Nepal's response and diplomatic effort during Covid 19 crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was originated from Wuhan, China, and has severely affected the world since December 2019. The pandemic is reflected in every country and there is a lack of domestic response mechanism towards the crisis preparedness. The COVID 19 pandemic caused a challenging impact on the economic as well as health sector of Nepal. In the context of COVID-19 national, regional, and global coordination is required to combat the existing global pandemic. COVID-19 has thrown the least developed countries into the shadow of crisis due to the lack of technologies and infrastructure. Nepal as one of the low-income countries, the task of controlling the COVID-19 spread was challenging and it required support from other countries. Taking the diplomatic efforts approach for analyzing the response of Nepal in the COVID-19 crisis, this research focuses on the bilateral and multilateral efforts made to pursue the international communities to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This thesis shows that for adapting and responding to the crisis small countries like Nepal needs to diversify their diplomatic effort with regional and global states. In addition to that the foreign policy of Nepal should be prepared to portray its self- interest, relying on data to prioritize essential ties and building the internal capacity maximizing the potential of the governmental and private sector ensuring human security. Keywords: COVID-19 crisis, Nepal, Diplomatic efforts, Government response, People