United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has appointed Dev Kumar Sunuwar as a member of the Advisory Board of Trustees of the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples from the Asia-Pacific region for a three-year term.
He is the second Nepali to be appointed to the board after human rights attorney Shankar Limbu.
Sunuwar was a fellow at the headquarters of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland in 2010. He has been working closely with various UN bodies on indigenous peoples since, as well as leading the caucus on indigenous peoples within the UN since 2015.
Sunuwar is currently working as the Asia-Pacific region coordinator for Cultural Survival, a United States-based non-profit organisation dedicated to defending the rights of indigenous peoples.
Dev Kumar Sunuwar is the second Nepali to be appointed to the board after human rights attorney Shankar Limbu.
Sunuwar previously worked as a journalist with the Post also, covering health and social affairs.
He is also the founder of Indigenous Television, Nepal's first community TV station run by indigenous community.
In addition to Sunuwar, Diel Mochire Mwenge from Congo, Marjolaine Etienne from Canada, Tukumminnguanq Nykjaer Olsen from Denmark and Pablo Miss from Belize have also been appointed to the advisory board of the UN indigenous peoples fund.
The fund has a mandate to support representatives of indigenous communities and organisations from across the world to participate in various UN meetings about indigenous peoples and their issues.
The board is composed of five persons with experience on indigenous issues, and they are selected from different regions of the world.