Kyle Knight
Writer and Fulbright Fellow researching the contemporary LGBTI rights movement in Nepal

Nepal's Third Gender and the Recognition of Gender Identity
Posted: 04/24/2012 2:41 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kyle-knight/nepal-third-gender_b_1447982.html

On Dec. 27, 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal issued a decision that has been called "arguably the single most comprehensive judgment affirming protections for gender identity anywhere in the world." The decision in Pant v. Nepal was overwhelmingly in favor of the petitioners, a group of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights NGOs led by Sunil Babu Pant, president of the Blue Diamond Society, a sexual health and human rights organization founded in 2001. In addition to mandating that the government scrap all laws that discriminated based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity and establish a committee to study same-sex marriage policy, the court took the unique approach of establishing a third-gender category.

In legal terms, the third gender in Nepal -- denoted on official documents as "other" -- is an identity-based category for people who do not identify as either male or female. This may include people who present or perform as a gender that is different from the one that was assigned to them at birth. It can also include people who do not feel that the male or female gender roles dictated by their culture match their true social, sexual, or gender identity.