A few months ago, Orinam, an all volunteer collective of LGBTIQA+ people based in Chennai, celebrated its 15th anniversary. There they had an unexpected speakera 17-year-old who, on an impulse, shared his ordeal of being bullied at school for being “effeminate”. His tormentors weren’t just students but teachers too. “If this support group hadn’t helped me, I would have committed suicide. Now, I just want to finish my board exams,” he said.Across the country, students are bullied because of their sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), forcing many to drop out. So, Unesco ’s New Delhi office teamed up with Sahodaran, a male sexual health initiative in Chennai, to conduct a community-based study on SOGI-based bullying in Tamil Nadu .The study was conducted among 371 people in the 18-22 age group from the transgender and MSM (men having sex with men) communities. “We also interviewed 20 people from academic institutions, including school teachers, head teachers and officials of the school education department,” said Jaya, general manager, Sahodaran.The research report gives an insight into ground reality. Of the respondents, 60% and 50% said that they were mostly victims of physical bullying when they were respectively in middle/high school and higher secondary school, while 43% of respondents said that they were sexually harassed when they were in primary school. However, only 18% of participants reported incidents of SOGI-based bullying to school authorities; and 53% of those who reported being bullied said that authorities took some action against the persons who bullied them.The consequences of bullying were quite harsh: 73% had reduced social interactions with their peers; 70% suffered from anxiety and depression; 70% said they lost concentration in studies; 63% reported lower academic performance; and 53% reported having skipped classes. About a third (33.2%) said bullying played a key role in discontinuing school.“Unesco’s work on preventing and addressing homophobic and transphobic violence, including bullying in educational institutions, is in line with our mandate on ensuring the right to quality education for all in learning environments that are safe, non-violent and inclusive,” said Sarita Jadav, national programme officer of Unesco.Bullying occurs in educational institutions as there is little awareness, and even faculty members are homophobic. Delfina, who identifies herself as gender fluid, says one of the main reasons she didn’t go to college was the fear of being bullied.Activists have been working to sensitise staff. Transgender activist Kalki Subramaniam brought out a manual, ‘A Teacher’s Guide To Gender Non-conforming Students’, three years ago due to the trauma she endured in school and college. “I faced it from students as well as teachers. In my college hostel in Coimbatore, I was ragged for three months, made to strip, dance to item numbers every day and molested,” says Subramaniam.Her bilingual manual, distributed to schools free of cost, explains what is sexual orientation, gender identity, why some children are different from others, how to identify a gender non-conforming child and how to support and protect them from being bullied at school.“I have also talked about how teachers can talk to families and ensure they support their children, and have given a list of resources they can access,” she says. “I want to give the manual to teachers, lecturers, professors and principals as I believe when you educate an educator, they educate hundreds of students.”NGO SAATHII has been studying violence against such students in partnership with LGBTIQ community groups such as AMANA and ETA in Manipur, Vikalp (Women’s Group) in Gujarat, Queerala in Kerala and Nirangal in Tamil Nadu.“We have been sensitising faculty and administrators of educational institutions on gender and sexuality issues through state-level or institution-specific workshops,” says L Ramakrishnan, vice president, SAATHII.With the Supreme Court reading down Section 377, there is greater willingness among institutions to engage with sexuality issues, Ramakrishnan says. He adds that UGC also recognised gender identity and sexual orientation as grounds for ragging in 2016 while amending the Anti-Ragging Regulations, but most universities are still unaware of it.In Gujarat, lesbian activist Maya Sharma of Vikalp has also been working to ensure that the 2016 amendment is implemented. She says bullying doesn’t usually hit lesbian women directly because it is often concealed within friendship, “but they do face ridicule and bullying, especially in college hostels”.The Unesco report, which will be launched on June 11 in Chennai by the minister for School Education and Pradeep Yadav, principal secretary to the government of Tamil Nadu, along with UNESCO director Eric Falt, is a step forward. Jadav says it is an important advocacy tool for the UN and NGOs to “promote a safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environment for all”.