Indigenous Rights Foundation is a not-profit and a sister organization of Indigenous Media Foundation, founded by working journalists belonging to different Indigenous nationalities in Nepal, which was founded to uplink the Indigenous Television signal to the satellite. Today, it runs and manages a satellite television channel of Indigenous Television named ITV Nepal.Launched on 21 November 2021, ITV Nepal, the multilingual Indigenous Peoples-led community not-profit television channel reaching to the Indigenous nationalities and diverse linguistic groups living in remote and grassroots level.
Registered under the Company Act on 24 September, 2020 as a not-for-profit organization, Indigenous Rights Foundation was founded to obtain license and uplink the Indigenous Television signal to the satellite, as per the government’s rule and regulations. Indigenous Rights Foundation together with Indigenous Media Foundation cherishes a dream to support Nepal’s Indigenous Peoples through best possible media and communication channel to realizing their rights as guaranteed in Article 16 of UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which affirms that ‘Indigenous Peoples have right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-Indigenous media without discrimination’.
Indigenous Rights Foundation together with Indigenous Media Foundation have made this incredible effort to establish both the cable and satellite television channel, which host programs into 23 different indigenous languages which helped not only to increase indigenous voices, participation and access to media, but also have strengthened the use of Indigenous languages in media and to push for the recognition of the right to freedom of expression, right to information in the mother tongues in Nepal.