“It was good to see that, despite the limited time at their disposal, States listened to our recommendations and reflected them [during the UPR session].”
“Thank you very much for your clear guidance on this process and for sharing the resource materials and suggested action points. This has been extremely helpful.”
– Local civil society representatives from Nepal
The UPR session of Nepal took place on January 21, 2026 in the Palais des Nations (Geneva). As a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls for each UN Member State to undergo a peer review of its human rights records every 4.5 years, the UPR provides each State the opportunity to report on the actions it has taken to improve the human rights situations in the country and to receive recommendations – informed by multi-stakeholder input and pre-session reports – from UN Member States for continuous improvement.
Earlier, in January, in preparation for the UPR session of Nepal, the CCIG has supported local partners by providing access and insights on relevant documentation and facilitating their remote attendance of the UPR session.
On March 3, 2026, in partnership with DKA Austria and FastenAktion, the CCIG organized an online meeting with local civil society actors from Nepal to discuss the outcomes of the UPR review and help coordinate possible UPR related activities at the local and International level.
The 8 Nepali civil society representatives who attended the meeting represented Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC), Dignity Initiative (DI), Social Work Institute (SWI) and Consortium of Organizations Working for Child Participation (Consortium Nepal). Each of these organizations works within diverse thematic areas relevant to their communities, such as the right to food, right to land, minorities’ rights, and children and adolescents’ rights.
This meeting provided local actors with an opportunity to share their views on whether their human rights concerns were adequately reflected in the recent UPR, analyze the Draft Report of the UPR Working Group and in particular the list of recommendations addressed to Nepal, and assess the impact of their advocacy actions undertaken prior the UPR session.
In fact, between October and November 2025, local partners from Nepal had participated in an online advocacy training delivered by CCIG to provide guidance and support for their advocacy work prior to the UPR session of Nepal. As a result, 26 States delegations were reached out in order to ensure that local partners’ key human rights concerns were indeed addressed during the UPR session. From November 25 to 28, Nepali civil society actors had come to Geneva: during their visit, they took part in 7 bilateral meetings with several State representatives, delivered a speech at the EU Delegation’s informal meeting with NGOs, and attended the UPR Info pre-session of Nepal (more information available here).
As a result of these efforts, during the online meeting held in March, local participants welcomed with appreciation that 2 out of the 7 UPR recommendations addressed to Nepal on the right to food and right to land were made by State representatives they had met during their visit to Geneva. Moreover, 2 additional recommendations generally relevant to their priority topics were also made by State representatives previously met.
As a conclusion to the meeting, participants were encouraged to identify UPR recommendations to be prioritized for implementation; check whether Nepal will accept these recommendations in the upcoming weeks; and join forces to boost sensitization on key UPR recommendations at the local level.
We were glad to hear their feedback on previous joint activities and how the training and technical support sessions provided by the CCIG have been helpful to them.
The CCIG remains committed to supporting local civil society actors through various human rights capacity-building initiatives on the effective use of UN mechanisms to better protect human rights locally.
To watch the UPR session of Nepal: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1umrfvn82
To find documentation about the UPR of Nepal: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/np-index