Considering the widespread discriminations against women and their systemic exclusion due to the age-old system of patriarchy which has been elaborated in the previous sections, AAN sturdily advocates that women should be active participants in all spheres of development on equal footing with men. As women are the ones who are most excluded and denied their rights even within rights holders groups, AAN strongly believes that women's rights must be recognised as human rights. AAN believes that a country cannot fully develop and prosper as long as half of its population is downtrodden, discriminated against and trapped in generations of impoverishment. Hence, AAN's interventions in Women's Rights Theme will be primarily focused on eliminating all forms of discriminatory laws and social practices that perpetuate and reinforce discrimination against women; combating all forms of violence against women; and eradicating trafficking of women and girls.

Key Strategies

·         Strengthening capacity and initiatives of women and girls to claim their rights and to meet their basic needs

·         Supporting actions to address all kinds of violence against women and girls

·         Advocating and campaigning for laws, policies and practices that advance and protect women's rights

·         Advocating for appropriate changes in the national laws in line with Nepal's commitment to CEDAW and various other international conventions.

·         Highlighting the connection between the exclusion of women and current conflict and campaigning to ensure women's rights for the establishment of sustainable peace in the country.

Education

The educational system in Nepal faces a myriad of challenges ranging from inadequate state policies, persistent gaps in policy implementation, limited role of civil society in non-formal primary education, and lack of accountability. Significant disparities in access to and participation in primary education due to religion, class, caste, gender and ethnicity, continue to plague Nepal. More importantly, it has been made clear in the previous section that access to education among the children of AAN’s rights holder groups, particularly girls, is extremely poor. Thus, AAN has taken Education as a priority theme with an aim to address the issue of children's right and their access to quality education, keeping the poor and excluded girls and boys at the centre.

AAN considers education as a necessary precondition of development, which empowers people to claim their rights. AAN believes that every child has a right to free, compulsory and quality basic education. Hence, AAN's interventions will focus on ensuring access to free and quality education, particularly to those from poor and excluded communities as well as on ensuring accountability of State and non-State actors for universal and quality primary education.

Education sector has suffered tremendously due to the ongoing conflict, with school zones used for military purposes by insurgents and security forces, lack of teachers in schools of rural areas due to fear for their safety, use of child soldiers and frequent strikes imposed on schools. Hence, AAN firmly believes in keeping the education sector free from the present conflict.

Key Strategies

·         Advocating at all levels for free, universal and quality primary education

·         Promoting community management of schools through local School Management Committees

·         Building the capacity of various stakeholders to improve the governance and management of schools

·         Advocating for and providing support to the government in the formulation and effective implementation of educational policies and programmes

·         Providing support for physical services to ensure that children from the poorest and most excluded communities get proper access to basic education

·         Campaigning for the declaration of children as zones of peace

Food Security

The rights holder groups of AAN are living in a state of food insecurity. Hence, in order to address their immediate needs AAN has considered ‘Food Security’ as one of its priority themes. As the livelihood of majority of the poor and excluded people are tied with various natural resources such as land, water and forest, AAN’s efforts towards food security of its rights holder groups will be primarily aimed towards increasing their access to and control over these natural resources. AAN believes that lack of food security is a manifestation of poverty created through structural and systemic denial of access to and control over productive resources as well as other economic opportunities. As these natural resources form an integral component of the right to life, AAN will strongly advocate for the right of poor and excluded people to these resources. Hence, AAN through its ‘food security’ theme primarily aims to safeguard the land rights of the numerous landless and poor land tenants, and to ensure equitable access of the poor and excluded people in water resources and community forestry.  AAN through its ‘Food Security’ theme will also focus on issues of sustainable utilisation of biodiversity and sustainable agricultural practices.

In the present context of rapid economic globalisation food security of the poor and excluded people is equally guided by various domestic and international trade issues. Privatisation and economic liberalization policies have undermined people’s rights over the means of production and capacity to purchase. The government policies have not adequately protected the collective indigenous knowledge and the right to local plant genetic resources. In the context of Nepal’s accession to WTO, AAN with its work on Food Security AAN also aims to advocate for pro-poor agricultural trade issues and other policy issues pertaining to the livelihood of the poor people including intellectual property rights.

The ongoing conflict has also severely affected the food security of people, especially the poor. Lack of employment in the rural areas and migration of the young male members due to present conflict have impinged on the already deteriorating conditions of food security in rural areas. Frequent blockades and resulting price hikes further add to this, making the lives of poor people further miserable.  As women and children are the ones often left behind in the rural areas, they become the ones to be most affected from this misery. Hence, lack of food security in conflict areas and during emergencies, particularly among the most vulnerable population groups, will also be an area of particular focus of AAN's work. 

Key Strategies

·         Campaigning on pro-poor issues related with land rights, water privatisation and community forestry management

·         Advocating for conservation, promotion and sustainable utilization of biodiversity and associated indigenous knowledge, technology and skills (IKTS)

·         Promoting sustainable farming practices

·         Engaging in pro-poor national policy dialogues on fair trade, food safety, and food and agricultural issues in the context of WTO membership

·         Advocating for equitable and pro-poor trans-boundary water sharing

·         Advocating for special food security measures to the poor people in conflict-stricken areas

HIV and AIDS

Nepal is increasingly coming under a serious threat of HIV epidemic. In the last decade, Nepal has progressed from a 'low prevalence' country to become a country with a 'concentrated' epidemic among certain sub-groups of the populations, such as sex workers, injecting drug users and returning labour migrants, especially from India. Moreover, many causes for a rapid spread of the epidemic exist in Nepal in the form of poverty, gender inequality, low levels of education, denial, stigma and discrimination. Faced with issues of denial, stigma and discrimination, HIV and AIDS threaten to further impoverish the poor and excluded people. As previous section has also elaborated that most of AAN’s rights holder groups are highly vulnerable to HIV infection, AAN has considered HIV and AIDS as one of its priority themes.

HIV and AIDS as a pandemic also threaten the economy of a country where its labour force is increasingly becoming vulnerable to this pandemic hence eventually affecting the economy of the country. The threat of an epidemic is further enhanced by the current conflict. The tendency of seasonal migration from rural Nepal to India, which has further intensified due to the present conflict, and trafficking of women and girls have made the women, children and migrant workers more susceptible to contract the deadly disease. Given the present situation and trend of the epidemic in Nepal, AIDS may become the leading cause of death in the age group 15 - 49 years in the next ten years, if effective measures are not taken immediately to curb the spread of HIV. All these factors further highlight the necessity to immediately involve in the issue of HIV and AIDS.

AAN recognizes HIV and AIDS not only as a health issue but a larger socio-political and a developmental issue. Through HIV and AIDS theme AAN will strive to reduce vulnerability to HIV and AIDS as well as to achieve sustained improvements in the quality of life of those infected and affected.

Key Strategies

·         Promoting strategic advocacy campaigns to influence policy-makers, civil society and donors to bring about necessary changes in their work to ensure that concerns of PLWHA are duly taken into account

·         Advocating and working towards increased resource mobilization and allocation for the response to the threat of the epidemic, with a strong sense of social responsibility

·         Promoting strong political commitment of the government and civil society in response to the threat of the epidemic

·         Promoting access of PLWHA to health and social care, treatment and rehabilitation

·         Creating awareness among people for the prevention of disease

·         Organising special campaigns on awareness raising and counselling on HIV and AIDS to displaced people due to conflict

Peace Building

Nepal is caught in a vicious cycle of violence. The conflict between the government and the Maoists has intensified and gripped most parts of the country. An atmosphere of fear prevails widely and the social contract of people has been badly affected. This conflict is rooted in structural causes like deep social exclusion; under-representation of certain groups in development mainstream; lack of proper access to justice; uneven geographical development; caste and gender based discriminations, and poor governance. The ongoing cycle of violence in Nepal is gradually turning into a protracted conflict.

The poor and excluded people have become the worst victims of conflict because their means of livelihoods have been affected in different ways and they don't have the capacity to move out to other places even through the escalation of violence. It is also understood from the earlier sections that almost all of AAN’s rights holder groups directly affected in one or another way by the ongoing conflict. Thus there is a need for organisations to work to mitigate the effects of conflict on poor people and contribute in addressing the structural causes of conflict. There is a need to ensure that the overall organisational strategies of AAN moves to the direction of conflict transformation processes, as no other work will properly succeed without halting the cycle of violence.

Key Strategies

·         Highlighting the structural causes of conflict and campaigning to address them

·         Campaigning for peaceful solution to the conflict

·         Campaigning for respect to International Humanitarian Laws during the conflict situation

·         Rehabilitation of conflict victims

·         Campaigning for adoption of affirmative action provisions for excluded groups and effective implementation of such provisions

·         Ensuring that overall organisational strategies of AAN focus on conflict transformation processes