Meenakshi Ganguly\/Kathmandu (Pahichan) June 7 – A Netherlands district court cited supreme court judgments from India and Nepal when it ruled the Dutch legislature should provide a way for citizens to legally identify as neither male nor female if they prefer.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in 2007 in\u00a0Pant v Nepal<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that the government must create a legal category for people who identify as neither male nor female. Crucially, the judgment dictated that the ability to get documents bearing a third gender should be based on \u201cself-feeling.\u201d\u00a0Nepal\u2019s LGBT activists<\/a>\u00a0were particularly\u00a0pioneering<\/a>, given that no other country before Nepal had developed an identity-based legal recognition procedure for transgender people at the time.<\/p>\n In India<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, the\u00a0Supreme Court ruled in\u00a0NALSA v. India<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that transgender people should be\u00a0legally recognized according to their gender identity<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 including if that identity was a third category other than male and female.<\/p>\n Both the India and Nepal cases \u2013 as well as the new Dutch judgment \u2013 cite the\u00a0Yogyakarta Principles<\/a>, a 2006 codification of binding international human rights standards related to sexual orientation and gender identity. According to principle 3, \u201cEach person\u2019s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity, and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Other countries in\u00a0the region<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0namely\u00a0Bangladesh<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Pakistan<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 now legally recognize more than two genders in some way. But while legal proclamations there have been promising, implementation has been piecemeal.<\/p>\n The Dutch judgment is the latest affirmation that South Asia\u2019s principled and tenacious activists, lawyers, and judges continue to influence the world. Governments in the region now have an opportunity to set a further example by ensuring these rulings are fully enforced and third gender legal recognition is available to everyone who seeks it.<\/p>\n Copy :\u00a0https:\/\/www.hrw.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meenakshi Ganguly\/Kathmandu (Pahichan) June 7 – A Netherlands district court cited supreme court judgments from India and Nepal when it ruled the Dutch legislature should provide a way for citizens to legally identify as neither male nor female if they prefer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,621,490,11],"tags":[524,1788,1787,507,458],"class_list":["post-10296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-news","category-slider","category-world","tag-lgbt","tag-netherlands","tag-supreme-court-of-nepal","tag-third-gender","tag-transgender"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10298,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10296\/revisions\/10298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}