A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE Epilogue On November 20, 2022, Nepal held elections for seats in the House of Representatives and provincial assemblies for the second time since the new Constitution came into effect in 2015. Members of the House of Representatives are elected through first-past-the-post (165 seats) and proportional representation (110 seats). The 2,412 candidates for the first-past-the-post seats included 225 women (9.3 percent); the 2,199 candidates for the proportional representation seats included 1,186 women (53.9 percent).170 The higher proportion of women in the proportional representation seats is due to the fact that parties use those seats to fulfill the gender quota – the constitutional requirement that women comprise at least 50 percent of candidates in the closed lists. Because the first-past-thepost elections are seen as more competitive, parties are less likely to nominate women for those seats. The recent draft integrated law proposes an enhanced quota for women in the House of Representatives, provincial, and local elections, with political parties required to nominate 33 percent women for first-past-the-post elections. The seven provincial assemblies (one for each province) have a similarly mixed electoral system with 60 percent of seats elected through first-past-the-post and 40 percent through a closed-list proportional representation system. Of 3,224 candidates, 280 women and one person who identified as gender non-binary (8.7 percent) ran for the firstpast-the-post seats and, of 3,708 total candidates, 2,196 women (59.2 percent) ran on party lists. While the proportion of women candidates for the 2022 House of Representatives and provincial assemblies was slightly higher than in the 2017 elections, the number of women candidates for the first-past-the-post seats fell far below the ECN’s recommended one-third of all candidates.171 With no enforcement mechanism for the one-third proportion, parties did not feel compelled to comply. In fact, according to IFES’ analysis, 61 constituencies ran no women candidates for the first-past-the-post seats for either body. Among all candidates for House of Representative and Provincial Assembly seats, IFES’ analysis showed that women won nine first-past-the-post seats (compared with six in 2017) and 76 proportional representation seats. The wins for women totaled 30.9 percent of all seats, lower than the 33 percent mandated by the constitution. As of December 7, 2022, 175 complaints were filed regarding violations of the Election Code of Conduct and candidacy eligibility, with 20 resolved. Because Nepal does not disaggregate its electoral dispute data by sex, there is no information on how many of the complaints were filed by women. Eleven were filed against women candidates. Types of disputes included vote solicitation or buying, door-to-door campaigning with more people than designated by law (25), biased media broadcasting in favor of or against particular candidates or parties, and the involvement of government employees and teachers in political campaigning. 170 171 Elections in Nepal: 2022 Federal and Provincial Elections. (2022). IFES – the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Ibid.; Online Khabar. (2022, September 18). Election Commission: Parties have to field women for at least 33% of the FPTP candidates. 69