Treaties & International Agreements of Nepal नेपालका सन्धि तथा अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय सम्झौताहरू

The Treaty of Sugauli — initialled on 2 December 1815, with ratification delivered on 4 March 1816 — ended the Anglo-Nepal War. Nepal lost roughly one-third of the territory it controlled, fixing its modern east–west limits at the Mechi and Mahakali rivers. Because the treaty never precisely demarcated the Kali River at its source, it still underpins the Kalapani–Limpiyadhura–Lipulekh dispute with India, including Nepal's 2020 constitutional map amendment.

Its ten articles grant each country's citizens near-national treatment — the legal basis of the open border for visa-free movement, residence and work. A once-secret letter of exchange, made public only in 1959, adds the security substance: Nepal's arms imports require India's 'assistance and agreement'. Either party can exit on one year's notice under Article 10 — notice Nepal has never given despite decades of revision demands.

Its Article 1 was the first formal, treaty-level recognition by Britain of Nepal's full independence, 'both internal and external'. Registered with the League of Nations in 1925, it became Nepal's primary documentary evidence of sovereign statehood — used in its 1949 UN application and cited ever since as proof Nepal was never a princely state of British India.

During B.P. Koirala's March 1960 Beijing visit, Mao Zedong proposed splitting the mountain 'half for each side'. Nepal refused any shared-summit formula, and the 1961 Boundary Treaty ran the line along the ridge through the summit — the southern face in Nepal, the northern in China. The two countries jointly announced Everest's remeasured height of 8,848.86 m in December 2020.

On 14 December 1955, in the famous sixteen-state 'package deal' that broke the Cold War membership deadlock. Nepal had first applied in 1949 — using the 1923 Nepal–Britain treaty as evidence of its sovereignty — but was blocked amid bloc vetoes. Admission multilateralised Nepal's foreign policy and led to its role as a major UN peacekeeping contributor.

Signed on 12 February 1996 and ratified by 96.5% of MPs present in a midnight joint session, it gives Nepal and India equal entitlement to the Mahakali River's waters and promises the ~6,480 MW Pancheshwar project. But the Detailed Project Report, due within six months of the 1997 entry into force, has never been finalised — the parties still disagree on 'existing consumptive uses', benefit-counting and water-sharing formulas, nearly three decades later.

When the 1978-era trade and transit treaties expired in 1989 — amid Indian displeasure at Nepal's purchase of Chinese weapons — Rajiv Gandhi's government declined renewal and closed most border points, leaving only two of roughly 15–17 crossings open. Nepal suffered acute shortages of fuel, salt and medicine for about 13–15 months. The crisis fed the 1990 People's Movement that ended the Panchayat system.

A $500 million US grant (plus Nepal's $197 million contribution) for about 300 km of 400 kV transmission lines and East-West Highway maintenance. Signed on 14 September 2017, it took five years of political battle to ratify — finally on 27 February 2022, with a 12-point interpretive declaration disclaiming any military dimension. It entered into force on 30 August 2023, with a strict completion deadline of August 2028.