Hi! I am Nandini Tanya Lallmon and I am one in a million. This my story.

I am the legal lead of #Reform53, the flagship advocacy campaign of the Commonwealth Youth Gender and Equality Network. Created in 2015 at a youth convening in Malta, our organization aims to improve the position of young people, and advocate for increased youth engagement and participation in existing structures, processes and governance.

Afford young people the opportunity to voice their concerns on gender equality issues that not only affect them, but that impact the variety of communities in which they live.

Across the Commonwealth, women and LGBT people live within intersections of discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics. Solutions to these systemic issues often tackle symptoms, such as demographic representation, and overlook deeply rooted causes, from institutional discrimination to cultural bias and transgenerational trauma. Current conceptions of sexism privilege the experiences of cisgendered men, with stale and superficial approaches to diversity, leaving women and LGBT groups ambling along without meaningful improvement.

Although these are vestiges of the British Empire’s rule, a shared problem lends itself to shared solutions. Similar legal and political systems, and the use of English as a common language, enable knowledge-sharing and collective work to challenge discrimination. The unique position of the Commonwealth Youth Gender and Equality Network within the Commonwealth family provides us with a pivotal role in connecting the Commonwealth’s political and diplomatic representatives, as well as industry, civil society, academic and business leaders.

#Reform53 campaign calls upon the leaders of all Commonwealth countries to reform laws that discriminate against women, girls and LGBT people, many of which are a colonial legacy.

Leading up to the 2021 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, #Reform53 aims to spark conversations, commitments and actions towards achieving five main objectives:

1. Decriminalising same sex relationships

2. Reforming consent laws on forced marriage and removing clauses that defer to customary laws

3. Ensuring provisions in law for abortion by choice

4. Ending workplace discrimination for women, girls and LGBT+ people

5. Increased political participation for women and LGBT+ people

We shot six short films to underline the need for legal reform and projected them at local events while sharing informative postcards on our focus areas. During our campaign launch week in January 2020, we met with High Commissioners, Ministers, diplomats, faith leaders, political party leaders and community leaders to lobby their support to push Commonwealth government leaders to commit to reform discriminatory laws. We spoke with Commonwealth Secretariat representatives of Youth, Rule of Law and Human Rights divisions to garner their support. In February, we presented the campaign at the Equality and Justice Alliance Forum in Seychelles and She Decides festival in Uganda, where 6,000 people pledged to support the campaign.

In March, we presented the campaign to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth at the International Women’s Day celebration in Papua New Guinea and obtained her endorsement for the campaign. We hosted empowerment workshops in Mauritius, Kenya, Barbados, Bangladesh and Cameroon with a total of 9,600 pledges collected. Our campaign has been featured by various print and online media houses, thus further amplifying the voices of minority groups. One of our campaign leads has been interviewed by BBC One while attending the Commonwealth Day service 2020 – a ceremony viewed by more than two million people.

Unfortunately, in April 2020, our work came to an abrupt halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our spirits were further dampened when travel restrictions prevented our delegate from attending the 64th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The postponement of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting 2020 left us all a little disheartened.

Nonetheless, we have devised innovative methods to keep the campaign alive online and stand in solidarity with the minority groups we advocate for – groups who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

We have launched a webinar series which has garnered more than 15,000 views and engaged more than 60,000 people. To demonstrate to leaders that civil society demands legal reform, we request supporters to share a selfie with our campaign logo on their palm via social media. Our promotional films have been highly viewed on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts of the Commonwealth Youth Gender and Equality Network.

Overall, we have reached more than five million people in our awareness campaign for legal reform and gained their support to back our advocacy work to lobby Commonwealth leaders.

In light of the 2021 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, we will compile these qualitative and quantitative impact stories and statistics and showcase the public support we have garnered in advocating for legal reform. Throughout our social justice journey, we have managed to onboard numerous partners so that we can present a united front as a coalition to boost our chances of success. We are well aware that discriminatory laws will not be reformed overnight.

Nevertheless, as Woody Hayes rightly advised, we aim to “paralyse resistance with persistence.”

Disclaimer: Any views or opinions represented in these articles are personal and belong solely to the author. The content provided by these authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs and viewpoints of 1M2030, or its affiliates.

1M2030 Story #15: Reform For Gender Equality