UN Agencies Say Self-Identification Sufficient for Sex Change in Prison

Dec 9, 2022 by

by Rebecca Oas, C-Fam:

Several UN agencies have issued a brief stating that a man who self-identifies as a woman must be treated as a woman, even in prison, regardless of legal identification or biological characteristics.

According to the “principle of self-identification,” a person’s declared sexual identity must be recognized legally. Access to sex-segregated spaces like restrooms should be allowed on the basis of self-identification alone.  This is a controversial position internationally.  Legal sex change without approval by a legal official or medical expert is permitted in 18 countries, most in Latin America and Western Europe.

In 2020, the UK scrapped an attempt to introduce “self-ID,” maintaining the standard that legal sex change requires a medical evaluation and a two-year period of having lived according to the person’s chosen sexual identity.

Issues like sexual orientation and gender identity remain highly controversial in the UN General Assembly. Even so, UN agencies have moved rapidly toward promoting “self-ID” as an international human rights standard without seeking consensus.  In a similar way, UN agencies have promoted abortion and comprehensive sexuality education as human rights issues even as they are repeatedly rejected in international negotiations.

Last year, former High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said ‘“every country in the world” should recognize the sex of trans people “based on self-identification” alone.  The UN’s independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity—whose entire mandate remains a matter of controversy—has similarly promoted self-identification as an “entitlement” under human rights law.

For people in confined places, such as prisons, the stakes of self-identification are much higher.  The new technical brief, sponsored by UNODC, UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNDP, and the World Health Organization, says the sex identity of prisoners should be “recorded as declared, “regardless of their legal recognition, documentation, genital organs, general appearance or sex assigned at birth.”

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Read also: Biden to Charge Critics of LGBT as International Criminals by Stefano Gennarini

 

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