Ukraine to change gender recognition process and do away with forced sterilisation
LGBT activists in Ukraine are pleased to see revisions to the rules which allow trans people to legally change their gender.
The gender recognition process for trans people could get a lot simpler under proposed new rules.
Rights group the Human Rights Watch made a complaint to the Special Rapporteur on torture on abuses of the old system.
The new rules, which will build on or change Order 60 of the Ministry of Health in Ukraine still fall short of other countries, notes the Human Rights Watch, but are a welcome step forward for transgender people there.
Previously trans people were made to undergo psychiatric observation and sterilisation in order to get divorced and get access to gender reassignment surgery.
The steps were all necessary in order for trans people to legally change their gender on official documents.
Those who did not want to undergo the process were subjected to a life of uncertainty with ID which does not match up with their gender identity.
The new rules would do away with the sterilisation element to the process, and the psychiatric evaluations would no longer be fully necessary.
They would also not be made to appear before the State Evaluation Commission, but they would still be made to divorce, and undergo outpatient psychiatric evaluations.
Human rights groups like Human Rights Watch still urge countries like Ukraine to do away with the “archaic” system, and put into place something which recognises the needs of trans people.
