14 Countries Ban Being Trans, New International Reports Reveals
Fourteen countries ban people from being transgender, according to a new report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
As ‘LGBTQ Nation’ reports, in the organisation’s new Trans Legal Mapping Report, researchers looked into legal bans on wearing clothes that don’t conform to one’s sex assigned at birth and they found that 14 countries have them: Brunei, Gambia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, South Sudan, Tonga, and the United Arab Emirates. Iran, the report notes, has a more “vaguely worded” ban on being trans whose “impact is no less severe.”
“Only a small number of countries in the world expressly criminalize trans people’s identity or behaviour or those who are perceived to be trans or who transgress gender norms,” the report says. “Often in the form of so-called ‘cross-dressing’ laws, they explicitly prohibit a ‘male person posing as a woman’ or vice versa. In those states, legal gender recognition is also not available, which then leaves trans people, or those perceived to be, at risk of arrest and prosecution.”
“However, that is only the tip of the iceberg as trans communities know,” the report explains. It says that many countries use “range of laws” to effectively criminalise trans people, including laws against public nuisance, indecency, good manners and morality, drug-related offences, vagrancy, loitering, begging, impersonation, sex work-related offences, and consensual same-sex activity.
The ILGA report cites several countries that have made progress when it comes to fighting discrimination against transgender people, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Pakistan.
The U.K. appears on the list of countries that have either stagnated or regressed since 2017 when it comes to transgender rights, along with the U.S., Guatemala, Hungary, and Mongolia.
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