Year in Review: Our Partnership with Digital Rights Nepal

Media Defence funds partner organisations as part of our global efforts to strengthen legal protection of journalists. This aims to enable them to build their capacity to defend freedom of expression and legal representation for lawyers in their country. To date, Media Defence has 21 partners around the world. We know a partnership is about more than funding and work closely with organisations to provide advice on fundraising, comparative law input, monitoring and evaluation and communications.

Earlier this year we interviewed Santosh Sigdel, Saurav Bhattarai and Sadichchha Silwal from Digital Rights Nepal (DRN), our partner since 2023. They told us about the challenges of defending journalists in Nepal, the impact of international support and countering threats to digital rights.

Our partnership with DRN is part of ‘Countering Authoritarianism in the Indo-Pacific’, a joint project between Media Defence and the International Center for Non-for-Profit Law.

A challenging environment

Nepal has a wide range of media outlets, and press freedom is enshrined in its constitution. However, frequent attacks against journalists and recent encroachments on the right to freedom of expression online, are creating an increasingly hostile environment for journalists. Nepal ranked 74th out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 Press Freedom Index. RSF notes, “Cases of surveillance, threats and intimidation are legion, which pushes many journalists to self-censorship.” The Nepali NGO Freedom Forum’s Annual Media Report in 2023 cited 59 direct attacks against journalists, an increase from the previous year.

“It is very difficult for journalists to do their work” said the DRN team. Financial pressure on journalists in Nepal leaves them more vulnerable, especially to legal attacks. “Many of the journalists were not able to cover their legal expenses,” noted DRN. Through the Media Defence partner grant, DRN was able to provide dedicated legal services for journalists in at least 9 cases in 2023, helping those who could not afford the costs on their own.

Simply the act of a journalist having a lawyer can contribute towards a positive outcome. According to DRN, the threat of legal proceedings is often intended to intimidate journalists without the means to obtain defence, into silence. “But when they see that the journalist has an organisation supporting them, and they can [support] for the long-run, they think ‘ok, we’ll drop the case as it isn’t going to be an easy win’. Dropping the charges against journalists is also a win for us because they can continue their work.” For instance, two journalists were detained in Kanchanpur, under Section 47 of the Electronic Transaction Act. With support from DRN and a local lawyer,  the journalists were released. Although the case remained under investigation, the District Attorney chose not to proceed with it in court and dropped the case.  We believe this was partially due to the reluctance to fight the case in court. With partner funding, DRN have also been able to help journalists in more rural areas of Nepal access legal support. In this case, DRN worked with the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) to source a lawyer and secure the release of the two journalists arrested in Kanchanpur.

Lack of legal specialisation in media freedom has also been a challenge DRN is trying to tackle. “Building a community of lawyers who have more expertise on freedom of expression and press freedom is very important,” said DRN. “There are very few good freedom of expression or media lawyers. We see there is an ecosystem where DRN can contribute towards litigation support, building capacity of lawyers and advocacy to create effective interventions.”

Developing international partnership and empowerment

According to DRN, partnerships with international organisations like Media Defence have a “solidarity” and “security” value beyond the financial resources provided.  “Partnering with Media Defence has given us a strategic edge,” DRN told Media Defence. “When reaching out to a journalist or other partners, to say we are partnered with Media Defence, it has a different impression.”

For the organisation, said DRN, the partnership has enhanced capacity as well as morale and confidence to take on freedom of expression cases and pursue strategic cases. In this work, noted DRN, Media Defence has been like an “international backup” to assist with challenges, questions and comparative law input.

Support with other aspects of their work, such as developing Monitoring and Evaluation frameworks has been valuable. They also utilised the Media Defence Resource Hub to support their work. “In our education material, developing our briefing notes and developing our research and thematic issues, it has been very useful.”

Protecting Digital Rights  

With now nearly 5000 online news portals in Nepal   , violations against digital rights – website blocking or takedowns and online violence, particularly against women journalists – have become an increasing concern and focus for DRN.

In its Supreme Court challenge to the government’s 2023 ban on TikTok, DRN saw the opportunity to challenge restrictions on the right to receive and disseminate diverse reporting on that platform, but also protect online content from arbitrary decisions. The legal challenge contributed to raising awareness about the implications of the ban to freedom of expression, according to DRN. “Our focus was on highlighting the constitutional issues surrounding free speech and digital rights, which became part of the larger conversation.”

The full verdict is yet to be published, but the ban was lifted in August 2024, and in September 2024 the Supreme Court ordered the government to formulate laws on regulating social media platforms.   DRN will continue to push for a decision. “It is essential for the Court to determine whether the government’s initial decision to impose the ban was lawful and justified. Establishing this precedent is crucial to prevent similar arbitrary actions in the future,” DRN said.

Tracking Digital Rights Violations

DRN has also been working with other stakeholders to develop a Media Freedom Violation Tracking Systemtool and approach for tracking online violations. Notably they worked with the National Human Rights Commission Nepal, a constitutional body which oversees a protection mechanism for freedom of expression defenders. This initiative seeks to address what DRN sees as a gap in understanding of digital rights within existing programmes for monitoring of press freedom violations in Nepal. “By creating this tool, we hope to increase understanding of these particular [digital online] rights and [ensure] shared understanding that digital rights violations should be categorised separately. By tracking these violations, we are building up a body of evidence and we can assess trends and will encourage others to tweak their own monitoring frameworks to include digital rights.” Through DRN’s engagement, the representative of the National Human Rights Commission agreed that online freedom of expression should be more explicit within their monitoring of freedom of expression. DRN  believe that  “the recognition and agreement is important, and indicates a positive kind of understanding towards online freedom of expression”.

Enhancing Digital Literacy

Outside of the grant, DRN has also recently launched its “Digital Rights and Safety Handbook”  which is used in DRN’ educational programmes, and trainings delivered in in seven provinces. DRN again identified a gap in digital rights knowledge saying “many of the issues covered are very new in Nepal, such as internet governance. Many people, including policy makers, are not very aware. We want to translate the handbook into Nepali so we can reach more people, and we’ve also been thinking about developing a kind of online course on digital rights and freedom of expression. This is all with the aim to enhance digital literacy and digital rights knowledge among the population.”

DRN remains committed to ensuring freedom of expression is defended on these different fronts, despite the challenges of working on these issues in Nepal.  “Sometimes it’s frustrating that we cannot see the immediate result of our intervention, but sometimes the results seem intangible but are gradually contributing to bigger results.”

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