Negotiation Capacity and Nepal's Foreign Policy: Some Observations
Bishnu Raj Upreti, PhD[1]
1.
The context
In the present context, global change processes (GCP) are so fast and so
heavy to deal on. The global change process is collectively named for climate
change (McGrath, 2022; IPCC,
2022; GCP, 2021; UNDP,
2021) and related insecurities; food water and environmental insecurities
(Upreti et.al., 2015); rapid advancement of information & technology and their
consequences like cybercrimes (Khatiwada,
2021); energy crisis (Geiger, 2021), radicalization of religious, ethnic
and isolated geographical sentiments; widened gaps between rich and poor and
related feeling of injustice among poor population (Seeler, 2008); highly skewed use, and
control of resources (CEO 2020; Upreti, 2010a,b,&c); growing scarcity of natural resources (Upreti,
2002); costal challenges; wars, and armed conflicts (Adhikari et.al., 2079BS);
and other insecurities in different parts of the world (Barnettm 2007; Bob and
Bronkhorst, 2010; Carius, 2006; Deudney, 1990; Eckstein, Kunzel. & Schafer, 2021; Floyd, 2008;
Homer-Dixon, 1994 and 1999; ICAN, 2020; Upreti et al., 2079 BS). GCP has also bearing on trade and market
(Karki, 2020; UNCTAD, 2022). Global change processes are particularly massive to cope by developing
countries with poor human capacity, weak research, and bad governance (Mathew and Upreti, 2005; Mulligan, 2010; Silva, et.al.,
2021).
What we observed around the world is intimate engagement of powerful countries
in these issues for expanding economic, political, and strategic interests.
Such engagement of global and regional powers makes the worsening situation
even complicated for weaker counties and people (Upreti et. al., 2079 BS).
The situation becomes
even more problematic when the priority of the countries to deal with the
global change processes are scattered, vague and largely ignored citing
justification of inaction in a as generic bureaucratic style like referring to limitation
of laws or rules, lack of required resources, etc.) or manipulated these issues for personal benefits
of certain influential individuals (or even some time organizations). Further, inter-ministerial
coordination is very poor and human resources capacity is very weak (Upreti, 2010a,b,&c).
These all have direct effect on the negotiation capacity of the state.
In this paper I am briefly discussing the state of negotiation capacity of
Nepal and ways of addressing them.
For the purpose of this paper, I define
negotiation as a process that involves aims, tactics, strategies, targets, and
timelines to deal on issues under discussion/debate by the active engagement of
two sides with expectedly satisfaction of both parties of negotiation. Main
focus on negotiation is finding an acceptable solution of a shared problem (Upreti,
2010a).
2. The Issues of negotiation in foreign relation of Nepal:
It should be undeniable fact that any officials deployed by the
government of Nepal in foreign countries and working in MoFA must be competent
negotiators if we want to be relevant in the international arena. However, Nepal
has not yet given attention to developing negotiation capacity of persons
dealing with major negotiation issues presented at section 2.1. In this
section, I am briefly discussing on the major issues of negotiation that Nepal
has to deal on. They are:
2.1 Major negotiation
areas
Negotiation on
trade:
Some of the major concerns of Nepal on the trade negotiations are
reducing or eliminating tariffs (e.g., taxes on certain imports of goods) and
non-tariff barriers (NTBs) (rules and regulations of exporting counties that
makes trade more difficult) including import licensing and other technical
barriers to export of goods, and other restrictions like Voluntary Export
Restraint (VER), subsidies, embargo.
Further, Nepal is now in the process of graduating from Least Developed
Country (LDC) to Developing Country (DC) because it has met the two of three
criteria, i.e., thresholds for Human Assets Index (HAI), and Economic and
Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) for graduation. Nepal has to deal on
the pandemic and other bigger health crisis (Sharma and Upreti, 2021).
In this context, dealing with such complex issues presented above require
both subject matter competence as well as good negotiation skill, which is
largely lacking.
Negotiation
on agricultural issues:
Our agriculture export and imports are largely with India and Indian
approach of dealing with agricultural negotiation is high handed (Upreti,
et.al., 2079BS). Further, issues like seedbanks, food banks, gene and genetically
modified organisms, tariff, sanitary-phytosanitary measures, agricultural
technical barrier to trade, export promotion of high value low volume crops,
fertilizers imports, seed export-import, food and animal products export and
imports, etc. are global issues of negotiation where Nepali experts need not
only technical aspects but also have to have strong legal competency and interpersonal
skills.
Negotiation
on refugee issue:
Nepal had very poor
performance on handling protracted issues. One among many examples is the
Bhutanese refugee negotiation with Bhutan government, which was neither
coherent nor consistent. Though the international sentiment and strong evidence
were in our favour but we were not able to deal the issue properly.
Negotiation
on border disputes:
Nepal has about 1850 KM border with India and about 1389 KM with China,
two giant neighbours who have other several bordering countries. Further, Nepal
India borders are open, which adds more complications. In this context, Nepal
is facing long standing border dispute with India in several places with long
standing deep rooted dispute in Susta of Mawalparasi and Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh
and Kalapani areas of . Similarly, China-Nepal border issues are also of occasional
concern (Acharya, 2020 and 2019). Hence, Nepal has to have strong negotiators
with strong language competencies, communication skills, international laws,
good inter-personal behaviour and strategic thinking. Further, most important characteristics
of negotiators is their commitment and determination on national interest.
There are several irrefutable evidence (maps, historical documents,
hydrological documents) to prove Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipu Lekh as
territories of Nepal according to the Treaty of Sugauli[2].
However, India, by its power and influence is resisting to accept the reality.
In this context, Nepali negotiators have to deal with such situation for which
they need a strong team of experts having complete knowledge of history, Mahakali
River system, cartography, negotiation and communication skills.
Negotiation on water issues:
Globally water is becoming a major security concern (UNDP, 2020) Similarly,
water negotiation will be a major challenge in foreseeable future. India’s
water scarcity and availability of water resources in Nepal makes unique
situation at the time when India has already declared water as strategic concern
of India (Upreti, 2013; Upreti et.al., 2015). Nepal has missed many
opportunities in past negotiations related to water. Hence, it is high time to
develop competence (all technical skills related to hydrology, meteorology and
other river sciences, interpersonal and communication skills and legal compete related border laws/international laws) in
negotiation skills of Nepali negotiators.
Negotiation on other issues of national interests
In this inter-dependent and
inter-connected world, it is very hard to comfortably sustain and progress in
its own. Therefore, every country use strategy of trade-offs, give and take, bargaining,
balancing, counter balancing, adaptation, containment, compromise, cooperation,
collaboration, depending upon context and time to gain maximum from negotiation
within the broad framework of national interests.
In the international negotiation, be it water, trade, agriculture, refugees,
environment (, climate (IPCC, 2022; GCP 2021)) or border or any other issues,
the guiding framework must be national interests of the country (Acharya,
2019; 2020). However, translating these concepts into
practice of actual negotiation require at least a) competency, b) commitment,
and c) skills. Nepal needs to focus on
developing these negotiation competencies.
Negotiation for strengthening development cooperation:
One of the important issues is also to make negotiation
for enhancing development cooperation and attracting resources and technologies
for infrastructure development, which requires constant engagement with high
competence. However, performance is weak as development cooperation support by
Canada, Denmark and other countries are withdrawn and shrinking.
Negotiation for climate change concerns:
Climate security is becoming a major concern globally and
negotiation are going on in many fronts and in many thematic issues. Countries like Nepal has great opportunity to
get benefit from climate change related benefits if there is strong negotiation
capacity and technical competences. Nepal is poor in this area too.
Negotiations
with foreign governments and regional and multilateral forums:
Negotiation is a specialized discipline and requires
special knowledge and skills in addition to interpersonal relations and
communication. Every foreign service personnel not necessarily have these
skills but all of them have to negotiate. In this context developing competent negotiators
is the responsibility of MoFA but it is not priority.
2.2 Representation of
Nepal in United Nations, international & regional organizations and other
forums
Competent (fluent language and having knowledge of the host country,
strong English language proficiency) and in-depth knowledge of international
relations and geo-political, geo-strategic, knowledge and skill are
preconditions for a successful diplomat to appropriately represent Nepal in international
forums and friendly countries. However,
all diplomats are not able to meet these minimum standards.
2.3 Promotion and strengthening of friendly
relations with countries and organizations
Nepali diplomats are struggling to enhance image of Nepal
in many foreign countries mainly because of their lack of competences discussed
in the section 2.2 above.
2.4 Others:
Other important functions of Ministry of Foreign Affairs
that demand negotiation in different issues.
For example, we have great
potential to drastically increase the number of Nepali Security forces in UN
Peace Keeping Operation that not only enhance global position of Nepal but also
generate financial resources and expands international relations. Similarly,
Nepal has great scope of positioning as champion of climate change debate
because of glacier melt (and related crisis) if our negotiation skill is enough
to achieve them. Likewise, birthplace of Buddha, the Lumbini is another iconic
scope for our global influence if deal properly. All these areas demand
skillful negotiation.
3
Why Nepal is weak in
international arena and consequences[3]
There are so many literatures highlighting weak negotiation capacity of
Nepal (Acharya, 2020, 2019; Sharma and Upreti, 2021), which has resulted into
unwanted consequences, be it a water negotiation with India, be it with WTO
negotiation or be it on Bhutanese refugees, or other international forums and
conventions. The main reasons for weak negotiation capacity are related to
different reasons such as:
3.3 Influence of external interests:
It is not uncommon for any powerful interest groups (be they Diplomatic
and Consular Corps, United Nations and its specialized agencies or aid agencies
or other organizations) to influence the key actors and players of international
relations of particular countries for their organizational/national interests.
Nepal is not an exception.
All total, 28 Residential Diplomatic Missions, 91 Non-Residential
Diplomatic Missions, 13 United Nations, its Entities and Specialized Agencies,
31 Aid Agencies and other Missions are operating in Nepal, according to the according
to the Protocol Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal (MoFA,
2021). All of them are working according to their organizational aims and overt
and covert interests. In addition, more than 33 Honorary Counsel are operating
and led by almost all highly influential businesspersons of Nepal. Some of the
Nepali businessmen taking honorary counselor responsibility of different
countries were allegedly engaged in activities other than defined in their core
responsibilities. One of them was even arrested in the black
marketing/smuggling of thermal guns brought for COVID-19 treatment.
Often it is said that King Mahendra played important role in maintaining
non-alignment and neutrality of Nepal in an intimidating geopolitical situation
with competition and uncertainties during 1960s and 1970s. In this regard Dr
Bhesh Bahadur Thapa said, “You have the freedom not to agree with his
political philosophy but when it came to national interests he stood firmly for
Nepal, negotiated with big powers firmly, and put Nepal in such a trajectory
which has to this day kept the country intact, independent, and sovereign”[4]. Situation
is degrading overtime in the last 4-5 decades.
3.4 Bureaucratic disorientation:
While discussing with the senior and experienced international relations
and diplomacy experts of Nepal (both ex-bureaucrats and others), it is realized
that professionalism is eroding fastly overtime, no practice of in-depth study
and analysis among the foreign service personnel, uniquely developed a culture
of using influence to get continuous better foreign placement and other
advantages. Hence, incompetent people or inappropriate way they are getting responsibility
in the foreign mission. Consequently, Nepal’s position in international arena
is becoming weaker and weaker.
3.5 Politicization of foreign affairs[5]:
We have structural problem at political level in Nepal regarding the dealing
of foreign issues. Regrettably, international relation issues are merely used
for internal political vested interests. Be it in negotiating issues and
concerns of national interests or in appointing ambassadors and other important
positions to be deployed abroad. Until and unless such behaviors are changed,
it will be quite difficult to improve the current state of weak international
relations of Nepal.
Political leaders of Nepal as well as leadership in MoFA increasingly
failed to realize required quality of a persons to be deployed as ambassador as
having integrity; competency in subject matter of international relations and
diplomacy; local language proficiency; competence in major international languages;
and high interpersonal skill. Consequently, they send people who have
ideological inclination towards their party during student time, or able to
influence then by other means. This situation is common and even growing more
resulting into failure of our diplomats to work for the national interests. Instead,
they largely serve for minister or party appointing them. Consequently, credibility
of Nepal and its heavy presence in international arena in the past 5-6 decades
is eroding fast now.
3.6 Lack of investment in capacity development:
Capacity of MoFA as well as the officials are too weak. I was assigned
by the Government of Nepal to coordinate a high-level expert panel to collect
and analyze evidence related to the India Nepal border disputes in Susta and
Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani areas. During that time, I have ample opportunities
to interact and assess institutional capacity of MoFA and its different
departments and divisions as well as their leadership. Based on my 4 months’
work with them I realized that there is no serious efforts in investing in capacity
building of the Ministry itself and its divisions and departments. It is
unrealistic to expect high performance without developing institutional and
individual capacity of staff. It was observed that only very few personnel were
managing huge portfolios with scarce resources.
3.7 Absence of strong think tank institutions:
Countries having successful international relations and foreign affairs
strategically utilize knowledge and skills generated by thinktanks. Therefore,
these countries have promoted, strengthened, and maintained autonomy of
thinktanks and international departments/centers of academic institutions.
In Nepal, neither political leadership nor senior government officials
realize the importance of think tanks. I have chance to lead the think tank called
Policy Research Institute formed by Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli with very
high spirit and massive mandate. However, I have deeply frustrating experiences
on how bureaucrats repeatedly attempted to make it failed. Their non-cooperation and deliberately orchestrated
structural hurdles severely affected the functioning of PRI. The situation of
the Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA) is also not so encouraging, and it is
also operating completely under the administrative shadow of MoFA.
Autonomy and independence, integrity, competency, quality, objectivity,
and meaningful engagement of key stakeholders in generating knowledge are key
to success of thinktank institutions, which are largely weak in Nepal because
of lack of support from the state and its bureaucracy.
3.8 Weak capacity Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Capacity of Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself is weak, inter-ministerial
coordination is extremely poor, rigid structure with highly bureaucratic in
nature and therefore not able to cope with the fastly changing global and
regional contexts.
There is lack of enough competent human resources for negotiation such
as international lawyers, academically trained and professionally engaged
thematic negotiators in MoFA. For example, negotiation on water resources
require negotiators with sound knowledge of hydrology, history and strong knowledge
of international water law and negotiation skills (which are quite unique than
general communication).
Similar requirements are needed for trade, agriculture, or any issues
under negotiation. But such competent human resources are needed for better
achievement. The main reason of countries having better achievements from international
negotiations are their high profile, highly competent, academically trained
thematic and professional negotiators.
3.9 Lack of documentation and archiving
We have extremely poor documentation and archiving practice in the
government in general and MoFA in particular. I was coordinating a high-profile
team of expert constituted by government of Nepal to collect and analyze the evidence
related to India-Nepal borders. During that time, I have fair exposure on how
MoFA has kept important records. It was poor and unsatisfactory.
Whatever it had, that was highly personalized record keeping system. In absence
of one person, access to required documents was not possible and blocked every
information until he or she is available. No access of other members of the
division and nobody knows what documents are with particular persons. I tried
to understand why such practice exist in the MoFA and found that there is very
high mistrust and unhealthy competition (to defeat by hiding information) among
the officials themselves.
We had several times requested to get specific documents kept by
specific division. Every time we approached, we were told that the documents we
are seeking is only available with a particular person, who is out of office.
Though the Department of Archaeology has started protection of the
documents of national importance of the country, it is not yet able to do all.
There is also inter-departmental and inter-ministerial problem of coordination
that limits collection, protection and preservation of documents of historical
and strategic importance.
While working on the evidence of borders collection, I came to know that
important documents and maps of state were missing but they are with
individuals. Similarly, many important documents available earlier (at the time
of Panchayat) are now not available and a very easy and scaping answer is the
move of MoFA from Sital Niwas (missed during the transfer time). Many documents
are kept in several rooms with locked in Narayanhiti Building for long without
even checking and we observed from outside that many of them are damaged by
rats and bats[6].
I have formally requested from Policy Research Institute to Foreign Minister to
take care of these important documents but so far there are no action.
Many strategically important documents kept in Singh Darbar are said to
be either born when Singh Darbar caught on major fire in 2030 BS or taken away by
individuals which were never returned.
4
Ways forward
Fundamental aim of foreign relation is to protect and promote national
interest of Nepal by safeguarding freedom, sovereignty, territorial integrity,
nationality, independence and dignity of Nepal, the rights of the Nepali
people, border security, economic wellbeing, and prosperity of Nepal[7].
Therefore, policy, strategies, plans and activities must focus on protection
and promotion of Nepal’s national interests based on the principle of realism (Korab-Karpowicz and Julian, 2018). The
following areas form basis for achieving the aim of foreign relation of Nepal:
4.3 Political
unity at domestic level for foreign policy
The precondition of improving foreign relations of Nepal is to have
national consensus on international relations among the political parties and
stand together (as they did in amending the constitution of Nepal while
including Limpiyadhura-Lipulekh in the map of Nepal[8]). Nation
must be united in foreign policy, national security policy and economic policy
to achieve economic prosperity, political stability, and better international
standing, which is largely missing in Nepal.
4.4 Investment in capacity development
Nepal government has not internalized the importance of investing in
human resource development specially in developing negotiation capacity of
officials who are responsible for negotiating on the thematic issues listed and
discussed in section 2.1. Only competent, skillful and committed negotiators
can make difference and therefore government must invest enough in this area. Similarly,
strong English language proficiency must be precondition of any negotiators and
officials of foreign services and diplomats. In addition, the diplomats (be
they from foreign service or political appointment) must have through knowledge
of culture, history, economy, power dynamics of the country where they are
deployed. All diplomats must take at
least 6 months language course of the local language of the country of their
posting. The responsibility for this
course should be given to Bishwo Bhasa Campus (BBC) and accept the diplomats
only if their language proficiency are approved by the BBC.
4.5 Promotion and strengthening of think tank institutions
Government of Nepal must promote, strengthen and institutionalize
existing government think tanks like Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA), Policy
Research Institute (PRI), Water and Energy Commission (WEC), ensure their institutional
autonomy by law, provide enough financial resources (never let the think tanks
to directly take money or advisors from donors and they have to groom and strengthen
domestically to avoid injection of potential foreign vested interests).
Government must have a clear policy and umbrella act on promoting and strengthening
autonomous status of government think tanks and also guidelines for the other
non-state think tanks operating in Nepal.
4.6 Strengthening of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoF):
Strong, resourceful, competent MoFA is precondition for addressing all
anomalies related to international relations and diplomacy Nepal is facing at
present. Neither political leaders nor other ministries respects MoFA rules and
standards at present because it is weak and ministry officials themselves are inconsistently
behaving on many important issues. This situation must change. My 3 years of experiences
of working with ministries reveal that coordination among ministries is very
weak, they are slow in decision making and inaction is their major character.
Further, discretionary allocation of financial resources without scientific
justification and clear criteria of Ministry of Finance makes difficulties on
functioning of important institutions of state like MoFA. PRI is the victim of
such decision of MoFA for 3 years.
The existing organizational structure of MoFA is less relevant and incapable
to deal with the complex global change processes discussed in the first section
of this paper. Its diplomacy so far is passive and reactive, and it must make
independent, proactive ad mature (PRI, 2079BS).
The staff of MoFA must be specialized on countries (China, India, USA,
Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Africa) by focusing to language, culture, history,
and political power relations of these countries. They need regular training on
the changing context, negotiation skills, etc.
MoFA must have competent skillful negotiators and international law
expert in its disposal to deal on many issues arises from the global change
process.
4.7 Strong provision on collection, digitizing and archiving
It is urgent and important to collect all documents related to international
relations and diplomacy, digitize them and keep them at least in 3-4 sources
with high security (Department of Archaeology, MoFA, Office of Prime Minister
and Council of Ministers, MoF, Parliament Library, Headquarters of Nepal Army
or at National Security Council Secretariat with strictly regulated
provisions).
Many important documents of national importance are not with government
but said to be with different individuals. Hence, these documents must be taken
by the state (with some compensation if they are not taken by individuals from
the state while serving the Government and the source must be proven) and
digitize and store appropriately.
5
Conclusions
Negotiation capacity of Nepal is extremely weak. Further, the GoN has
not given priority to develop negotiation capacity of officials working in
foreign ministry as well as other concerned ministries. Politicization of
foreign ministry has extremely undermined the entire scope and opportunities of
achieving foreign policy objectives of Nepal. Hence, it is urgent to change the
existing style of operation of MoFA, develop political consensus in foreign
policy issues and develop institutional capacity of MoFA by restructuring it,
invest in capacity building of individuals engaged in negotiation and competent
human resource development.
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g]kfnsf]nflu ;'emfjx? . sf7df08f}+M gLlt cg';Gwfg k|lti7fg .
[1] Bishnu Raj Upreti is currently leading
government think tank Policy Research Institute (PRI). He has 42 years of experience
in development cooperation, research and global change process in Asia, Europe,
Latin America and Africa. He is author of more than 6 dozen of books, more than
hundred chapters in books, 35 articles in peer reviewed international journals.
He can be reached at: bishnu.upreti@gmail.com, @brupreti
[2] Our own study (the border evidence collection
expert group work) as well as the technical report “Almora: a Gazetteer Volume
XXXV of the District Gazetteers” of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh
authored by H.G. Walton in 1911 states that the Kali has its 'true source' in
Kuthi-Yankti, which after the infall of Kalapani river takes the name of Kali.
[3] Interview of Dr. Bhekh Bahadur Thapa entitled “Challenges
of Nepal's Foreign Policy” Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bALPRouP8X0
[4] Interview of Dr Thapa to
Nepal live today newspaper. Details can be seen here: https://www.nepallivetoday.com/2022/01/02/dr-bhekh-bahadur-thapa-looks-back-at-nepals-foreign-policy-trajectory/
[5] How politicization has
affected the foreign policy can be seen in details at: https://www.nepallivetoday.com/2022/01/02/dr-bhekh-bahadur-thapa-looks-back-at-nepals-foreign-policy-trajectory/
[6] My
office is in the same building first floor and these documents are locked in
several rooms of the second floor. So many bats and rats run here and there
around these stored rooms.
[7] See article 5 of the
Constitution of Nepal at:
https://lawcommission.gov.np/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Constitution-of-Nepal.pdf
[8] The
Council of Ministers had approved the new map on 20 May 2020. On 22 May later
it submitted to the Parliament and on 13 June 2020, Prime Minister KP Sharma
Oli put forth for voting in the Lower House of Parliament and it was unanimously
approved (except Sarita Giri and she was pulled back from the Parliament
because of her disobey the whip of her party).
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