Ms. Bandita Sijapati is a Senior Social Development Specialist with the World Bank in the Sri Lanka and Maldives country office. Her work focuses primarily on social safeguards, gender and inclusion, and citizen engagement, particularly in the urban, agriculture and DRM sectors. Among others, she has co-led the World Bank’s flagship report on gender and social inclusion in Nepal, UNDP’s study on the challenges faced by persons with disabilities in Post-Earthquake Nepal and was involved in the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment in Nepal following the earthquakes in 2015. She has also provided advisory and consulting support to the Government of Nepal, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and bilateral and multilateral agencies including the International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, Department for International Development, in areas of gender, inclusion and social development. Prior to joining the World Bank, she served as the Research Director at the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility, Social Science Baha from 2010 till 2017. She holds a PhD from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, New York, and a master’s degree from Columbia University, New York. In 2016-2017, she was a Visiting Academic at Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford.