Strengthening Multiparty Democracy in Nepal

DIPD has worked in Nepal since 2012, supporting the country on its path from a civil war-torn state towards a more stable democracy through the engagement with political parties. The cornerstone of the partnership is “Joint Mechanism for Political Party Strengthening” (JOMPOPS) - a platform for cooperation among Nepal’s major parties. DIPD has been providing technical support mainly involving experience sharing of the leaders from the Danish political parties based on the request from Nepal’s political parties.

The engagement in Nepal is demand-driven and based on the local ownership.  In the early years, JOMPOPS focused on strengthening multiparty collaboration among political parties to support the finalization of Nepal’s new constitution. However, the partnership has in later years developed, focusing on local-level politics and supporting women in politics, even though the multiparty activities have continued as a cornerstone in the programme. The Danish Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre), recently engaged in the partnership, emphasizing the engagement of youth in politics.

All the activities in Nepal are decided and implemented by the local partners themselves. The JOMPOPS platform has set-up multiparty and intra-party committees at different levels as per the need of the activities and also implements the activities through collaboration with relevant national and international institutions. 

The programme consists of training activities in topics related to multiparty cooperation, youth inclusion in politics, women in politics, and local level politics. Through the SLP partnership, there are exchange activities where Danish politicians share their experiences with the Nepalese counterparts and vice-versa.

Between 2014 and 2017 the most important result has been regular multiparty dialogue and collaboration among JOMPOPS parties that contributed positively to the drafting of Nepal’s new Constitution promulgated in September 2015, considered also a major milestone of the peace process. Equally important is the continued dialogue and engagement among the major political parties in Nepal on several important issues such as ending violence against women after the promulgation of the new Constitution.

On the run up to the last local elections that took place after nearly 20 years in Nepal, the Election Commission of Nepal trained thousands of potential women candidates, many of whom got elected, with technical support from DIPD.

2018-2020 saw new results.

Immediately after the elections, in early 2018, JOMPOPS took a lead in training the newly elected women MPs particularly in the newly formed provincial parliaments. Sharing of experience from Danish politicians was facilitated by DIPD during such trainings.

With inspiration from the “Folkemøde” at Bornholm, JOMPOPS organized a Democracy Fair in Kathmandu in 2018. During the three-day Democracy Fair, political debates were taken to the streets of Kathmandu, with thousands of local citizens, party members and political leaders gathering to celebrate democracy and cross-political collaboration.

During 2019 there was an agreement on a Youth Leadership Programme among JOMPOPS parties. The JOMPOPS parties agreed to target youths under 30 years old, which is far below the normal youth definition in Nepal. This is a shift in mentality to actively encourage young people in their 20s to engage in Nepalese politics. The core group of 28 persons have been well trained on topics such as multiparty collaboration and gender equality that they were able to further train 545 other youth peers in the parties.

JOMPOPS parties formed Youth Multiparty Debate-organizing Committees, and 70 young people took part in the first multiparty youth debate in December.