The Supreme Court declares queer people equal citizens
A ruling from Kathmandu made queer people in Nepal equal citizens in 2007. With consequences to this day.
On 21 December 2007, Nepal's Supreme Court delivered a ruling that attracted attention far beyond the Himalayas. In the case "Sunil Babu Pant and Others v. Government of Nepal", the judges made clear: lesbian, gay, trans and intersex people are citizens with the same fundamental rights as everyone else.
The petition had been filed in the spring of the same year by four organisations, led by the Blue Diamond Society of activist Sunil Babu Pant. The background was concrete. Anyone who did not want to be registered as either a man or a woman often received no citizenship card and therefore no access to a passport, education or state benefits. On top of that came police violence and harassment in everyday life.
The court rejected the government's objections. Sexual orientation was natural and not a mental disorder. And how two adults live their intimacy was nobody's business, not even the state's. The government was ordered to change discriminatory laws, to officially recognise a third gender and to set up a commission on same-sex marriage.
The consequences did not stay on paper. Nepal was one of the first countries to include a third gender option in its census and passports. Sunil Babu Pant himself entered the Constituent Assembly the following year and is considered Asia's first openly gay member of a national parliament.
Even so, it took almost two decades to reach marriage equality. Governments changed, bills stalled. Only in June 2026 did the Supreme Court order the government, with binding effect, to grant same-sex couples full marriage rights. The foundation for this had been laid on a December day in Kathmandu.