Author E. Hughes Career Achievement Award

Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies

Shobha Pradhan Shrestha ’08 (MA)

Founder and Executive Chair,
Women for Peace and Democracy (WPD), Nepal

Shobha Pradhan Shrestha is the founder and executive chair of Women for Peace and Democracy (WPD), Nepal. Shrestha has more than a decade of experience in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Currently, she is working with 416 marginalized women in the rural parts of Nepal and is focusing on building their capacity and facilitating their roles in the process of socioeconomic and political change.

Shrestha is also a conflict resolution trainer and network manager of peacebuilding efforts at grassroots and national levels. She has been assisting the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at USD’s School of Peace Studies with women, politics, and peace programs since 2004. Shrestha is an active member of the Control Arms Coalition, International Action Network on Small Arms and Working Group on Small Arms and Other Portable Lethal Weapons. Her efforts have been focused on small arms control since 2003. Shrestha represented Nepal in control arms strategy meetings and participated in the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) signing ceremony at the United Nations on June 3, 2013. She presented a paper on “Armed Violence into Development (Geneva Declaration),” a civil society statement from Nepal, at the third biennial meeting of states on illicit trade in small arms, at the United Nations in July 2008. Shrestha previously served as the member secretary in South Asia Small Arms Network Nepal (SASA Net Nepal). She carried out research for the Nepal Chapter of Small Arms and is one of the authors of the book, Barrel of Gun, published in April 2006 by SASA Net Nepal.