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How effective, innovative and imaginative is our diplomacy, in this day and age of a rapidly changing world?

Let us do a fact check on the basis of a key test case. 

On 07 Oct 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Gaza Strip, killing more than 1100 people, including 10 Nepali students, and capturing 250, including a young Nepali student from Kanchanpur, Bipin Joshi, who was studying agriculture in Israel along with his friends.

It will be wrong to say that the government has been doing nothing to secure the release of the youth, bring him home and bring cheers to his family and the country. It has been making frantic efforts that have failed to yield a result.

Let’s revisit some of those efforts.    

On 24 Sept 2024, for instance, Minister for Foreign Affairs Arzu Rana Deuba, addressing the Ministerial Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement during the 79th United Nations General Assembly, urged the global community to take initiatives for the safe release of Joshi.

On 08 Jan 2025, Minister Deuba requested the Israeli government, through Ambassador Shmulik Arie Bass, to secure the release of Joshi.

On Jan 15, in the wake of reports that Hamas was releasing some hostages, Minister Deuba called up Qatar’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, who serves as Qatar’s chief negotiator and mediator in peace talks with Hamas, and appealed for special intervention to secure Joshi’s release.

During a meeting with Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad bin Sultan Al Muraikhi in Doha on Feb 16. Minister Deuba sought the latter’s good offices in securing Joshi’s release.

Adding to these efforts, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli recently called upon Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi,  the president of Egypt, which played a key role in mediating the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, renewing Nepal’s request for Egypt’s assistance in securing the release of Joshi.

Nepal has been playing a key role in the UN peacekeeping missions around the world for about 70 years and its involvement in securing peace in the Mideast is as long. It has served twice in the UN Security Council as an elected non-permanent member, in 1969-70 and in 1988-1989. In 2018-20, Nepal served as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Nepal was the first country in South Asia to recognize Israel after its birth as a state on 14 May 1948. The country has excellent relations with Qatar, which is a popular employment destination for Nepali workers. And the enduring ties between Nepal and Egypt, a key NAM member, go a long time back.

Despite these positives and efforts from our side, the release of Joshi has not materialized even as freedom comes calling for many of the hostages.

This debacle reminds one of Henry Kissinger’s famous quote: Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

And a razor-sharp Chanakya goes: In diplomacy, the tongue is mightier than the sword. 

In the words of Chanakya, diplomacy is the art of winning the war without bloodshed.

Delays in securing the release of Joshi perhaps call for learning lessons from past failures and adopting a subtler, quieter approach, keeping in mind that this is an acid test for our “art of the impossible”.

Article 18 (1) of the Constitution of Nepal, 2015 states: All citizens shall be equal before law. No person shall be denied the equal protection of law.

Article 38 of the charter states that no physical, mental, sexual and psychological or other any type of violent act or exploitation shall be inflicted against women on the ground of religious, social, cultural traditions, practices or on any other grounds. In particular, clause 4 of that article gives women the right to participate in all bodies of the State on the basis of the principle of proportional inclusion, clause 5 grants them the right to obtain special opportunity in education, health, employment and social security on the basis of positive discrimination whereas clause 6 gives the spouse the equal right to property and family affairs. 

While our modern laws “guarantee” equal rights, roles and opportunities for women in every walk of life, even scriptures offer their utmost respect to women and girls while likening the male and the female to the wheels of a chariot. They argue that gods become happy where there’s respect for women.

Despite such guarantees and sweet words, women and girls remain far from the forefront in every walk of national life, though there are some exceptions. After the promulgation of the 2015 constitution, the country has got, apart from a head of the state, more women representatives in the parliament, in state assemblies and at local levels. These positives notwithstanding, things have not changed much for women and girls in our country. These days also, women and girls remain unsafe in urban spaces as well as in villages. For them, educational and career opportunities are still few and far between. What’s more, the exodus of men and boys has put heavier burdens on women and girls. 

National gender equality policy (2077) describes changing social structure and mindset, increasing decisive role of women leaders, gender mainstreaming in the state's public policy, increasing access to justice by eliminating gender violence, eliminating harmful customs and traditions, internalization and institutionalization of gender issues at federal, provincial and local level, balancing women's natural, professional and social roles, benefitting particular target groups, social transformation including gender equality by eliminating all kinds of discriminations against women and adolescents through development of gender-responsive governance as the challenges (in bringing about gender equality).  

A pretty long list of challenges, isn’t it?

Overcoming these challenges and having women and girls in the driving seat is a tough challenge that will require our talking heads to walk the talk. 

Relentless pressure from the society, including independent media, will be necessary to make them deliver on their promises and guarantees. Let the International Women’s Day (March 8) inspire us all to march into a future where equality is the norm, not the exception.

How is the state of air pollution in our federal capital? Those who breathe in the city air day in, day out know all too well. It will be no wonder if our relevant state organs at local, provincial and federal levels too know about air pollution in the city as it is a small world and those at the helm of those organs also take in the same air.

Recent data from IQAir, whose website claims that it operates the world’s largest free real-time air quality monitoring platform—empowering individuals, researchers and governments to monitor, understand and act to protect the health of populations around the globe—show how unhealthy, how polluted, how unbreathable air is becoming worldwide. 

For example, live AQI (air quality index) City Ranking of around 4 pm, February 27 has a faraway Dakar, the capital city of Senegal in Africa, as the city with the worst air quality ranking (235). Then come a series of cities in our immediate neighborhood, including Beijing, which stands third in terms of worst air quality with an AQI (air quality index) score of 188, Mumbai, which stands fourth with a score of 177, Kolkata (fifth) with a score of 167, Shanghai (sixth) with a score of 165 and Dhaka (seventh) with a score of 162. Per IQAir data, our federal capital is not lagging much far behind these mega cities as it figures as the ninth worst city in terms of air quality with a score of 153 as second-place Hanoi (196) and eighth-place Istanbul (155) give it some breathing space.

Per the website, AQI 0-50 is good, 51-100 moderate, 101-150 unhealthy for sensitive groups, 151-200 unhealthy, 201-300 very unhealthy and 301+ hazardous.   

Also on the list of most polluted countries, which is based on annual average PM 2.5 concentration (μg/m³), Nepal does not lag much behind, though it is not a country with a robust industrial base. Based on the data of the year 2023, Nepal stood eighth with a score of 42.4 on the list that featured Bangladesh on top with a score of (79.9), followed by Pakistan (73.7), India (54.4), Tajikistan (49), Burkina Faso (46.6), Iraq (43.8) and the UAE (43).

Let’s hope against hope that these unmasked data will prompt our competent authorities to take some serious measures to make the air breathable. 

The tragic loss of Prakriti Lamsal, a 20-year-old BTech (third year) Computer Science student at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KITT) in Bhubaneswar, has once again brought to the fore the issue of safety and security of Nepali students studying abroad, India in particular.

Details of what exactly happened on the KITT premises in the evening of February 13 remain quite sketchy, despite widespread media coverage in both India and Nepal as most of the students had gone to attend the institute’s foundation day.  Media reports, quoting friends and batchmates, suggest that the young girl from Butwal was in a toxic relationship with another BTech Mechanical (third year) student identified as Advik Shrivastava (21) from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Tapes of a conversation between the two have surfaced, giving an indication of the extent of abuse that the young girl may have been facing for quite some time, something which some of her friends have also alluded to.

As the case unfolds, there are ample reasons to believe that this tragic loss of life may have gone unnoticed had some of her courageous friends not dared to share it with media outlets despite considerable threats to their well-being via a messaging app.

These reports also suggest that the abusive and unhealthy relationship was no secret for the institute in question as the young, courageous and bright girl had lodged her complaint against the abuser at the International Relations Office. The office intervened to an extent, but there is every reason to believe that it could have done a lot more to protect an international student with hardly any support system in the host country from an abusive relationship.

On the contrary, its staff, including teachers, made a desperate attempt to cover up the entire incident by seeking to silence fellow students demanding justice through unsavory words against Nepal and the use of brute force. As part of that attempt, they forced hundreds of protesting Nepali students to leave the facility, threatening to unleash police against them if they did not oblige.

With no money to foot their travel expenses, hundreds of Nepali students are on their way home amid an appeal (and apologies) from the institute to return for the resumption of their studies even as smoke from their friend’s funeral pyre billows in a faraway Swargadwari (Pyuthan district) just days after her aggrieved father demanded justice and fair treatment for Nepali students in the pilgrimage town of Bhubaneshwar.

Amid a never-ending news cycle, this story may get lost with the government of Nepal already feeling, perhaps, that it has done enough in this case and the institute also thinking that token steps like a scholarship honoring the student and action against some of its loudmouths will restore its reputation.

If our government thinks that a phone conversation or two and a dispatch of officials from the embassy in New Delhi are enough in a case like this, it is mistaken. The traumatized students may hesitate to return to the institution out of safety concerns. Who will be responsible for the impact of this incident on their studies and their future?

Who, if not the government of our country, will make sure that the young girl and her family get justice?

The government should move ahead with extreme sensitivity, keeping in mind that any leniency on its part may expose Nepalis studying abroad to greater risks in the coming days.