The ILGA World Trans Steering Committee is pleased to announce the launch of the 2019 Trans Legal Mapping Report, now in its third edition, which is one of the key outputs of ILGA World’s Gender Identity and Gender Expression Programme.
Complementing ILGA World’s State Sponsored Homophobia Report, which looks at laws and legislation around the world that seek to criminalise, recognise or protect same-sex behaviour, the Trans Legal Mapping Report draws attention to how laws in different countries recognise the rights of trans people to change their identity markers on official documents.
In this third edition, the report features the voices of trans communities to the experience of being criminalised, often arbitrarily, from every corner of the world. It is a difficult time for trans communities globally, which is reflected in the regression or stagnation in legal gender recognition rights in countries such as Guatemala, Hungary, Mongolia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay, and the potential for regression in India and Nepal. Yet, since 2017, there has been firm progress in countries such as Australia, Canada (for non-binary people), Chile, Colombia (for children), Costa Rica, and Pakistan. I am hopeful that my own country – South Africa – has begun to engage on the need for new legislation that places the right of trans people to self-determination at the forefront on what a rights-based approach to gender identity ought to be. The ever-changing shifts in the diversity of trans people is worthy of celebration as we continue to push against repressive state laws which aim to enforce a particular gender ideology that embodies conservative nationalism.
We need many more studies in the future that celebrate our challenges and gains in our right to self-determination, our right to gender affirming care and to live in a world that does not systemically and physically harm us. I am confident that you will enjoy this read – it is a valuable resource in the world we currently live in. Once more, thank you and congratulations to the Gender Identity and Gender Expression Programme and the research team.