Nepal

A petition to require consent from the woman’s husband in a law in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal allowing women to have an abortion on fetuses of less than 12 weeks cited CEDAW conventions mandating equality between men and women on matters relating to family planning. The Court dismissed the petition emphasizing that CEDAW is intended to promote and protect women’s rights and to consider the wording of equality in such absolute terms would, in fact, be contrary to this original intent.

A woman who had been a repeated victim of marital rape petitioned the Supreme Court of Nepal to make sentencing for marital rape on par with sentencing for other types of rape. The Court found that punishing marital rape differently from other forms of rape violated equal rights provisions in the Interim Constitution and international law, especially considering that prior sentencing guidelines of three to six months put the victim in danger of repeated violence and rape.

After hearing a petition from the Forum for Women, Law and Development in Nepal, the Supreme Court ruled to invalidate a law allowing men to seek a second wife if, after 10 years of marriage, they have not had a child with their first wife. The Court recognized that this law gave unequal treatment to women and men by not giving comparable recourse to women and implying that infertility was the fault of the woman. The law was therefore inconsistent with Article 11 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal and with international gender rights conventions including CEDAW.

The petitioner filed to amend a provision in pension payments by the Nepalese Army that withheld payments from married daughters. The Court ruled to invalidate this measure based on the grounds that pension payments to children were stopped at 18 years, before the legal age of marriage, making it obsolete. However, the Court also acknowledged that this provision was contrary to Article 11 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal which guarantees equal rights to all, in particular highlighting that equality is meant in practical terms sometimes necessitating positive discrimination.

Meera Dhungana, an important women’s rights advocate in Nepal, petitioned the government to deem void a provision of the Bonus Act in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal that prevents married daughters of a deceased from receiving compensation upon his death. The petitioner claimed that this provision discriminates against women based on their gender and marital status, thus contradicting the Constitution and international gender rights conventions.

A petition on behalf of the Forum for Women, Law and Development in Nepal called for revision of a law prohibiting dowries. The law imposed a much stricter sentence on the bride’s family than the grooms, making it inconsistent with the equal rights provisions in Article 11 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal and international human rights standards. The Court’s decision to revise the law, which cited earlier rulings based on Article 11, shows a continued dedication to transforming the Nepalese legal code in the interest of gender rights and equality.

While there are certain legal protections in place, such as a law establishing the minimum age of marriage at 20, enforcement is weak. Police and local governments rarely intervene to prevent child marriages. Nepal’s Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 5, targets ending child marriage by 2030. Further developing the National Plan of Action to End Child Marriage would advance Nepal’s National Strategy to End Child Marriage. 37% of girls in Nepal marry before age 18, 10% percent marry before age 15, and many marry around the time they begin menstruating.

Citing the prevalence of uterus prolapse in pregnant women in Nepal, the petitioner filed that the government should be responsible for providing infrastructures to support women’s reproductive health under Article 20 of the Interim Constitution of Nepal which guarantees the right to reproductive health for all women.

A petition claimed that the traditional practice of electing young girls as Kumaris, or “goddesses”, who are expected to follow certain social restrictions and appear at religious festivals violated the rights of the child. After ordering a study the Court found that this practice did not prevent the Kumari from getting an education or qualify as child labor.

The Court upheld a petition to quash a provision of the Nepalese Passport Act that requires women under the age of 35 to procure a letter of consent from a guardian before obtaining a passport. The Court ruled that the provision was contrary to Article 11 of the Constitution because it infringed on equal treatment between men and women, was contrary to the mandate for positive discrimination to ensure equality for women, and inhibited a woman’s right to enjoy the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and international human rights treaties.