On this page, you will find:

To find organisations providing legal assistance to refugees, visit our Pakistan Legal Assistance page.
For Pakistan Country of Origin Information (COI) experts, reports, commentaries, and relevant documents visit our Pakistan COI page. 

Legal Framework

Pakistan’s penal code does not explicitly penalize same-sex sexual activity, but it provides for the criminalisation of what it calls ‘unnatural offences’. Article 377 in Chapter 26A ‘Of Wrongful Constraint and Wrongful Confinement’ is a broad provision which states that whoever has voluntary carnal intercourse against the order of nature with a man, woman or animal is liable for a fine and/or between two and ten years imprisonment.

In the Constitution, Section 2 of Article 25 ‘Equality of Citizens’ specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and Article 27 prohibits discrimination in public services based on race, religion, caste, sex, residence or place of birth. There is no mention of discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Furthermore, 203D ‘Powers, Jurisdiction and Functions of the Court’ provides that the Federal Sharia Court may take decisions against legislation that is ‘repugnant’ to the Injunctions of Islam, which are provisions relating to the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah, and that the President or Governor must amend the law in order to bring it in line with the decision of the Court.

The Offence of Zina Ordinance 1979 criminalizes sexual activity, although specifying it is intended as carnal penetration outside of marriage. Despite not having laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, same-sex marriage is not allowed; therefore, same-sex sexual activity involving penetration is not allowed under any circumstances in Pakistan, being punishable by death according to Article  5 (2) (a), 6 (3) (b) and 17 of the Zina Ordinance.

However, there is uncertainty around whether sexual activity between women is also punishable by both, the Penal Code and the Offence of Zina Ordinance 1979, as both refer to ‘carnal intercourse’.

In April 2011, under the judgment of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury, transgender persons were provided with the legal recognition of a ‘third gender’ the khwaja sira. In November 2011, the Court ordered the electoral commission to collect data and register transgender persons as voters.

In September 2012, again under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, transgender people were confirmed as having equal rights to all Pakistani citizens, including the right not to be deprived of inheriting property from their families. The order is to be communicated to all courts of Pakistan and strictly enforced.

In 2018 the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights (TPPR) ACT was passed aiming to provide for protection, relief and rehabilitation of rights of the transgender persons and their welfare and far matters connected therewith and incidental.

The TPPR Act defines transgender person as a person who is:

“(i) Inter-sex (Khunsa) with mixture of male and female genital features or congenital ambiguities, or

(ii) Eunuch assigned male at birth, but undergoes genital excision or castration; or

(iii) a Transgender Man, Transgender Woman, Khawajasira or any person whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the social norms and cultural expectations based on the sex ‘they were assigned at the time of their birth.”

The Act ensures the right of transgender persons to be recognized as per his or her self-perceived gender identity, including official registration and changing their name in all governmental departments once they have attained the age of 18.

The Act establishes no discrimination against transgender persons when recognizing the right to education, employment, vote, hold public office, health, assembly, access to public places, inherit and property. Moreover, it guarantees Fundamental Rights and the duty of the government to ensure they are respected. In case of aggrievance, transgender persons may complain to the National Commission for Status of Women and National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR).

Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the Convention relating to the status of Stateless Persons 1954. Pakistan is a signatory to the ICCPR and ICESCR, but made a reservation to Article 40 in the former which provides in section 1 that parties to the covenant agree to submit reports on the progress made in enforcing and extending the rights recognised in the ICCPR.

For more detailed information on the protection of LGBTQI+ rights in Pakistan, visit the Pakistan ILGA World Database.

Homosexuality/Bisexuality

In 2019, ILGA’s ‘State-Sponsored Homophobia’ report stated that Pakistan had been vocal at the UN Human Rights Council and other fora in its refusal to embrace SOGI within the scope of the various human rights treaty bodies, and in its promotion of the ‘traditional values of humankind’ resolutions at the Human Rights Council. Furthermore, it had rejected five out of the seven recommendations received at the Universal Periodic Review in 2017, including decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual relations and taking measures to protect the LGBTQI+ community. Most recently, the parliament has rejected taking any action on the issue after receiving a request by gay men to have certain rights recognized.

The U.S. Department of State’s ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’ (section 6) 2012 corroborates other news sources regarding societal attitudes and state enforcement of laws against homosexuality. That is, in practice, cases that fall within Article 377 of the Penal Code are rarely prosecuted. Systematic discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons is widespread but no definitive data exists. This may be due to the reluctance of sexual minorities to come forward in complaint of discrimination for fear of greater difficulties within their communities should they do so. According to LGBTI News and BBC the law is rarely enforced in the courts, but families tend to intervene to suppress the case without filing a complaint and force the concerned persons to marry.

According to Global AIDS Monitoring 2018, 2019 and 2020, men who have sex with men and a lesbian couple who announced their relationship in social media were arrested in some cases, although cases have not been traceable after the arrests took place. In prison, transgender women are sometimes forced to share cells with men, and get harassed by them. 

The Guardian stated families tend to consider it a “dishonor” to have homosexual or bisexual family members, and pressure them to get married and conform to the norms of Pakistan’s society, according to DFAT Country Information Report on Pakistan 2022. If their sexual orientation is known or they refuse, they might be forced to undergo medical treatment to losing their rights in the family, physical violence or even expulsion from the family.

Nevertheless, in larger cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, LGBTQI+ persons may be accepted by their closer relatives and friends, and might live as a couple, but will potentially be subjected to threats, violence or blackmail if the nature of their relationship is known.  Between 2015 and 2019, 66 trans people were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s five regions, but no arrests were made. In general, perpetrators are not apprehended when cases of violence against the transgender community are registered with the police.

Activities organized in aid of highlighting the plight of LGBTQI+ persons in Pakistan stirred up significant opposition. The Muslim Youth Front(MYF) launched a campaign in Lahore in early 2012 and directed it primarily against two American organisations: GLIFAA (Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies) and GLSEN (Lesbian and Straight Education Network). In 2011, a GLIFAA event was opposed by MYF, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaatud Dawa. These groups couch their rhetoric in terms of the ‘twin evils” of America and homosexuality, the former they see as having brought the latter over as an otherwise non-existent phenomenon in Pakistan.

 Transgender persons

Although transgender persons are recognized and granted rights by law, they still suffer violent attacks by other civilians. Especially targeted are activists on trans rights, for example Shama, who was sexually assaulted by nine men on January 17th, 2018 or activist Sonia, who was shot and injured.

The transgender or hijras community is still shunned and heavily excluded from society, and they often live together in a community making a living through artistic performances, begging and prostitution. Nonetheless, after passing the 2018 TPPR Act, transgender rights have been acknowledged, including them in more social programs and giving them public employment opportunities. Transgender candidates stood for election in the 2013, 2018 and 2019 rounds, and a transgender woman was appointed by the Minister for Human Rights for the first time in Pakistan’s history. And in 2020, a transgender woman represented Pakistan at the United Nations’ convention to end violence against women.

Pakistani police have, however, arrested transgender women based on them maintaining same-sex relationships and claiming they defied the order of nature as foreseen in the country’s constitution and penal code.

Iqbal v UK Immigration Asylum Chamber Appeal (2018)
Iqbal entered the UK in 2012 on a student visa and had later applied for leave to remain on the bases of his family and private life in 2015, but the request had been refused.
In 2017 he applied for an asylum request on the grounds that he was homosexual and that returning to Pakistan would place him at risk of persecution. His request was refused, and M. Iqbal appealed the request, but it was dismissed because the judge considered the application lacked overall credibility that the applicant was homosexual, especially considering that M. Iqbal had already applied for a permit to reside in the UK without claiming he needed protection because of his sexuality.
The appellant later lodged an application for permission to appeal based on an error in law, given that the judge had erred in his approach to the witness evidence and in the consideration given to the Asylum and Immigration Act 2004. However, the Appeal Court found there was not material error in law and upheld the original decision.

Unknown applicant v Italian Ministry of Interior (2013) 
A national Pakistani applied for international protection in Italy, based on the ground that he had been forced to flee Pakistan due to the threats from his boyfriend’s brothers, members of the Muslim League, because of his homosexuality. The application was refused by the Territorial Commission in 2012, but the applicant appealed before Tribunal.
The Tribunal considered the applicant’s claim credible and accepted the appeal under Article 1(a) of the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees, because of the existence of well-founded fear of persecution due to his sexual orientation. 

Matter of M-H-, Respondent, U.S. Department of Justice (2012)
The respondent (the asylum seeker) was denied asylum and withholding of removal on grounds that crimes he committed in America (consisting of sexual acts with minors) denied him these rights. The court reviewed the question of whether the crime must be an ‘aggravated felony’ in order to bar these rights (even when a claimant faces torture on refoulement). They concluded that Matter of N-A-M should be applied as the standard for evaluating when a claim for asylum may be barred on grounds of criminal conduct; the lesser threshold of ‘particularly serious crime’ was found to be the appropriate measure.

SZMDS v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship High Court of Australia (2010)
As with other rejections for asylum by the Australian courts, the claimant was not considered to be ‘homosexual enough’. Here the majority of the court agreed with the Refugee Review Tribunal and determined that the homosexual activities he had engaged in were unlikely to continue and that one trip to Pakistan and another to the UK both rebutted any claim for subjective fear of persecution in Pakistan. The High Court even went so far as to make a public announcement defending the decision. 

An asylum case of a transgender Pakistani was reconsidered without full hearing at the UK High Court in August 2009. Judge Mark Ockelton QC remarked that he had ‘real difficulty’ in understanding why the Pakistani national was still being litigated against by the home office. Due to the strength of the asylum seeker’s case, Ockelton cut the hearing short and dismissed the home office’s appeal.

Organisations supporting LGBTQI+ individuals

Website
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Address: House 54, Block A, OPF Colony, Budhny Road Doran Pur, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan
Tel.: +92-91-2614046 /+92-337-9216208  
Email : contact@blueveins.org

Blue Veins is an award-winning organization based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan committed to build, strengthen and galvanize women & transgender person’s collective power for a just and sustainable world. Blue Veins works on projects focusing on transgender health rights, inclusive health services and trans visibility among stakeholders.

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Email: info@fdipakistan.org

Forum for Dignity Initiatives is a research and advocacy forum working for sexual and gender minorities in Pakistan. They are a rights-based organization that plays the role of an enabler, striving for an equitable society for transgender people, sex workers, and girls and young women.

Website
Tel.: 0343-2447649 / 0300-2835478
Email: bindiyarana2009@gmail.com

Gender Interactive Alliance works for the rights of and social justice for the trans-gender peoples community in Pakistan. Among their foremost projects is lobbying with the government to recognize trans-gender people as equal citizens of Pakistan; providing free medical care to trans-gender people who are routinely denied public healthcare; and enabling entrepreneurship by providing alternative economic opportunities for trans-gender people who are, by and large, left out of the mainstream economy. They also aim to provide a safe space for these people online so that their stories and experiences are not erased from our collective cultural experience.

Website

Khawaja Sira Society strives for the advancement of the social and health rights of transgender women/Hijra by strengthening community systems and developing community led interventions with focus on addressing discrimination and stigma. They also work on creating an enabling environment by advocating for equity, justice, safety, health and wellbeing of transgender women/Hijra communities and individuals

Website
Tel: + (92) 321 302 5583
Address: House 44, Block K-2, Model Town, Lahore, Pakistan
Email: qasim.iqbal@nmha.org.pk

Naz Male Health Alliance (NMHA) provides technical, financial and institutional support for improving the sexual health, welfare and human rights of the men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender community throughout the country. Their services includes HIV voluntary counselling and testing, sexually transmissible infection diagnoses and treatment, behaviour change communication, and condom and lubricant distribution through outreach as well as through a drop-in centre/clinic.

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Email: info@neengar.org

The core mission of Neengar Society is to provide the less privileged with more opportunities by enabling access to education, health and a better environment. Their projects include ‘Dignity for All’ providing training to grassroots level community activists about how to improve safety for transgender people from violence and other hateful crimes. These activists are now better able to seek justice for victims of human rights abuses. Along with training, they organized screenings of films on human rights to engage masses in debates on human rights violations of marginalized communities in Pakistan including transgender populations.

Website

OutRight Action International is an organization advocating, supporting and researching for the LGBTIQ+ community around the globe. In Asia, they work in partnership with local LGBTIQ groups to stop gender-based violence and discrimination against LGBTIQ people in general and against more marginalized groups within the broader LGBTIQ spectrum.

Country of Origin experts in LGBTQI+ rights

Email: rubabmehdi@hotmail.com

Rubab Mehdi is the Chair of International Imam Hussain Council based in the UK and Pakistan, Chairperson International Human Rights Association; lawyer, interfaith campaigner and a human rights defender. Rubab belongs to a philanthropic background and was the Chief European Co-Ordinator/Spokeswoman Ministry of human Rights Pakistan. She is a qualified British lawyer and was taught at BPP Law College and Holborn College of Law. In Pakistan she assisted Barrister Wasim Sajjad (Acting President of Pakistan, Chairman Senate & Advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan) in formulation of Federal laws and also took on cases ranging from civil litigations to criminal prosecutions involving family disputes, regulatory compliance, corporate frauds and contracts. Over the years, she worked systematically and quietly on a number of significant human rights issues in Pakistan: ranging from female education, orphan care/rehabilitation, disability equality, domestic violence and police torture. Her passion and confidence to speak out regarding the country’s misnomers and taboos has been stated by many as the catalyst through which they themselves entered political/campaigning life. ​She is prepared to consider serving as a Country of Origin expert witness for asylum seekers from Pakistan, including LGBTI cases.

Pakistan Legal Assistance

Find organisations providing legal assistance to refugees in Pakistan.

Pakistan COI

Find Pakistan Country of Origin information (COI) experts, reports, commentaries, and relevant documents. 

We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant resources, or you are aware of organisations and/or individuals to include in our directories, please get in touch.

Last updated July 2024