History
On November 17, 2008, Nepal’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of laws to guarantee full rights to LGBT people, and all gender minorities must be defined as “natural persons” under the law; this included the right to marry. "This is a landmark decision for the sexual minorities and we welcome it," said Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal's first publicly gay lawmaker and a leading gay rights activist in South Asia. The court asked the government to form a committee to study same sex partnership laws in other countries and asked that the new law does not discriminate against sexual minorities, including cross-dressing and transgendered people.
On March 22, 2009, Pant said in an interview with the Indo-Asian News Service that "Though the court has approved of same sex marriage, the government is yet to enact a law," signaling that while a same-sex marriage bill has been ordered by the Supreme Court, it has yet to be drafted or voted on, much less legislated. In June, 2009, Pant said the process has just started. “Nepal is going through transition and everything seems to move slowly. The seven-member committee has formed and just started working to study same-sex marriage bills in other countries. Hopefully they will draft the suggestion to make same-sex marriage law soon and give it to the Government to approve.”
Several sources are reporting that same-sex marriage and protections for sexual minorities will be included in the new Nepalese constitution being drafted.
Nepal currently has the Interim Constitution. The Interim Constitution provides for a Constituent Assembly, which is charged with writing Nepal's permanent constitution. The CA is now in the process of preparing its first draft. Under the terms of the Interim Constitution, the new constitution was to be promulgated by November 30, 2011, but a final six month extension was granted just before this deadline bringing the date to May 31, 2012.
Negotiations on the new constitution failed and the Prime Minister dissolved the Constituent Assembly on May 28, 2012 in preparations for new elections. As a result, the future of same-sex marriage is uncertain.
Read more about this topic: Same-sex Marriage In Nepal
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