It is difficult for transgenders to get basic facilities like employment, housing and education in Pakistan. However, Nisha Rao studied advocacy for the betterment of herself and her community and now she is the first transgender to fight a legal battle for their rights. She has become a lawyer. See the report of Sidra Dar from Karachi.
Lawyer Nisha Rao maneuvers among the throng of black-coated attorneys clustered near Karachi’s city courts searching for her client. As Pakistan’s first transgender lawyer, she has carved a path from the streets to the courtroom and her example is inspiring other transgender people in the conservative Islamic Republic.
The 28-year-old ran away from her middle-class family home in Lahore when she was 18, along with two other transgender persons. Rao arrived in Karachi, to seek an identity and a new life. However, she ended up begging on the streets of the city as the elder transgender people there advised her to beg or become a sex worker for survival and earning her meal. Thereafter, Rao begged from car to car at the traffic lights, but she refused to live like that all her life. She used her little income to pay for her law classes at night.
Rao has even bigger aspirations than becoming an attorney.
“My goal is to become Pakistan’s first transgender judge,” she said.
