About Us

Ipas Nepal has been providing technical support to initiate and expand evidence informed Safe Abortion Services (SAS) and contraception services across the country since the legalization of abortion in 2002. Beside this, Ipas Nepal has been rigorously working for on Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response, linkage of climate change, gender, and SRHR, Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and Humanitarian context and SRHR.

Ipas Nepal works intensively with the MoHP, the Ministry of Women Children and Senior Citizens, the Department of Health Services (DoHS) and different divisions, centers, and organizations at the Federal level while working closely with the Province government and Local Government .

In Nepal, use of clandestine abortion procedures endangers women.

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Our Vision

A world where every woman and girl has the right and ability to determine her own sexuality and reproductive health.

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Our Mission

Women and girls have improved sexual and reproductive health and rights through enhanced access to safe abortion service, contraceptive care, and reduced gender-based violence ensuring resilient health system.

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Theory of Change

With a shared commitment to a resilient sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) ecosystem, Ipas Nepal collaborates with government, civil society, and community actors to strengthen health systems for SRHR. This includes ensuring the availability, acceptability, and affordability of choices for abortion and contraceptive care.

Ipas Nepal emphasizes a deep understanding of individuals’ needs and preferences in abortion care, promotes social norm change around reproductive rights, reduces abortion stigma, and works to decrease gender-based violence. Ipas Nepal also addresses intersectional factors—such as climate change and humanitarian crises—that negatively impact sexual and reproductive health rights.

Ipas Nepal believes that through respect for sexual and reproductive health and rights, women and girls can live with dignity.

Our Values

Driven

We are impatient for a world where women and girls’ sexual and reproductive rights are fully realized and unsafe abortion no longer exists. We are focused and disciplined in our mission.

We make the most of our time, energy and resources and push ourselves to keep moving forward despite obstacles. We don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good because we need safe abortion today. We care deeply about the impact and quality of all that we do.

Principled

We believe sexual and reproductive rights are basic human rights. Access to safe abortion is an integral and unassailable part of those rights. Safe abortion is also a fundamental part of basic health care. Our work on safe abortion promotes gender equity. Our actions are founded on these core beliefs. We have integrity when we do not compromise these principles and when we trust in women’s decisions.

Bold

We are unapologetic and unconditional in our commitment to a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. We solve problems through creative thinking, curiosity, and we challenge assumptions that might otherwise limit us. We make decisions based on experience and evidence and feel safe in taking calculated risks both in our communication and our action.

We always seek to challenge our own biases and assumptions and we are not afraid to create new pathways for women to exercise their right to safe abortion. We believe that this requires honest, direct communication and we are not afraid to tell the truth. We are also not afraid to laugh at ourselves and have moments of joy in our work.

Interdependent

Our goals are ambitious and larger than us. We are devoted to advancing the abortion field and the rights of women, not just Ipas. We share information, expertise and responsibility, and we strengthen our entire field as a result. We have a collaborative spirit and recognize when we are stronger together. We respect our colleagues, internal and external, by giving each other the benefit of the doubt and celebrating and supporting the work of others.

Key Approaches

Gender equality, diversity and social inclusion (GEDSI)

GEDSI will inform all dimensions of Ipas Nepal work. Ipas Nepal will strive to enhance diversity of its work force in its office. All programs will have strong built-in gender dimension in design and implementation. Ipas Nepal’s social inclusion priority will involve working with and including marginalized communities, including people with disability, in its program design, implementation, evaluation and learning aspects. GEDSI will include directly working with marginalized groups, including women and adolescent girls, as well as working with men and adolescent boys to bring about intended changes.

Partnership and capacity strengthening

The change that Ipas Nepal creates has always been and will be through strategic collaboration and capacity-strengthening support with a diverse range of local and community-based partners, including the women and girls we serve. Strengthening intersectional partnerships and deepening our partnerships with governments and the overall health sector will also be key priorities.

Partnerships will be established with the objective to share vision, risks, burden, resources and accelerate the impacts. Partnership will nourish mutual trust, respect and equity. Ipas Nepal will further strengthen its participatory approach to ensure mutual accountability and promote equitable work with partners and stakeholders.

Health System strengthening

Ipas Nepal will work on health system strengthening through technical assistance so that maternal and neonatal health and reproductive morbidities can be reduced. The work could focus on overall health system strengthening as sexual and reproductive health systems and service provisions are closely linked to the broader health system. The system strengthening work will also contribute to universal health coverage. A client-oriented, provider efficient (COPE) approach will be followed for system strengthening work.

Sustainable SRHR Ecosystem

Ipas Nepal will focus on partner capacity strengthening to enable partners to effectively plan, implement and deliver SRHR related programs now and in the future. Ipas Nepal will invest in building its own capacities in the evolving areas of work on intersectionality of SRHR.

Knowledge management and innovation

Ipas Nepal will prioritize knowledge generation, documentation and promotion through required investments to create knowledge products, reflection and learning spaces, and culture. Continuous improvement and innovation will be key objectives of such knowledge management. Evidence will be created and promoted to spearhead the change agenda prioritized in this strategic plan.

Local ownership and co-creation

Ipas Nepal will promote local ownership of programs through co-creation with local and other levels of governments and community engagement in planning and implementing programs. Achieving sustainability of programs will be key elements of such ownership and co-creation embedded in the overall program design.

Accountability

While GEDSI will form an integral part for Ipas Nepal to be accountable, it will promote accountability through being transparent in its program and operations and by being responsive to stakeholders. Ipas Nepal will be accountable to not only donors who provide funds to us, but to the partners we work with and will promote the accountability of partners to the people they work with. For Ipas Nepal, being accountable means being timely and responsive to critical questions posed to us and entertaining — not running away from — critical perspectives on our interventions, correcting ourselves, and learning from mistakes.

Movement Building

Ipas Nepal will invest to develop individual knowledge and agency of people, community leadership, the network of organizations working on SRHR and their mobilization capacity for SRHR movement building. Ipas Nepal will work to tap opportunities to integrate abortion into broader health, gender equality, and social justice movements.

Ipas Impact Network

In June 2022, Ipas country leaders from across the organization signed a declaration agreeing to the purpose, framework, and principles of the Ipas Impact Network. Through this declaration they actively and publicly opted into the network, which is a mutually agreed upon relationship defined by our commitment, culture and belief in shared ownership, distributed power, and equity.

In the Ipas Impact Network, country and regional teams (which we are calling “nodes” internally) will be the primary implementing and fundraising parts of the network. This includes the US country node. Service teams will provide technical, financial, communications and other services which will be shared by the country and regional nodes or used by the entire network.