Cristian González Cabrera

A federal court of first instance in Mexico recently ordered the Guanajuato State Congress to create a rights-respecting legal procedure so that transgender people can modify their identity documents to accurately reflect their gender identity.

The ruling is a result of litigation initiated by Amicus DH, a Guanajuato-based LGBT rights organization that represents trans people pursuing legal recognition of their identity. Under the state’s current system, they must file a lawsuit (a juicio de amparo) to enjoin the state’s civil registry to modify their documents, which can be a lengthy and expensive legal process.

The court’s ruling orders Guanajuato’s congress to create a simple and administrative gender recognition procedure in its next legislative period. The procedure should center self-identification per standards required under Mexican Supreme Court and Inter-American Court of Human Rightsjurisprudence. Twenty-one other Mexican states already have such a procedure in place.

In 2022, Amicus DH and Human Rights Watch published a report documenting how trans people in Guanajuato experience grave rights violations due to the state’s lack of legal gender recognition. In collaboration with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, we interviewed 31 trans people from León, Irapuato, Celaya, and Guanajuato city, who said they faced serious economic, educational, labor, legal, health, and other ramifications because they lack documents reflecting their gender identity.

Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the country’s constitution. It is up to each state’s legislature or governor to pass a law or issue a decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry.

Guanajuato’s incoming congress should comply with the court’s order and join other Mexican states that already uphold the right to legal gender recognition. The new governor and congress should also prioritize consulting LGBT communities in the state to create broader public policies for this population to improve their access to education, security, health, and work.

January 24 is the International Day of Education, which celebrates the key role that education plays in ensuring peace, development, gender equality, and human rights. For this year’s celebration, however, there is a dark stain on Peru’s education record: Law No. 31498, which purports to “promote the quality of educational materials and resources.”

Congress passed this law in May 2022 effectively giving publicly registered parental organizations supervisory and veto powers over the Education Ministry’s learning materials for early childhood, primary, and secondary schools. These organizations can provide input about, for example, whether the materials respect “the religious liberty and moral convictions” of students and parents, or whether the materials promote “practices that can constitute ‘moral crimes.’” “Moral crimes” is a nebulous term that appears to be a reference to issues of sexual and reproductive rights. Public servants can face disciplinary sanctions, including suspension without pay or dismissal, for failure to comply with the obligation, established by the law, to consult parents.

It is important to involve parents in their children’s education and there is already a framework that promotes this participation. But the level of control that this law gives parental organizations is unprecedented and poses a risk to independent education and the quality of educational materials by ignoring the experience and pedagogical expertise that creating learning materials requires. It also calls into question the Education Ministry’s essential role in implementing the National Curriculum of Basic Education, which is grounded in the respect for human rights. Parents committed to quality education for their children should be worried.

The lawmaker who initially proposed the law was a prominent figure in a conservative parental group that opposes discussing gender in class, and rejects comprehensive sexuality education. Another parental group has in recent years appealed to the Supreme Court to block age-appropriate gender and sexuality material in schools. Education Without Backsliding, a coalition of human rights organizations, told Human Rights Watch that they see the law as an attempt by conservative groups to censor age-appropriate information about gender and sexuality in schools, a key element of human rights-centered education. The coalition has filed suit to halt the implementation of the law. The Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsperson has also has also spoken out publicly against the law.

Under international law, children have a right to comprehensive sexuality education. At its core, it consists of age-appropriate, affirming, and scientifically accurate learning materials that can help foster safe and informed practices to help prevent gender-based violence, gender inequity, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies. It can equip young people with the skills to develop a positive view of diverse sexualities, both their own and their peers’. Peru’s Supreme Court held in 2019 that learning material on gender and sexuality is essential to promote equality and human rights.

Peruvian children critically need this information. The United Nations found that in 2018, 38 percent of Peruvian girls and women ages 15 to 49 reported suffering physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, and in 2022 it reiterated its concern for these high levels of violence. In 2020, the government hotline for domestic and sexual violence received almost twice as many reports as in 2019.

A 2019 government survey showed that Peruvians perceive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people as being the most discriminated against in the country, which  the Inter-American Court of Human Rights highlighted when it found in Azul Rojas Marín v. Peru in 2020 that these populations face high levels of structural and institutional discrimination.

But Law No. 31498’s insidious effects could extend beyond information on gender and sexuality. The law states that parental organizations can effectively veto learning materials related to “personal development, citizenship and civic education, social sciences, world discovery, and science and technology.” In Peru’s politically polarized context, parents could use the law to restrict information on any other number of controversial human rights issues in the country, such as accountability for past abuses, rule of law, and freedom of expression. In this sense, it threatens the development of critical and reflective thinking of the students, so essential to consolidate a more democratic society.

Law No. 31498 undermines the vital role that education plays in shaping informed, critical, and inquiring minds. Lawmakers should uphold international human rights law and adhere to past Supreme Court jurisprudence that upheld the need to provide information on gender and sexuality. Only when lawmakers reject elevating parental rights over sound educational practice and revoke the law, can Peru fully celebrate the values of International Day of Education.

The “New Ideas” government of President Nayib Bukele appears to be ignoring the potential of sexuality education to foster understanding and reduce violence against sexual and gender minorities. This is not an innovative approach, but rather an antiquated, prejudiced idea.

El Salvador’s Education Ministry recently fired the director of the National Institute of Teacher Training and announced a “restructuring” of that institution. The reason? The Institute had greenlit a segment of Let’s Learn at Home—a remote education television show initiated during the pandemic—that explained the concept of sexual orientation.

The ministry said the information was not “in adherence with [Salvadoran] reality.” Subsequently, the Institute’s website became inaccessible and currently displays an error message.

The segment, which targeted eighth grade students, who are about 14 years old, featured animations of children playing, riding scooters, and listening to music. The narrator defined heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality in basic, age-appropriate terms. Indeed, the program did nothing more than provide the most elementary information about natural variations in human sexuality.  

Despite the ministry’s attempt to erase lesbian, gay, bisexual people, they are very much a part of the “Salvadoran reality.” President Bukele acknowledged as much when, in 2014, he described himself as a “hetero ally” and the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights as “the civil rights struggle of our time.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court held that the constitution protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation in 2009 and gender identity in 2022. 

Why then has the government decided to censor essential information about sexual orientation? This makes little sense given the potential of such education to reduce the high levels of violence that LGBT people face in El Salvador.

In January 2021, Human Rights Watch published a report on the violence and discrimination against LGBT people that limits their life choices and leads them to flee El Salvador. The organization COMCAVIS TRANS previously found that this insecurity also leads to the internal displacement of LGBT people. Transgender people are especially vulnerable.

Comprehensive sexuality education, to which children have a right, could contribute to reducing this violence if it is age-appropriate and rights-based. It can equip young people with the skills to develop a positive view of different sexualities, both their own and their peers’. Experts have found that this kind of education can contribute to preventing discrimination and violence against sexual and gender minorities.

Unfortunately, the Salvadoran authorities seem to lack interest in realizing education’s full potential. In addition to the government’s censorship of Let’s Learn at Home, the Legislative Assembly explicitly omitted any substantive reference to sexual orientation and gender identity in the recently approved “Grow Together” Law, which governs the rights of Salvadoran children and adolescents.

The legislature also watered down that law’s article on comprehensive sexuality education by noting that families have “a fundamental and primary role” in providing this type of education, a setback to an earlier draft in which “the family, society, and the state” shared this role. Assigning the family the “primary” responsibility to teach comprehensive sexuality education is setting up families to fail, if taken to its logical conclusion. Some families may lack the time, training, and information to impart such education.

Censoring information on sexual orientation and gender identity is not a “new idea”: it is an old, tired idea rooted in prejudice. El Salvador’s authorities should fulfill their international responsibility to educate young people about sexuality and gender, not burden parents with the “primary” role to do so. This information can help reduce violence against LGBT people by fostering tolerance and acceptance. This is what the Salvadoran reality requires.

From the North American tundra to the South American Patagonia, an estimated 852 million people live in countries with marriage equality. Despite these high numbers, the Americas have a way to go before becoming a true beacon for same-sex couples. Countries with marriage equality should harness their remarkable advances thus far and urge the rest of the region to join the America’s growing marriage equality bloc.

Canada became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to enact legislation recognizing same-sex marriages nationwide in 2005, after the Netherlands, which was the first to do so in the world in 2001. South American countries followed suit, with Argentina in 2010 and Uruguay in 2013. Thanks to a series of important judicial decisions in the region soon after, four more—Brazil in 2013, Mexico and the United States in 2015, and Colombia in 2016—affirmed marriage equality.  

Then, in 2017, a landmark opinion by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights confirmed that all rights applicable to the “family relationships” of heterosexual couples extend to same-sex couples. This opinion provides an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights for the 23 countries in the Americas that have ratified the treaty.

Judicial rulings in favor of marriage equality in Ecuador in 2019 and Costa Rica in 2020 explicitly cited the Inter-American opinion. Earlier this year, Chile became the latest country in the region to recognize the equal rights of same-sex couples.

All these countries have acknowledged that in such a diverse region, the rights to privacy, equality, and non-discrimination are critical to fostering societal harmony. These universal values are reflected in the Inter-American Court’s rich jurisprudence on privacy and diversity, including in 2017. These societal and legal norms are why the Americas have arguably the most advanced family diversity standards in the world.  

But not all is well in the region, including in countries with marriage equality. Some conservative and religious actors, including in the United States and Costa Rica, continue to undermine the legitimacy of marriage equality. Ecuador bars same-sex couples from adopting children. And LGBT people in, for example, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico continue to suffer high levels of violence and discrimination that marriage equality has not helped to deter.

Against this backdrop, countries with marriage equality cannot rest on their laurels; instead, their governments and officials should continue to promote the principles of equality and non-discrimination for LGBT people through public statements and education campaigns.  

And then there are the 25 countries in the region that do not have marriage equality. Some, like Honduras and Paraguay, have laws that explicitly ban same-sex marriage. In nine countries, all in the Anglophone Caribbean, consensual same-sex conduct remains criminalized – a relic of British colonialism – making the immediate prospect of marriage equality more challenging.

But activists haven’t stopped fighting for the equal rights of same-sex couples. Human rights lawyers have presented test cases before the courts in Panama, as well as before the politicized courts in Boliviaand Venezuela, aiming to set precedents in their countries. Despite setbacks, as in Peru, whose constitutional court recently issued two misguided rulings against same-sex couples, activists have rightly targeted national courts when their legislatures have left much to be desired.

Their efforts may be bolstered by potential positive changes coming to certain countries without marriage equality. The new Honduran President, Xiomara Castro, has signaled support for LGBT rights, including marriage equality. And while human rights should not be put to a popular vote, Barbados (an Anglophone Caribbean country where consensual same-sex conduct is criminalized) and Cuba have announced referendums on same-sex marriage.

This current lack of uniformity on the principles of privacy, equality, and non-discrimination in the region creates a dichotomy of pro- and anti-LGBT countries impacting same-sex couples. Some may be able to marry in their home country but not have their marriage recognized when they travel abroad. Others may not be able to marry at home and may only be able to do so if they choose to emigrate. For a more harmonized Americas, governments should rally around their regional achievements that expand human rights and the potential to set the bar for marriage equality in the world.

Countries with marriage equality can play an important role as champions of the issue, and some have already risen to the challenge. Argentina currently co-chairs the United Nations LGBTI Core Groupand the Equal Rights Coalition. Both groups aim to expand the rights of sexual and gender minorities around the world. Latin American countries have also played a significant role in championing various United Nations LGBT resolutions, including leading calls for the creation of an Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The United States and Canada have taken steps to advance LGBT rights through their foreign policy.

Whatever the initiative, governments should center marriage equality as a key element of non-discrimination; they should share information and good practices on political and legal strategies with their counterparts striving for marriage equality in their countries.   

Five times as many people in the Americas enjoy marriage equality as those who lack this essential protection. But for 165 million in countries where discrimination and disparate treatment is written into law or imposed as a matter of policy, the burgeoning bloc supporting equal treatment under the law serves as a model for the rest of the region, and for the world.