NEPAL – Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics has given official recognition to gay and transgender people in this year’s Nepalese census. For the first time data was collected on the third gender from 5.6 million households across the country.
This has been seen as a major victory for equality in a country that only decriminalized homosexual relationships three years ago. The state’s recognition of the rights of gender minorities, gays and lesbians has been a long hard fight.
CNN reported Sunil Babu Pant, activist and founder of LGBT rights organization Blue Diamond Society as saying, “We had to put in a lot of pressure to have the third gender counted in the census. It was only after we said that we would go to court that the officials agreed to include the third gender as a category.”
Back in 2007 the Supreme Court had directed the state to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and decriminalize “unnatural sex.” It also decreed the issue of citizenship certificates that clearly indicate an individual’s choice of gender identity.
Pant said that whereas the ruling was very satisfying its implementation was slow and painful.
Bikash Bista, a statistics bureau spokesman said, “The new categorization was an attempt to open up the traditionally conservative country up to different points of view.”
