement is essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and provides a roadmap for climate actions that will reduce emissions and build climate resilience.

See which countries have signed it and which ones have deposited their ratification instruments.

16. Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
16. Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

16. Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals is dedicated to the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, the provision of access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels.