Pakistan and Nepal have called for greater cooperation on gender equality, seeking to turn their longstanding cordial relationship into concrete action on women’s empowerment. The call came during a visit by a delegation of Nepali women parliamentarians to the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) in Islamabad, where both sides discussed ways to strengthen ties in education, climate, and cultural exchanges with a special focus on gender development.
Ambassador Jauhar Saleem, President of the IRS, stressed the significance of moving beyond friendly diplomatic relations to more practical forms of collaboration, particularly to address gender gaps in both countries. He praised the visiting Nepali parliamentarians for their commitment to improving legislation and governance for gender development and proposed that half of the existing scholarships for Nepali students in Pakistan be allocated specifically to female students. According to him, this could significantly advance women’s empowerment throughout the region.
Leading the Nepali delegation, Nagina Yadav, a prominent figure in the Nepali Congress Party, detailed Nepal’s progress on gender development but acknowledged ongoing challenges. She expressed strong interest in learning from Pakistan’s women empowerment initiatives and called for more substantial cooperation between the two countries.
Other members of the Nepali delegation, including Puja Chaudhary of the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal, Sarita Bhusal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), and Gaura Nepali, a Dalit rights activist, highlighted the potential for structured working groups. They suggested that increased collaboration could be achieved in sectors such as business, education, culture, and climate change, as well as through direct people-to-people exchanges.
Representatives from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a German foundation supporting social democracy in the region, also took part in the discussions. Felix Kolbitz, FES Pakistan Country Director, underlined climate change as a particularly important area for joint effort, given the vulnerabilities shared by both countries. He reiterated FES’s commitment to fostering cooperation with the goal of empowering women and addressing broader human security issues. Natalia Figge, the foundation’s Resident Representative in Nepal, suggested frequent exchanges between the two countries as a practical way to push forward gender equality.
The session concluded with an interactive question-and-answer segment that generated a variety of proposals for future collaboration, reinforcing the shared determination of both countries to advance gender parity and women’s empowerment through practical regional partnerships.
