b. the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(CERD), Article 5(d)(iii);
c. the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW), Article 9;
d. the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Articles 7, 8;
e. the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Article 18.
24. Nepal has not made any reservations to CEDAW or the CRC, which contain important
protections against gender discrimination in nationality law (CEDAW Article 9) , the right of a
child to acquire their parent’s nationality without discrimination on the basis of the parent’s
gender, and the prevention of childhood statelessness (CRC Articles 7 and 8).
25. According to the Treaty Act of Nepal 2047 (1990), in instances where the provisions of a treaty
to which Nepal is party are inconsistent with the provisions of national laws, the provisions of
the treaty shall be enforceable and supersede national laws which contradict them. 18 As such,
these treaties impose a strict human rights regime on Nepal whereby the state has accepted
obligations to ensure gender equality and non-discrimination and to safeguard against
statelessness.
26. Nepal is not a party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the
1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
Statelessness in Nepal – A Snapshot
27. In 2017, an estimated 5.4 million people (constituting 24 percent of the population aged 16
and over) lacked citizenship documentation.19 While many undocumented persons will likely
be recognised as citizens should they apply, a large but unquantified number within this group,
have either been denied citizenship or are likely to be at risk of statelessness. Consequently,
while it is not possible to accurately estimate the number of stateless persons in the country:
a. The scale of the problem is significant, likely in the hundreds of thousands.
b. the lack of more accurate data is in itself an example of the failures of the state to
identify and address this issue as the serious challenge it is.
28. UNHCR’s 2019 statistical information follows a recent pattern of reporting the number of
stateless persons in Nepal as a ‘-‘, indicating that Nepal has either reported zero stateless
persons, or that data was ‘unavailable.’ 20 UNHCR last provided statistical information on
statelessness in Nepal in 2011, when it estimated the population to be 800,000. 21 However,
the government rejected the figure,22 and since then, no statistics have been reported. UNHCR
has stated that a “large number of individuals lack citizenship certificates” but that “these
individuals are not necessarily all stateless”,23 but this explanation does not shed any further
light on the scale of the problem.
18
Treaty Act of Nepal, 2047 (1990), Article 9(1).
United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Nepal Country Report on Human Rights Practices for
2017, p. 1.
20
According UNHCR’s Report regarding global trends in forced displacement for 2019, a dash in the data table ("-") indicates that the value
is zero, not available or not applicable: UNHCR, Global Trends – Forced Displacement in 2019 (2020), p. 78.
21 UNHCR, UNHCR Global Trends (2010), Table 1, p. 37.
22 A. Giri, ‘Govt Refutes UN’s “Stateless Nepalis” Report’, Kathmandu Post (3 October 2012).
23 See, inter alia, UNHCR, Global Trends – Forced Displacement in 2019 (2020), p. 77.
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