The South African government wants to update the country’s gender identity policies and laws to be more inclusive of transgender and intersex citizens.

Published last month for public comment by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), a new draft Official Identity Management Policy aims to create an “inclusive digital population register that is secure, accurate and confidential.”

The document has wide-ranging proposals that include modernising and digitising identity systems as well as the recognition of non-binary sex/gender categories.

It says that new legislation and the population register “must make a provision that enables the establishment of a category that is neither male nor female.” The document adds that “the sex category must cater for transgender [individuals] that will enable updates of sex information in the population register.”

The DHA says that the format of a new ID number should “be as inclusive as possible, especially when it comes to intersex and transgender persons.”

The current ID format only recognises female or male gender/sex in the seventh digit (0-4 means the holder of the ID is a female while 5-9 means the holder of the ID is a male).

The new policy suggests that “to accommodate non-binary, transgender and intersex persons, it is recommended that an alternative digit or letter ‘X’ be used for this population.” Read more via Mamba