“Nepal’s natural resources, most importantly forest resources, began to deplete rapidly since the IPs lost control over these resources.” have not been handed over as community forests (CFs), leasehold forests or religious forests are government-managed forests (GMFs). GMFs can be considered strictly protected and broadly managed inside the PA system. Traditional rights to certain forest products (e.g. thatching grass in the Terai plains) are regulated for specified seasons under the strict supervision of PA staff. Indigenous communities inside and surrounding all PAs have suffered the loss of social and economic welfare and rights, including the loss of life. Buffer zones around the PAs generally include human settlements, farmlands, common property lands and water bodies, as well as other natural capital upon which indigenous communities have traditionally depended for their livelihoods, cultural activities and recreation. Basically two distinct types of exclusion due to community management of forests are clearly visible in Nepal. Firstly, the poor and socially disadvantaged within communities remain excluded from mainstream participation and decision-making, and from equitable sharing of benefits accruing from CF management. Landless forest-dependent people suffer the most under CF, as the local CF regulators generally tend not to recognize their traditional use rights (in the name 74 of the welfare of the majority in the community). Secondly, seasonal and remote traditional forest users are prohibited from exercising their traditional rights to forest use, and this has had serious negative impacts on livelihoods, especially among the high mountain communities. A third type of exclusion from traditional rights to forest use has been accelerated due to the rapid demographic changes caused by market injected urbanization. Indigenous peoples of the Hills and the Terai regions, including Inner Terai, have lost their traditional political system and many parts and aspects of the traditional social structure. Nepal’s natural resources, most importantly forest resources, began to deplete rapidly since the IPs lost control over these resources. In the absence of local alternatives, young people from some IPs groups are compelled to join foreign armed forces (India, Britain, Singapore, Brunei). IP youths seek legal and illegal employment in the Middle East, North America, Europe and Southeast Asian countries. Nepal’s laws and policies, in the beginning, seem to have granted the right to land, geographical areas and natural resources that fell under the Kipat system under indigenous peoples’ collective rights. After Acts, policies and rules started being formulated, especially with the objective of state management and conservation of forest and natural resources, communities started losing their collective right to develop, conserve, manage and control such natural resources. In 1964/65, the promulgation of the Land Act seemed to have transferred the collective right over land to individual rights. Due to the then prevalent legal system depriving indigenous Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)