Rights of LGBTQ+ Community under Rule of Political Homophobia: A Comparative Study of SAARC Nations

A tireless progress has been made in the past 50 years by many-an-unnamed individual activists, advocacy organisations across the globe at all local, regional, national and international levels. The history of discrimination across the South Asian region tastes of a bitter colonial past reflected in the same shade of cultural subjugation and penalization on expression of non-normative gender behaviours. Even religious strain guides homophobia in the region and gets translated into State policy. It is perhaps when political homophobia is cloaked under the garb of ‘protection of traditional values’ that the argument for criminalizing homosexuality takes on its most pernicious form. In this research study, we try to meander through the periphery of international principles, legal provisions and challenges faced and overcome, wherever applicable, by the SAARC nations to uplift their LGBTQIA+ communities.