Nepal: Transgender People Continue to Face Various Obstacles.

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In Nepal, transgender people continue to face various obstacles within the processing of their applications ot change their legal gender on identity documents. Indeed, despite the country being a global touchpoint on this matter, especially since “the Nepali authorities’ recognition of trans people’s rights based on self-identification following a court ruling in 2007”, transgender people still have to deal with various forms of discrimination. 

As a matter of fact, the aforementioned jurisprudence and a range of implementation measures are insufficient to prevent systemic discrimination. As highlighted by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the authorities have never provided clear guidelines on the bureaucratic process for changing one’s gender, which has resulted in general bureaucratic confusion. 

Indeed, “while some trans people have been able to successfully change their legal gender through individual court cases, interactions between trans people and the state have been fraught for several years”, as reported by HRW. In particular, it has been documented how some officials requested “medical certificates proving that individuals have undergone genital surgery”, despite it not being demanded under Nepali law. 

Furthermore, HRW interviewed 11 trans people in Nepal, back in December 2025, with “over half of whom were in the midst of stalled legal gender recognition processes”. This research documented that “the process for obtaining legal gender recognition contains troubling elements of medicalization and inappropriate bureaucratic scrutiny of physical characteristics as markers of gender identity; trans people’s experiences of the ad hoc process reveal it is too often confusing, slow, and rife with human rights violations”. 

The overall situation has worsened since the beginning of 2025, “following an increase in public and, apparently, in private, “anti-gender” advocacy with authorities by groups opposed to rights-based trans legal recognition”. In addition to this, the Ministry of Home Affairs recently paused all processing of applications, de facto ending legal gender recognition in Nepal. If the bureaucratic process was unclear before, now it has become impossible to complete it at all. 

Transgender people already face systematic discrimination worldwide, but when denied legal documentation and formal recognition, they face major issues in “accessing education, health care, and employment”, living “with the fear that at any moment, someone could come across their documents, realize they were trans, and mistreat them”. 

As stated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “the United Nations has affirmed the right of trans persons to legal recognition of their gender identity and a change of gender in official documents, including birth certificates, without being subjected to onerous and abusive requirements”. Sadly, “this right is violated in all regions of the world” as of nowadays”. 

In conclusion, clear guidelines regarding the bureaucratic process to follow are needed to ensure that trans people in Nepal have access to identity documents reporting their chosen legal gender.

written by Alice Scotti