The former member of the constituent assembly of Nepal Sunil Babu Pant has shared an open letter to Prime Minister KP Oli asking why the Government of Nepal has not been working towards bringing greater legal protection and rights for the LGBTI+ people in Nepal. It was on the 21st of December in 2007 when the Supreme Court of Nepal made a landmark decision to create laws to protect the rights of LGBTI people. When same-sex relations became legal on this day eleven years ago, many celebrated and soon expected the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, many things have yet to still happen.
The founder of Nepal’s first LGBT organisation, Pant is currently in Nepal where he has been interacting with many former colleagues and individuals working on LGBT rights.
PS. If you want more insight on Blue Diamond Society, Sunil Babu Pant and the queer community of Nepal then I highly recommend you to read Kyle Knight’s article “Outliers: Sunil Babu Pant, The Blue Diamond Society, and Queer Organizing in Nepal”.
His Open Letter:
Hon Prime Minister @kpsharmaoli #kpoli
I am writing this gunasho to ask you “why Nepal government repeatedly failed to implement constitutional rights of gender and sexual minority communities’ and supreme court’s orders to insure our rights and equality before the law”?. Civil code, criminal code and many other acts formulated or being formulated by the parliament and your government have ignored gender and sexual minority communities. Government has failed to count this marginalized communities into the national, provencal and local government’s budgets and programs. Your own slogan and signboard appears to be meaningless for so many of us, which says: inclusion, participation and development; as your government excludes and marginalizes all the gender and sexual minority communities. You can check your own government-data where you can easily see that there is a big ZERO inclusion of gender and sexual minority communities anywhere in and around government programs, policies, budgets, jobs, education, development etc, which makes us uncomfortable and angry, this should make you uncomfortable and angry too.
After such a long struggle and so many changes in the country, if situation does not change for us what is the meaning of having democracy in Nepal?
I wish you all the best for you not to fail each and every nepali community, including gender and sexual minority communities. Let us know how we can help you so that we can feel ‘your government is as our government’ too.
Thank you for your anticipated attention towards our gunashos, needs and aspirations
Sunil Babu Pant
Former member of constitutent assembly of Nepal
