The following piece is the translation on my article for Walking On The South (WOTS?).
Quella che segue è la traduzione di un mio articolo per Walking On The South (WOTS?).
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The
Nepalese Ministry of Internal Affairs has recently issued a circular
to the 75 districts of the country to give effect to a law passed
last year on the issue of equal opportunities. The approval of this
law gives citizens the right to be registered on citizenship
documents with the words "third gender", a measure taken for those who do not wish to be
identified as "man" or "woman."
The
circular appears to be an important first step towards the
implementation of the 2007 Supreme Court's decision that defined lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and intersex (LGBTI) as "natural persons" and
supported their rights. The law also spoke in favour of gay
marriages, and in this respect there has been some progress, too. In
Nepal there is no official census of the LGBTI community, but some estimates suggest that the number could be around 500,000
individuals (in a country of nearly 27 million inhabitants). Positive
comments came from Bhumika Shrestha, the first Nepalese political and
transgender member of Congress, and by Manisha Bista, President of
FSGMN, the Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities, Nepal.
One
of the promoters of the initiative was the Blue Diamond Society, an
organization founded in 2001 to defend the rights of sexual
minorities. In the past few days the government refused to renew the licenses of the
association without giving specific reasons. The non-renewal will
make it impossible to access the funds, including those coming from
the Global Fund: this might put in serious difficulties the
organization, the 750 people belonging to the staff and the smooth
operation of 42 offices spread around the country.
The
recognition of the rights of those who identify themselves in the
"third gender" appears positive as much as surprising in a
country with a strong religious and conservative tradition like
Nepal, where about 60% of girls get married before the age of 18 (often in arranged
marriages, sometimes polygamous), a good 20% of which around 15,
sometimes even between 11 and 13 if families can not support them.
These practices have become less common in the capital, Kathmandu,
but 80% of the population lives in rural areas, where some traditions
maintain a certain solidity.
This
is the case, for example, of the Lama community living in the Humla
district, located in the extreme North-Western region of Nepal, where
about 10% of households still practice polyandry, a form of polygamy
in which a woman establishes a relationship with more than one man.
Specifically, after the eldest son marries a girl, his younger
brothers are forced to marry the same woman, but all the children
born out of these relationships will always be recognized only to the
older brother. If a man breaks this chain and independently marries a woman without respect for
the tradition he has to face the immediate exclusion from the
household.
"Chaupadi"
is another custom still prevalent, especially in the villages located
in the Far West of Nepal: women are forced to spend days of isolation
within the animal barns during the menstrual period. The practice has
its roots in the Hindu tradition that sees women impure in the days
of the cycle and childbirth: it is for this reason that more than 90%
of women outside the city gives birth at home or in adjacent huts and
they monthly respects the exile imposed by chaupadi. These huts,
however, can be dangerous places: in recent years there have been
reports of women being raped, killed by snakes, or dead from
hypothermia as they observed the ritual of isolation. The last case dates back to few months ago in the district of
Jajarkot: a sixteen year old girl was found dead after a landslide,
being buried under the rubble of the hut in which she had been
confined to observe the chaupadi.
Meanwhile,
in Kathmandu, the Occupy Baluwatar movement celebrated 100 consecutive days of protest. The initiative was launched
following a reprehensible crime story, to denounce the growing
problem of gender violence. The Nepalese law bans women under the age
of 30 to migrate and work in Persian Gulf countries and this
situation has led to the flourishing of an illegal market of
passports. In November 2012, a Nepalese woman returning from Saudi
Arabia was found in possession of a false passport, was conducted to
the immigration detention centre where was robbed and raped
repeatedly by government officials. When the press brought out the
story, groups of volunteers from different backgrounds started a
movement, which has collected every day dozens of protesters in front
of Baluwatar, the official residence of the Prime Minister, since
December 28, 2012. The movement has created a list of specific
requests, divided into short-and long-term objectives, and calls on
the government to implement concrete actions to end violence against
women and laws to create a more structured approach to migration and
gender issues.
The
constant political instability is a major obstacle on the path of
reforms in Nepal. After over a decade of civil war between the
Maoists and monarchists, the federal republic has been proclaimed in
2008; almost five years later, however, Nepal is without Parliament
and without a real Constitution. Last March Khil Raj Regmi was appointed Prime Minister of the interim government
in place of Baburam Bhattarai. The move was intended to promote the
process that should lead the country to elections in June 2013, but
the political and social landscape related to gender issues in Nepal
still looks complex and contradictory. On the one hand, the
acknowledgments obtained by the LGBTI community represent an
important step for the country in the process of integration of
minority groups, but these positive results come at a time of evident
political instability, there are still many inequalities, and women
still see far, far away, the achievement of real equality of rights.
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