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LESSON

Lesson Learned: Enhancing Dialogue for Inclusive Constitution

The grantee focused on the empowerment of marginalized groups. The main project output – the alternative constitution – was drafted without including country's dominant political parties. This weakened the chances of the project to establish a lasting effect on Nepal’s constitutional drafting process.
Project Partner
National Coalition Against Racial Discrimination
Project Description
This project aimed to improve the situation of Nepal's historically marginalized and indigenous Dalit, Muslim and Adivasi groups. The project was undertaken to correspond with the schedule of the country's Constituent Assembly (CA), which was entrusted with the development of a new constitution for Nepal. It developed coalitions among the country's marginalized groups, in order to increase receptiveness of political parties to Dalit and indigenous issues and to reflect them in the new constitution. The grantee made a deliberate effort to provide the marginalized group representatives and those involved in the drafting of the constitution high quality information about issues related to constitutional processes and examples of federalist practice in other countries. Although the Constituent Assembly dissolved without completing its mission, the extent to which the alternative constitution, the project's central output, has contributed to preliminary constitutional drafts of the Constituent Assembly‘s thematic committees demonstrate the project's impact.
Evaluation Date
February 2012
Country