For decades, Nepal has hosted refugees in its eastern Province 1. These refugees rely primarily on subsistence farming, characterized by low productivity and income. Moreover, these vulnerabilities are also shared by the communities that host them. In light of these circumstances, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) collaborated to conduct a market systems snalysis in Nepal’s Province 1. Employing the ILO-UNHCR Approach to Inclusive Market Systems (AIMS), the overarching objective of the study was to develop and propose interventions that will enable refugees and host community members to access decent economic and employment opportunities.

The report identified three value chains through the sector selection and subsequent value chain analysis: vegetable, piggery, and poultry. Each sector faces its unique set of constraints and bottlenecks that currently inhibit wider levels of inclusiveness and productivity. However, as the findings of this report demonstrate, each value chain also possesses a high potential and level of opportunities for interventions that address the root causes of these constraints to create decent jobs and greater social inclusion of refugees and host communities.

To address the root causes of these bottlenecks, the study proposes a series of recommendations based on the market systems approach. Rather than adopting a strategy of “one-size-fits-all” or direct delivery of aid to produce immediate alleviations of the challenges, these recommendations emphasize recommendations that ultimately seek to modify the incentives and behaviour of market actors across the system.