The transgender community in Pakistan faces multiple issues like discrimination, social stigma and exclusion. The majority of society has no, or limited knowledge about these issues.
Forum for Dignity Initiatives is a research and advocacy forum to improve human rights status of marginalized groups including all sexual and gender minorities. They organized a series of open dialogues between high school/university students and trans* women and trans* rights activists to encourage trans*/straight alliances.
To maximize the impact of these dialogues, legislators were invited to – hopefully – encourage them to include trans* women rights in the decision making process. All dialogues were recorded and shared on social media to reach a wider audience, in order to increase the level of visibility, awareness and understanding of the trans* community.
Project results
- Six dialogues between transwomen and high school students were held, reaching a total of 600 students at different high schools and universities;
- These dialogues were so successful, that FDI is likely to repeat them every semester;
- The panels leading these dialogues were attended by 12 human rights activists, 2 lawyers, 12 academics and more than 20 young trans* people from different parts of the country.
