KATHMANDU: Nepali Congress leader and First Lady Arzu Rana Deuba has filed her candidacy for the post of central member of the Nepali Congress (NC) in the 14th general convention.

Leader Deuba registered her nomination on the women’s open category at the NC Election Committee office in Bhrikuti Mandap, Kathmandu, Saturday afternoon.

After filing the nomination, Deuba, the champion of the female voice in the country, sought the support of all to ensure her and NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba-led panel’s victory in the general convention.

She, besides being a Nepali politician, is also a philanthropist and a social worker. Apart from politics, she is actively involved in running numerous social organizations and has a special interest in the empowerment of women in Nepal.

Deuba has been active in the field of environment as an activist and social scientist since the early 1990s when she worked for IUCN. She was elected as regional councilor of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) during its fourth world congress held in Barcelona, Spain in October 2008, becoming the first candidate to be elected from Nepal in IUCN’s highest decision-making body.

In the current first term as IUCN Regional Councillor, she has served as Chair of the Gender and Biodiversity Task Force (GBTF) of the IUCN Council as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and Co-chair of the Theme on Environment, Conflict and Security (TECS). She also served on the Bureau of the IUCN Council.

She represented IUCN as keynote speaker at the IUCN-PATA Asia Pacific Conference in 2009 and also as Keynote Speaker on the Himalayas at a Mountain Conference organized in Munich, Germany by ICIMOD and its partners in 2010.

Within the country, Deuba has been pursuing the demarcation of a large tract of land as a natural reserve. As a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources, she has been active in providing directives to the Government of Nepal in keeping with its national and international commitments for nature conservation.

On the international front, she has used her expertise in the field of gender and social issues to interface with environmental issues. Deuba has become an active member of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA) to campaign for mainstreaming gender issues within the UNFCCC.

In addition, she continues to be the role model of tens of thousands of Nepali women who look up to her as a leader as a politician, champion of environmental causes, climate activist and agent of social change.