ILGA’s 2016 Trans Legal Mapping Report, the first comprehensive mapping of gender recognition laws worldwide, was launched at the 2016 ILGA World Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 2016. The report, co-authored by myself, ILGA’s Zhan Chiam, and Matilda Gonzalez Gil from Colombia Diversa, has garnered a positive reception from activists and writers across the globe, and it is hoped that it will become an annual addition to ILGA’s publications.
The report, which is available to view on ILGA’s website, covers two areas: the availability of legal gender recognition procedures, and access to facilities for legal change of name, in national law. Where legal gender recognition is not available by law, access to legal change of name can allow trans* and gender-variant persons to amend their identification documents in such as a manner as to allow for easier use in everyday life. Accessibility of name change procedures or statutes can also ameliorate the situation for gender-variant persons resident in areas where legal gender recognition involves a drawn-out, pathologised, or uncertain process due to legislative or administrative provisions.
The report also identifies the manner in which access to these two areas is regulated in the country in question: via legal or administrative process, or – as in many cases – if the situation remains unclear or contingent upon the approval of a registrar or judge. The number of jurisdictions wherein this kind of uncertainty is the case allows for reflection on the populations of gender-variant persons across the world for whom gender recognition is an arbitrary and difficult process.
We also note in our findings the conditions on which legal gender recognition, or name change, can be granted. In many countries, gender recognition is contingent on having undergone psychiatric or medical interventions which are invasive and undermine the right to bodily integrity of the person in question. The use of objective criteria to determine if an individual is “trans* enough” to qualify for gender recognition also often relies on Westernised standards such as those in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, meaning that not only is the individual in question asked to conform to certain benchmarks and behaviours, they must allow themselves to be labelled with a “disorder” which may not correlate with their own self-image or cultural background. In highlighting these instances, it is hoped that we can facilitate discussion and analysis of the globalisation of standards used in quantifying which presentations of gender variance are legible in the eyes of the law.
Finally, we also wish to highlight the social effects of laws on gender recognition. While giving platform to the advances made in recent years in countries such as Ireland and Malta, and the undoubted benefits of progressive, human rights-compliant gender recognition legislation, in detailing the conditions under which recognition is granted, we also allow for visualisation of the human impact of gender recognition legislation which demands that the person in question file for divorce from a spouse (in countries which do not allow same-sex marriage) or which interferes with property or succession rights. The impact of gender recognition legislation which does not conform with the international human rights standards which should inherently apply to all people can leave a potential applicant contemplating a difficult choice between identifying as their true gender in the eyes of the law, and instigating a social and personal upheaval.
Although this year’s report concentrates on two specific areas of law, we believe that it can be useful to activists and advocates worldwide, as it allows for comparison and contrast between states’ regimes on a continent-by-continent basis as well as individually. It also allows for temporal visualisation of regional change, such as the sea-change in European law in the years since the adoption of Goodwin and I v United Kingdom in the European Court of Human Rights. We also hope that our contribution to data collection and dissemination will be useful on levels ranging from the individual to the international; as my co-author writes in his introduction to the report: “It is important to bear in mind that not enough states properly consult with trans communities about these identity and documentation processes. It is necessary that we continue engaging with our national governments —by using reliable data, research and good practice examples, targeting our arguments to the local context, and employing the language of human rights —to effect change for our communities.” The usefulness of readily available, quantifiable data to advocates in countries wherein gender-variant life is shrouded through pathologisation or the threat of criminal sanctions cannot be overstated.
Moving forward, the report holds the potential for expansion to investigate areas such as anti-discrimination legislation, violence against gender-variant persons, or the availability of gender-related healthcare. We hope that it will contribute to debate in this still-developing area of law and policy, and that it can make a contribution to the advancement of the status of trans*-identified and gender-variant persons around the world. It is available to download on ilga.org at Trans Legal Mapping Report 2016.
Sandra Duffy 