IPs in Nepal can be divided into two distinct regional groups: Hill IPs and Terai IPs. Many indigenous communities, notably the Majhi, Bote, Musahar, Bankariya and others who lived in and around protected areas (national parks, wildlife reserves, buffer zones and conservation areas) have been displaced and have now become landless and deprived of their traditional occupations. Access of indigenous communities to forests, rivers and wetlands (fishing, watering of domestic cattle), and farming and foraging lands – that fall within the jurisdiction of protected areas (PAs) – has been restricted and curtailed in Nepal. The government of Nepal does not recognize indigenous territories or community ownership of land.   Nearly all forests and grasslands have been nationalized in the past half-century; none have been restored to community ownership.  Customary systems of collective management of land, including forest and rangeland commons, are not recognized in protected areas or the national forest.  Indigenous peoples of the Hills and the Terai regions, including Inner Terai, have lost their traditional political system, and with it many aspects of the traditional social structure. For example, the Tharus (indigenous peoples of the southern plains of Nepal) and other indigenous peoples of the Terai lost control over their ancestral land after the eradication of malaria in the early 1950s. They also lost their traditional social and political structure with the introduction of the autocratic party-less Panchayat system in 1960. The Limbus of the eastern Hills of Nepal were the last IPs to lose the Kipat, or the indigenous land tenure system. The district profile of Kanchanpur reveals that the Tharu Chaudhary occupied 82% of the land some 50 years ago. Now they have only 16% (DDC profile). The government of Nepal has a less than satisfactory track record of implementing international conventions protecting IP rights. Nepal  still needs to implement ILO Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and change existing laws and policies to give due recognition to the indigenous peoples’ traditions, customs and land tenure systems. The existing legislative and policy frameworks for equitable sharing of costs and benefits concerning protected areas in Nepal are inadequate. Growing public protests and local movements in buffer zone areas of Nepal are evident to this end. Although the government invited a Special Rapporteur on the rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples to Nepal, his recommendations, along with the programs and provisions of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), have yet to be fully implemented. Nepal’s protected areas (including buffer zones) were established by government decrees without free, prior and informed consent by resident indigenous peoples and local communities.  The government of Nepal does not legally recognize “indigenous and community conserved areas” as a designation of terrestrial or riparian management or as part of the national protected area system. As a result of legal and institutional dynamics, indigenous communities around the country have been historically deprived of the lands Lok Niti 71