DRS/SRI: The State of Sexuality: Modernity, Law and Same-Sex Sexualities in Nepal

Abstract

Paul Boyce and Daniel Coyle

Legal reform around sexualities and gender identities has been at a focus of polity and politics in Nepal for the last decade or more. Recent measures include the recognition of the ‘third gender’ in the Nepal 2011 census and current plans to include recognition of same-sex marriage and protection of sexual minorities within the Nepali constitution.

Such legislative progress has taken place in the context of the profound shifts in the post-monarchist, newly democratic Nepalese state, wherein aims to reconfigure the contract between people, law and polity has created spaces within which ‘new’ and 'modern' discourses of sexuality and rights have emerged and consolidated.

This sexual rights work in Nepal has emerged out of considerable international influence such as Human Rights Watch, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the United Nations, and must be understood in the context of this ‘international milieu’, whilst also being strongly regional (due to the work of strong and articulate national advocates). The globalized terrain of these reforms suggests complex interpenetrations of legality, culture and subjectivity.

For example, the broader cultural environment for the recognition of same-sex sexualities and transgendered rights in Nepal appears to be narrow, with these issues featuring little in the 'cultural consciousness'.

As such the cultural context for the recognition of ‘minority sexual rights’ appears weak, even as the national legal framework appears especially advanced.  This paper explore s these issues based on on-going research in Nepal.

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Please contact Dr Wendy Harcourt: harcourt@remove-this.iss.nl and Dr Silke Heumann: heumann@remove-this.iss.nl

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