The rights Nepal promised its transgender citizens are quietly slipping away

Nearly two decades after a landmark Supreme Court ruling made Nepal a global symbol of transgender rights, the home ministry has effectively suspended gender recognition for those seeking binary status.

There is a particular cruelty in being promised something, watching it be written into law, and then being told, not through any official announcement, but through silence, unreturned calls, and stalled paperwork, that it no longer applies to you. That is the experience of many transgender people in Nepal today.