For eight weeks, 20 young Nepalis got something that is rarely available outside the civil service: direct access to the people who make Nepal’s foreign policy.

On May 15, the Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA), under the aegis of the foreign ministry, had called for Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Nepal Summer Internship–2026, an eight-week voluntary policy research internship for Nepali graduates and professionals interested in contributing to Nepal’s foreign policy agenda.

The programme ran from mid-June to mid-August. It focused on key research themes including strategic affairs and public international law, development and finance, emerging technologies, clean energy and the Nepali Diaspora.

Twenty participants were selected across three tracks: 10 interns, five in-person fellows and five virtual fellows. Their research covered strategic affairs and public international law, development and finance, emerging technologies, clean energy, climate diplomacy, labour migration and the Nepali diaspora.

Earlier the IFA hired a minimum number of interns and research fellows pursuing higher studies abroad, aiding diplomacy careers. The surge in applications, according to Nikhil Sangroula, who was involved in designing the programme, reflects the institutional attraction of the MoFA and growing interest among young Nepalis in diplomacy and the foreign service.

MoFA is a highly important ministry and a long standing institution with a strong legacy, Sangroula said. He said many young people are interested in entering the Public Service Commission and pursuing careers in bureaucracy and diplomacy. The chance to gain experience at the foreign ministry, he said, made the programme attractive to them.

“The MoFA/IFA internship has opened more widely to young researchers”, said Sangroula.

It was the first programme in the history of IFA to include research fellows.

At the closing event held on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the programme was an effort to widen the route into policymaking beyond the civil service and electoral politics.

“The civil service examination should not be the only route through which young people contribute to policy making,” Khanal said, stating that Nepal’s public systems were still largely built on an older model even as the country faced new challenges from climate change, artificial intelligence and frontier technologies.

For the participants themselves, the programme's most unusual feature was not the workshops themselves but the access it offered to the machinery of policymaking. Interns and fellows conducted policy-oriented research, consulted government officials and other stakeholders, and translated their findings into recommendations for policymakers.

Ayusha Kunwar, 25, who studied at Northeastern University and plans to pursue a master’s degree in development economics, was also selected as an intern. Her research focused on the possibility of overseas voting for the Nepali diaspora. She had initially expected little from an eight-week voluntary programme. Instead, she found the access to bureaucrats, diplomats and former bureaucrats to be its most valuable feature.

“That access was probably the biggest asset of the programme,” she said. According to her, senior officials did not just lecture the interns and fellows; they read the research, gave feedback and explained the constraints under which policy decisions are made.

Vanshika Shah, 26, who studied economics at Ashoka University and later earned a master’s in international relations and diplomacy from Leiden University, said she had left a well-paying job in India to return to Nepal because she wanted to contribute to Nepal’s policy process.

She said she joined the programme because governments rarely ask researchers for direct policy feedback. Going in, she expected little from an unpaid government initiative. What she found instead, she said, was a serious attempt to connect research to policymaking.

Officials, she said, helped participants navigate the ministry, arranged access to the foreign secretary and joint secretaries, and facilitated discussions. “I was surprised by how open the bureaucracy was,” she said. “They would sit through our research and tell us, ‘This is our problem. Help me solve it.’”

For her, the most significant learning was not just about foreign policy, but how the state functions. Working inside the system, she said, made her see that government work is less visible from the outside than people assume.

Sangroula said the goal was not just to assign research topics but to help participants understand how Nepal’s bureaucracy works and how academic research can be translated into policy language. Workshops, mentorship and speaker sessions were built in deliberately, he says, because many participants, especially those educated abroad, were unfamiliar with the workings of Nepali institutions.

“Simply saying the government is dysfunctional is not useful,” Sangroula said. “We wanted them to understand why a problem exists and how it is being produced.”

The programme also exposed a contradiction in its own design. While it sought to widen access to policymaking, its voluntary structure may have narrowed who could realistically take part. The programme received around 1,300 applications, but the selected cohort was heavily composed of people who had studied abroad.

Kunwar raised a broader concern about representation. Because the programme was voluntary, she said it naturally favoured applicants from privileged backgrounds. In her cohort, she noted, everyone had studied abroad. “I would like future cohorts to be more representative and to include people who studied in Nepal as well,” she said, adding that some form of compensation could make participation more accessible.

The structure also placed limits on the research itself. Participants said eight weeks was not enough time to fully do justice to the research, with much of the first consumed by research design and methodology.

Whether the research will have a life beyond the programme, however, remains to be seen. Executive director of the IFA, Rojina Tamrakar said the programme should not end with submission of papers, pointing to plans for continuing research, a possible alumni network and longer-term engagement with participants. Khanal said the government intends to continue the summer internship and is also considering a longer term fellowship, potentially lasting a year.

Shah is already in discussions with IFA about how she might continue contributing to foreign policy work, including on the guidance note she developed during the fellowship.

“The fellowship helped steer me toward my long-term goal of working in Nepal's diplomatic and foreign policy establishment,” she said.