On paper, Nepal has some of the strongest constitutional protections for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) in the world. But constitutional language alone does not make rights accessible, and barriers to accessing those rights persist, particularly for women from marginalised communities, and those living in underserved rural areas. Rights become real when institutions enforce them and nowhere is this more consequential than in the courtroom.
Judges and judicial officers sit at the center of where constitutional promises meet lived realities. The decisions they make determine how rights are interpreted, how remedies are shaped and whether the law reaches people equally, regardless of who they are or where they come from.
This premise served as the catalyst for our gathering in Kathmandu recently, which brought together 46 participants from across Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur. Among them were 5 High Court judges, 4 District Court judges, and 28 judicial officers and public prosecutors. As the final installment of a three-part training series, this in-person session followed two online workshops organised in collaboration with iProbono, Nepal’s National Judicial Academy (NJA), Warwick Law School, City St George’s (University of London), and the Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice (LAPSOJ).
The gap between constitutional promise and lived realities remains significant. According to the Department of Health Services’ Annual Health Report (2023/24), more than 102,000 women were provided safe abortion services through Nepal’s public health system in a single year[1]. However, research continues to show that access to abortion care is shaped by intersecting legal, geographical, socio-economic and institutional barriers[2]. These include stigma, limited legal literacy, shortages of trained providers, inadequate referral systems, and the disproportionate challenges faced by people living in remote areas and other historically marginalised communities. In this context, judicial interpretation and enforcement of SRHR protections play a critical role in determining whether constitutional guarantees become meaningful in practice.
Dr Malagodi delivered the in-person training in Kathmandu based on the #DesignTheLawNepal Legal Design Toolkit, developed by Dr Mara Malagodi and Dr David Vitale of Warwick Law School, which includes comparative legal frameworks, and interdisciplinary research. Participants examined Nepal’s SRHR legal landscape, explored barriers to enforcement, and reflected on how judicial decision-making can better account for the social and institutional realities that shape access to rights in practice.
SRHR cases rarely, if ever, are purely legal questions. They sit at the intersection of healthcare access, gender inequality, poverty, discrimination, and social stigma. For courts to deliver remedies that are both legally sound and meaningfully just, judges must be able to recognise and respond to these dimensions, not as external context, but as central to the case before them.
These conversations were particularly timely. iProbono is currently supporting public interest litigation challenging the continued criminalisation of abortion in Nepal, a case with significant implications for reproductive autonomy and women’s rights across the country.
Group exercises based on #DesignTheLawNepal Legal Design Toolkit, prompted participants to reflect on a central question of user-centred legal design: whether the law, in practice, reaches people equally regardless of who they are or where they live. As Supreme Court Bench Officer Pooja Chaudhary later reflected, the training highlighted that “beyond the law and the Constitution, non-legal factors can also affect an individual’s circumstances” and that judges “need to understand those circumstances” to deliver effective justice.
Engagement throughout the session was strong. Participants shared experiences from their own courts, exchanged perspectives across institutions, and reflected on dimensions of SRHR cases they had not previously considered through this lens. Many expressed a genuine interest in applying these approaches in their work going forward.
This session marked the conclusion of the judicial training component of the #DesignTheLawNepal project, but the work does not end here. One participant from the series will go on to serve as a Toolkit Ambassador, carrying this work forward to judges and judicial officers in more remote parts of Nepal, where access to rights, and the courts, remains hardest won. By equipping more judges and judicial officers with context-sensitive approaches to SRHR adjudication, the project aims to strengthen the judiciary’s capacity to deliver rights-based, citizen-centred decisions that can improve access to justice for countless individuals seeking to realise their constitutional rights.
[1] Department of Health Services, Annual Health Report 2080/81 (Ministry of Health and Population, Government of Nepal 2025) https://hmis.gov.np/media/40/Annual-Health-Report-208081_compressed.pdf accessed 26 July 2026.
[2] Sabrina Germain and others, ‘The Case for the Complete Decriminalisation of Abortion Care in Nepal and Beyond’ (2025) 39 The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia 100616 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lansea.2025.100616 accessed 1 August 2026.
