Neha Gurung is an advocate based in Nepal and co-founder of the Citizenship Affected People’s Network (CAPN), a national non-governmental organization advancing the cause of equal citizenship rights in Nepal. Five years ago, she was a stateless person with no legal identity in her own country –Nepal. In the last eight years, she fought a legal battle in the Supreme Court, organized a nationwide advocacy campaign alongside her mother, to ensure gender-equal citizenship laws, created a network of stateless persons, completed law school, and established herself as a human rights lawyer.

After acquiring her hard-earned citizenship she continued her association with the campaign. Through CAPN, she advocates locally and nationally for the positive provisions in the citizenship laws, provides individual legal counseling and support to other impacted people, and creates awareness among youths, students of law and high school, and the general public about statelessness and the need for equal citizenship laws.

Currently, she is engaged with the Global Movement on Statelessness as a co-leads of the Movement’s Interim Core Group. Here she works together with the groups to help achieve its goal of creating a platform for wider and deeper impact in the field of statelessness.