Responding to COVID-19: Supporting the survival of LBT people in Nepal
By Christina Cadore & Laxmi Ghalan, President, Mitini Nepal
All over the world COVID-19 and the fallout from it is changing the daily lives of people. From increasing violence, to loss of income for informal workers, women and girls have been most impacted. Women have been left fighting for their lives and their livelihoods.
As ever, grassroots women’s movements have been on the frontlines of the response. To support our partners and the women they work with, we’ve launched The COVID-19 Resilience Fund. The COVID-19 Resilience Fund will support our partners to continue their vital COVID-19 relief efforts at a time when their services are in higher demand especially for the most marginalised groups they work with, and yet fundraising is made even more difficult. Resilient grants are also supporting partners to adopt to new way of working and to continue their advocacy efforts to influence their governments’ COVID-19 response and recovery plans.
In this series we speak to our partners about the challenges COVID-19 have presented to them and women in their communities and the difference the Womankind COVID-19 Resilience Grants will make.
Womankind partner Mitini Nepal, who support lesbian, bisexual and trans people (LBT), were one of the first recipients of the COVID-19 resilience fund. Below founder and president Laxmi Ghalan describe the difference this grant will make to women in their community.
Stigma & discrimination: The impact of COVID-19 on LBT people in Nepal
Laxmi: “The LBT community already lack support, empathy and acceptance from their families as well as the society, so COVID-19 has had a huge impact. As a marginalised and underprivileged community, LBT women have been experiencing extreme hardships at this difficult phase of a global pandemic. Individuals are suffering in a greater sense as they have mostly been disowned by their families and have no safe haven to run to.
It is a known fact that the LBT community has difficulties getting jobs because of stigma and bias that surrounds the community but at present, even the mediocre source of income that they relied on has slipped away from them. With LBT women unemployed or in the informal sector they have been unable to afford food, rent and other essentials.
In order to claim relief packages distributed by the Nepal government, it was mandatory to show their citizenships. Many LBT people do not have their legal documents with them as they had fled home and transgender individuals mostly have citizenships that announces the gender assigned at birth. This means that LBT women have been unable to access relief packages and have no source of income.
Another way COVID-19 is impacting LBT people is through healthcare. As LBT individuals are often mistreated by health care providers, they are often not comfortable to go to hospitals. This history of discrimination presents a fear that LBT individuals that might have shown symptoms of the infection may hesitate to go to hospitals to get a test done due to the fear that they will be mistreated.“
Survive during lockdown, thrive when it’s lifted
Laxmi: “The grant received from the Womankind COVID-19 Resilience Fund will help us to continue to support LBT women by distributing relief packages to the affected people of the community. This small sum of money will help them to afford food and other essentials until they are able to work.
Mitini Nepal have also met with the government to demand an end to having to show citizenship for the access of relief kit. The government has since agreed that citizenship or any legal documents would not be required for the LBT community to get relief packages from the government. We will continue to monitor and track the relief packages sent out by the government in order to make sure the affected people actually benefit from them.
Many LBT people will lose their source of income after the lockdown is lifted putting them in a vulnerable position long after the government relief packages are available. With this grant from the Womankind COVID-19 Resilience Fund we plan to promote small businesses, as well as train LBT people in skills that will help them generate income so that can be financially independent in the long term.”
Women’s rights organisations already work in difficult conditions with limited funding making it even harder for them to quickly adapt to this crisis. Our support can make a difference. Help us to support our partner organisations during these unprecedented times. Donate to our COVID-19 Resilience Fund today.
