A global legal body, ADF International, has told Premier it has particular concerns about one section, Article 31, of the new constitution.
The majority Hindu country's draft states that: "Anyone causing disturbance to the public health, order/decency and morality or disrupting public peace by converting any person religion as well as jeopardize/mock someone's religion, such work shall be punishable in accordance with the law."
Robert Clarke, a barrister at ADF International told Premier that Christians are particularly at risk from the proposed new laws: "80 per cent of the population are Hindu.
"Christians make up about somewhere between two to five per cent of the population, a number of people this is perhaps going to affect in the extreme, but they are minority and usually these laws protect minorities and this is something that's really going to impact Christians disproportionately in Nepal."
He added that the wording does not make clear how and why someone can be punished: "If someone is making comments that perhaps you think is perfectly legitimate criticisms or questions about the validity of religious beliefs that someone holds, and they're just trying to probe that, maybe they're even trying to investigate it for themselves - and that person subjectively feels they're offended.
"They feel like their religion's been mocked and they go and report that.
"Will that be enough? The answer is we really don't know."
Listen to Premier's Hannah Tooley speak to Robert Clarke here:
