Transnational AIDS networks, regional solidarities and the configuration of meti in Nepal

Abstract

This paper critically examines the role of transnational AIDS networks and resources in the consolidation of one of the earliest identity categories, meti, used within an emerging Nepali LGBT movement in the early 2000s. It argues that political identity formation in resource-poor contexts with limited domestic support for queer organising has been a cumulative effect of transnational exchanges between activists and resource networks. Beyond this, the paper traces the emergence and changing meanings of meti to show how a seemingly Indigenous category is more closely linked to modern configurations of male same-sex sexuality in response to opportunities available for political mobilisation. The paper is based on secondary research and interviews with 71 participants and participant observation conducted during seven months of fieldwork in Nepal, and interviews conducted outside the country between 2016 and 2019.

Keywords:

• Social movements
• collective identity
• LGBTI+
• NGOs
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

I thank Matthew Waites, Kelly Kollman, Uma Pradhan and Liana Chase for their valuable feedback on this paper. Thanks also go to participants of the Feminist Review Online Writing Workshop 2020 and the organisers, Kyoung Kim and Jennifer Ung Loh, whose careful reviews helped shape this paper. I am also grateful for constructive comments from Peter Aggleton and two anonymous reviewers. Most of all, I am indebted to activists from the Blue Diamond Society and their allies whose time, interest and critical insights were invaluable for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 I use ‘queer’ to loosely refer to non-heteronormative subjectivities – not necessarily consciously chosen identities - that pertain to sexual orientation and gender identity

2 I conceptualise resources as including financial, technical and moral resources (Edwards and McCarthy 2004) where financial resources refer to monetary resources; technical resources include information, expertise and training provided; moral resources include the solidarity, support and legitimacy provided by external sources. Finally, social networks are the relationships between individuals and representatives of institutions which facilitate social exchange, exchange of all the above types of resources, as well as opportunities for collaboration (Drew et al. 2011). In this sense, the networks themselves work as important resources for organisations though I maintain a separation to highlight the specific salience of social networks.

3 Plummer and Porter (1997) have noted how amorphous the category of MSM is, while Raimondo (2009) further explains some of the problems with this category.

4 Seckinelgin (2017) argues that activism on HIV has often been reduced to institutions in the global North delivering technical expertise and services to the global South with local NGOs acting as intermediaries. This does not take into account contextual structural inequalities that contribute to the problems encountered by those living with the disease. Harper and Parker (2014) note a similar tendency in HIV work with injecting drug users in Nepal funded by new centralised funding structures like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

5 When only 114 cases of HIV infections had been identified in Nepal (Pigg 2001, 494), as many as 80 organisations with no prior experience in the field of HIV and AIDS had answered a call of applications for a three-year project by amfAR—the first organisation to intervene in this area in Nepal (Hannum 1997, 182). Some of the organisations that answered the call were small-budget CBOs that had formed specifically in response to amfAR’s request for proposals. The organisations finally selected to work with amfAR were selected for their links to the community most at risk.

6 A National AIDS Prevention and Control Programme was launched immediately after the first HIV infection was diagnosed in 1988 (World Bank 2012)^. Four years later in 1992, a multi-sector National AIDS Coordinating Committee was established while a national policy was only formulated in 1995. The country’s first HIV control strategy was formulated in 1997, with subsequent strategies developed in 2002, 2006 and 2011 (NCASC 2017).

7 Pigg (2001, 494) counters that the Nepali government’s slow response to this matter was mainly because it saw AIDS as a ‘foreign disease’ and did not feel the same urgency to respond to an epidemic that was only ‘expected’, compared to other public health issues in the country. Though reports from donors do not mention this, budget allocation to the Ministry of Health had increased consistently from NPR 8 billion in FY 2005/06 to NPR 40.56 billion in 2016/17, indicating that government resources were directed to other public health issues that it deemed more important then. Benton (2015) provides a detailed account of such ‘HIV exceptionalism’ in Sierra Leone whereby a large amount of money was allocated for HIV programming in isolation from other pressing health concerns. Benton (2015, 78) argues that while ‘HIV exceptionalism actually serves to amplify existing disparities…it also provides a means by which poorer HIV-positive people can benefit from a health care system that normally privileges the priorities of its wealthy donors’.

8 Usually a derogatory mimicry of how people from the Newa Indigenous group speak with a hard ‘ta’ sound. The Kathmandu Valley is home to the Newa people and this quote indicates that Newa metis might have been a significant presence around Ratnapark, or at least influenced the language that later developed among metis.

9 The term MSM, which had its origins in public health, had by then become a vernacular term among NGOs working for men who have sex with men in South Asia.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is developed from research funded by the College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow.