On the occasion of International Women’s day, Queer Youth Group, a youth-led queer rights organisation, organised its third annual Queer Womxn Pride Parade.

While the parade had started in 2019, last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the march couldn’t take place. However, this year, following the safety protocols, the queer rights group organised the parade in Bhrikuti Mandap, Kathmandu, later joining the mainstream women rights march.

According to the group, this year’s theme for the parade is, ‘All Women From Now’.

“This year, we are calling the women rights movement to be inclusive of intersex women, transgender women and women of diverse sexual orientations beyond heterosexuality,” said the organisers.

Similarly, in the parade, the rights group also raised their concerns against many laws of the country which are queerphobic. 

For years, Nepal has been always projected as a safe haven for queer people. However, the ground reality is grim. Queer people are often subjected to violence, both in physical and digital spaces. And even within the queer community, transgender and intersex woman have to face a lot of struggles, both legally and socially, as the current laws and provisions force them to get citizenship with ‘others’ as a gender marker, even if they do not identify with it.

“Trans women are women. Intersex women are women. We want our identity documents to reflect that and we stand against the legislation endorsed by the government regarding ‘other’ gender marker. Similarly, we also call upon the government to take immediate action on amending as well as formulating legislation to recognise our gender identity,” said the organisers.