Report on Citizenship Law Nepal Sabin Shrestha 1. Introduction Almost nine years after a second people's movement, the Constituent Assembly (CA) promulgated a new constitution on 20 September 2015. The intervening period witnessed the dissolution of the first CA on 28 May 2012 and the election of a second CA on 19 November 19 2013 as a result of the top political parties failing to reach consensus on some contentious issues, including citizenship. Consequent to the destructive earthquake that devastated the nation on 25 April 2015, the top four political parties adopted a fast-track process and resolved all the contentious issues, thereby promulgating the first constitution ever drafted by an elected body in Nepal. The new constitution has certain provisions that differ from the earlier Interim Constitution and which are therefore in contradiction to the existing Citizenship Act. In addition, the Supreme Court of Nepal has made a number of landmark decisions on citizenship, issuing directive orders to the Ministry of Home Affairs and district administration offices to comply with the provisions on citizenship. Parliament has yet to revise Nepal’s Citizenship Act to comply with the decisions of the Supreme Court. Nepal is a party to a number of human rights treaties, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It therefore has an obligation to abide by the norms of these treaties and to draft laws on nationality in line with the principles they contain. 2. Historical Background Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious country comprising more than 100 castes and ethnic groups and eight major religious traditions. These castes and ethnic groups are distinguished by their languages, customs and myths of origin, and have different sizes, RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2017/8 - © 2017 Author 1