Nepal's unknown data privacy law: No Shangri La, but a first for South Asia

Abstract

Data privacy laws sometimes take root in unlikely locations. Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, has an unstable parliamentary democracy with coalitions led by various Marxist parties. Nepal has very limited privacy protections in relation to the private sector, and does not have a large non-agricultural private sector as yet. But in relation to public bodies its right to information (RTI) law, while primarily concerned with ‘freedom of information’ (FOI) issues, has numerous unusual and potentially important data privacy protections. This article analyses these protections, their scope, and (to the extent possible) their application, and argues that they amount to a ‘data privacy law’ for Nepal’s public sector. Nepal is the first country in South Asia to have such a law.