Pakistan’s Transgender Community Faces Continued Challenges In Attaining Citizenship

Yesterday the Express Tribune reported:

The transgender community in Punjab saw new hope on Wednesday as their voter registration began, and Computerised National Identity Cards (NIC) were issued by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), reported Express News.

At least 21 votes were registered and 25 NICs were issued to members of the transgender community in Rawalpindi.

Several transgender activists have been fighting this battle for over 3 years now, and it’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court issued a notice to register khwaja siras* as citizens of Pakistan. It’s been an impossible task with insurmountable challenges at every step; one of the demands from NADRA at the outset was that every person that applies for a third gender in their National Identity Cards has to sign up for a medical exam that determines their sex. Such unacceptably invasive requirements were met with resistance by the khwaja sira community and repeated meetings with the Social Welfare Department along with endless hearings at the Supreme Court often ended inconclusively.

So when this news came out yesterday I was shocked and elated. At long last justice prevails! I immediately called Bindiya Rana, focal person of Gender Interactive Alliance and a dear friend. Bindiya was livid. Not only had no National Identity Cards been issued, most of the khwaja siras who had spent a lot of money and gone to Rawalpindi to finally claim their citizenship had to face yet another series of impossible requirements.

One of those requirements was to produce NIC copies of their father and mother along with B form! It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the khwaja sira community is made of people shunned by their families at a very early age and they usually have no contact with people who gave birth to them. Instead of asking for their biological parents NICs, they suggested submitting NICs of their gurus who for all practical purposes are their caretakers and guardians.

In a follow-up news report by the Express Tribune today, it says:

Farzana, the president of the Shemale Association in Peshawar, says that, with the government reluctant to issue NICs with the name of the guru, there is little hope that the people of her community will be registered. “Whether in legal or social matters, it’s the guru that’s responsible,” she says.

While efforts by the Chief Justice are appreciated, the oft-debilitating bureaucracies need to understand that they recognize an alternative, marginalized society’s rights they will have to go the extra mile to ensure that there particular needs and concerns are paid heed to. If NADRA cannot be flexible about substituting documents of biological parents with those of the Guru, it will unfortunately be denying citizenship to as many as 10% of Pakistanis.

The Express Tribune’s reporter Rabia Mehmood summarises some additional problems faced by the transgender community in this video below:

* Khwaja Sira is a term with which a majority of transgender people in Pakistan identify with. Some also self-identify as hijras. Only wretched legal jargon (which is also employed by the media) employs the archaic, offensive misnomers such as eunuchs or she-males.