This paper explores and assesses the presence/absence of institutional arrangements in educational settings for addressing the concerns of gender-variant children (GVC) through a sample survey of schools in the three-country context of India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. This research highlights the need for effective regulatory, normative and cognitive structures to address issues of childhood gender variance. With a contextual analysis of recent developments and comprehensive study of data reports in the three countries, the study analyses multiple dimensions of discrimination and bullying of GVC in educational settings. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper highlights causes and issues associated with the problems of GVC as well as affirmative actions and institutional practices required to be implemented in schools in the three-country context. The results and findings provide evidence that academic institutions in India, Sri Lanka and, to some extent, Nepal lack institutional mechanisms to address issues of homophobia, abuse by peer group, mental health issues, emotional challenges, social discrimination, lack of opportunities, lack of monitoring and counselling, micro-level engagements and high dropouts of GVC. This study also charts out futuristic agenda, such as comprehensive mapping of GVC in schools, implementation of effective counselling mechanism, the need to create and adopt basic reference module for educators around gender diversity and variance.

this article delves into the discourse of motherhood and the girl-child as deconstructed by Ismat Chughtai in A Life in Words (2012) and The Crooked Line (2003). these two works due to their intertextual connections and thematic similarities become appropriate tools for analyzing Ismat's concern with femininity as a complex web of tangible relations. Ismat's women, even though living cloistered lives exert their individuality and authority in discursive ways. the girl-child narrator in both these works is a spectator to the wiles that women employ to empower themselves in the male dominated society. In these two works, Ismat unscrupulously deconstructs the images of the sacrificing mother and the dutiful daughter that are ingrained within the patriarchal system. In the process she liberates the experience of motherhood from age-old categories and gives voice to hidden anger, angst and discontent in the mothering self. At the same time Ismat also destabilizes the stereotypical image of the girl-child who not only acquires a certain subject position but also challenges motherly domination and familial authority. thus both Shaman and young Ismat devalue and delegitimize the figure of the ideal daughter as exhibited in the polished conduct of Bari Apa and Manjhu (Shaman's elder sisters). In deconstructing these established discourses, Ismat is also creating new ones that recognize alternative subject positions for women.

Prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person. (The United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others)

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