International Alert, together with partners Equal Access Nepal and Youth Action Nepal, recently completed a training course in Nepal for interns who will be responsible for undertaking research on Nepali youth’s experiences and perceptions of current security challenges and responses. The interns, four from each of the districts involved - Bara, Dang and Sunsari – and one from the capital Kathmandu, were trained on conflict-sensitive and participatory research and facilitation techniques, as well as on the core themes and issues related to public security and justice in Nepal.
The training is part of a new three-year initiative funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seeks to contribute to building and fostering a constructive role for youth by ensuring their access to security and justice in Nepal.
The interns have now completed conducting focused group discussions and interviews with key informants for the research in their respective districts. These include key individuals from administration offices, police offices, the Federation of Nepali Journalists, the NGO Federation of Nepal, and the Nepal Bar Association. After a preliminary analysis of the discussions and interviews, the interns will present their findings to the relevant stakeholders, including government administration officers, police officers, and media and youth organisations at the district level, through open discussions during the month of February. This will be followed by two regional retreats for young Nepalis where the interns will have the opportunity to interact and share their findings with the retreat's participants and experienced peacebuilders in Nepal, who will contribute to bridge the knowledge gap between the older and the younger generations of peacebuilders.
As part of the same initiative, fourteen young journalists and radio producers, four from each of the districts and two from Kathmandu, are scheduled to receive media reporting and production training in March. During the first year of the initiative, they will produce more than 50 radio programmes, both in Nepali and in local languages, based on the findings of the interns’ research in the districts. By working closely together, the radio producers and research interns will therefore form a network of young Nepalis working on public security and justice issues in each of the districts. This is designed to raise wider public awareness around these issues and increase the capacity of youth to advocate for the inclusion of their needs and experiences in policy-making and practice.
Within the first year of the initiative, nine dialogue forums will be formed to involve all relevant stakeholders in the districts and three advocacy forums will be held in Kathmandu with the participation of some members of the Constituent Assembly. This will culminate in a workshop aimed at consolidating and validating the findings and a final conference to share the findings with the wider public at the national level. A lessons-learned briefing paper on youth’s perceptions of security and justice in Nepal, aimed at both national and international policy-makers, will also be published as a conclusion of the first year’s initiatives of this project.