The Iraqi government should immediately reverse the recently passed law that punishes same-sex conduct and transgender expression with imprisonment, Human Rights Watch said today. The law violates fundamental human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, association, privacy, equality, and nondiscrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq.
On April 27, 2024, Iraq’s parliament passed the anti-LGBT law as an amendment to the country’s existing “Law on Combatting Prostitution,” No. 8 of 1988. The new law punishes same-sex relations with a penalty of between 10 and 15 years in prison as well as allowing for a prison term between 1 and 3 years for people who undergo or perform gender-affirming medical interventions and for “imitating women.” The law also provides for 7 years in prison and a fine between 10 million Iraqi dinars (US$7,700) and 15 million dinars (US$11,500) for “promoting homosexuality,” which is undefined.
“The Iraqi parliament’s passage of the anti-LGBT law rubber-stamps the Iraqi government’s appalling record of rights violations against LGBT people and is a serious blow to fundamental human rights,” said Rasha Younes, interim LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The law adds insult to injury for LGBT people in Iraq, who are already facing violence and threats to their lives.”
Though consensual same-sex conduct was not previously explicitly criminalized in Iraq, the authorities have historically used vague “morality” laws to prosecute LGBT people. The introduction of the anti-LGBT law follows months of hostile rhetoric against sexual and gender minorities by Iraqi officials, as well as government crackdowns on human rights groups. Previous proposed amendments to the anti-prostitution law would have imposed the death penalty for same-sex relations, but this provision did not appear in the final version.
The new law, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, equates same-sex relations with “sexual perversion,” which it defines as “repeated sexual relations between members of the same sex … if occurring more than three times.”
The new law also specifically targets transgender women. It allows for a prison term between one and three years or with a fine between 5 million dinars (US$3,800) and 10 million dinars (US$7,700) for “imitating women,” which it defines as “wearing makeup and women’s clothing” or “appearing as women” in public spaces.
The law prohibits hormone therapy and what it calls “sex change” based on personal desire, as well as any attempt to change one’s gender identity, punishable by prison terms between one and three years. The same penalty applies to any surgeon or other doctor who performs gender-affirming surgery. The law makes an exception for cases of people born with intersex traits, when a surgeon is performing an operation to “normalize” the sex characteristics into classical male or female aesthetics.
Iraq’s new anti-LGBT law builds on and reflects an increasing effort by anti-LGBT legislators to explicitly make same-sex relations and transgender expression a criminal offense. The immediate precursor to the law passed in April was a bill introduced on August 15, 2023, by Raad Al-Maliki, an independent member of parliament.
If passed in its original form, the bill would have punished same-sex relations with the death penalty or life in prison, punished “promoting homosexuality” with a minimum of seven years in prison and a fine, and criminalized “imitating women” with up to a three-year sentence. In introducing the bill, Al-Maliki said its purpose was to “preserve the entity of the Iraqi society from deviation and calls for ‘paraphilia’ [abnormal sexual impulses] that have invaded the world.”
The introduction of the 2023 bill in turn followed a proposed anti-LGBT law put forward by legislators in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In September 2022, members of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament introduced the “Bill on the Prohibition of Promoting Homosexuality.” Under the bill, anyone who advocates for LGBT rights or “promotes homosexuality” would face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to five million dinars (US$3,430). The bill would also suspend, for up to one month, the licenses of media companies and civil societyorganizations that “promote homosexuality.”
Although the bill was not passed, it was introduced amid a heightened crackdown on free assembly and expression in the Kurdistan region. On May 31, 2023, a court in the region ordered the closure of Rasan Organization over “its activities in the field of homosexuality.”
On August 8, 2023, the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission issued a directive ordering all media outlets to replace the term “homosexuality” with “sexual deviance” in their published and broadcast language and banning use of the term “gender.”
Iraqi authorities’ continued attacks against LGBT people and activists violate their basic rights, including their right to privacy, free movement, free expression, assembly, and association, including on the internet, as well as their right to nondiscrimination and protection under the law. The abuses violate Iraq’s Constitution and international treaties to which Iraq is a party.
Unequal protection against violence and unequal access to justice are prohibitedunder international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in its articles 2 and 26, guarantees fundamental human rights and equal protection of the law without discrimination. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that provides authoritative interpretations of the covenant, has made clear that sexual orientation is a status protected against discrimination under these provisions. Similarly, the Arab Charter on Human Rights, of which Iraq is a member, affirms these rights.
“Relentless abuses against LGBT people in Iraq, starting with the family and stretching into every aspect of their public life, not only results in the deaths but makes people’s lives unlivable,” Younes said. “The Iraqi government should immediately repeal the anti-LGBT law and end the cycle of violence and impunity against LGBT people.”
Belarus has hit a new low in its targeting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. As of today, the definition of pornography under Belarusian law will include depictions of same-sex relationships as well as transgender people.
The Culture Ministry recently amended its decree on “erotic materials” to classify “homosexualism, lesbian love” and the “desire to live and be seen by others as a person of an opposite sex”—a reference to transgender people—as “non-traditional sexual relationship or behavior.” This places depictions of LGBT people alongside those of necrophilia, pedophilia, and voyeurism, all of which legally constitute “non-traditional relationships.”
Under Belarusian law, they all may also constitute pornography.
Public displays of pornography are punishable in Belarus with up to four years in prison. Child pornography is punishable with up to 13 years behind bars.
While it is not yet clear what kinds of depictions of LGBT people could fall under the new definition of pornography, it clearly aims to assault the dignity of sexual and gender minorities, people already demonized and at risk of persecution in Belarus.
Belarusian public officials and religious groups periodically advocate for introducing administrative and criminal liability for “non-traditional sexual relationship and gender change propaganda.” Neighboring Russia recently expanded its anti-gay propaganda law and banned the “international LGBT movement” as extremist.
In 2020, police arrested numerous peaceful protesters who demonstrated against the rigged presidential elections. Belarusian rights groups documentedthe systematic and widespread ill-treatment and torture of the protesters, reporting that people perceived as LGBT faced an increased risk of police violence and threats of sexualized violence.
Since then, Belarusian authorities have used public humiliation as a shaming tool against critics who are perceived to be or are LGBT. In one such instance, police forced a detainee, arrested for leaving a critical comment online, to “confess” on camera to being gay. At the end of the horrific video, he said: “I understand this is immoral, I promise to correct it.”
In their brutal assault against civil society in recent years, Belarusian authorities shut down all human rights organizations, including LGBT rights groups, leaving LGBT people with even less protection.
Belarus should annul these despicable amendments and stop cynically targeting LGBT people.
Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentaryreleased today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.
The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.
“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.”
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 constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.
“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”
Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”
In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.
Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.
In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.
In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.
In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.
In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.
The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.
“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”
The government of Nepal should urgently create a clear, simple, and rights-respecting procedure that would allow transgender and third gender people to obtain official documents in accordance with their gender identity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. While Nepali policy allows in principle for transgender to people to obtain documents marked “other,” implementation is piecemeal and those who want “male” or “female” as their legal gender are forced to undergo invasive and unnecessary medical interventions and examinations.
The 67-page report, “‘We Have to Beg So Many People’: Human Rights Violations in Nepal’s Legal Gender Recognition Practices,”documents the significant policy gaps that remain in the implementation of Nepal’s legal recognition for transgender people, despite global recognition of Nepal’s progress. Nepal’s pioneering recognition of a third gender “other” category based on self-identification garnered widespread praise and made Nepal an important touchpoint for the rights of sexual and gender minorities. But Nepal has no explicit legal option to change a gender marker to “male” or “female,” and even the procedure for the third gender option is unclear and ad hoc. Interactions between transgender people and the state have become particularly fraught with discriminatory, ill-informed, and requirements for harmful medical practices.
“We began the fight for our dignity in 2001 and we secured a major victory at the Supreme Court in 2007, but the government has not yet implemented the order to recognize us based on our identities,” said Manisha Dhakal, executive director at the Blue Diamond Society, an LGBT rights organization.“Generations of transgender and third gender Nepalis have faced barriers and humiliation because of policy gaps, and we need real change now.”
In 2007, the first Supreme Court judgment on sexual orientation and gender identity ordered the government to take three steps: audit all laws and scrap those that discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity; form a committee to study same-sex marriage policy options; and legally recognize a third gender category based on an individual’s own self-identification. The judgment in Pant et al. v. Nepal (2007) has been cited by courts around the world, including the Supreme Court of India, courts in the United States considering gender on passports, and the European Court of Human Rights, as a positive example. However, Nepali authorities continue to lag in carrying out the court’s order to recognize gender identity on the basis of self-identification.
Human Rights Watch found that some people – including people pursuing documents that list them as “third gender” or “other” – have been denied documents changing their gender or wrongly told they must undergo surgery to be eligible. A small number of people have been able to change their documents from “male” to “female,” but doing so invariably involves an invasive and humiliating physical exam in a medical setting, an experience that is rife with human rights violations.
“Trans women are women and trans men are men, and Nepal needs to match its reputation as a so-called beacon of hope for sexual and gender minorities with comprehensive policy change to respect our rights,” said Rukshana Kapali, chief executive officer at Queer Youth Group Nepal. “Nepal got a lot of credit for instituting the third gender option on citizenship certificates, but it is not implemented consistently, and it does not uphold the rights of people who identify as women and men.”
Human Rights Watch conducted the research for this report between August 2022 and December 2023. A researcher interviewed 18 transgender people and 1 intersex person who had attempted to change their legal gender or had not undertaken the process due to various barriers, as well as activists who help others undertake the legal gender recognition process, and government officials.
International human rights law and global medical standards of care support the complete separation of medical and legal processes with regard to gender transition. People seeking transition-related medical interventions should not face legal barriers, and people attempting to change their legal gender and name should not be required to undergo any medical procedures. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an international, multidisciplinary professional association, “opposes all medical requirements that act as barriers to those wishing to change legal sex or gender markers on documents.” The organization stated that “[m]edical and other barriers to gender recognition for transgender individuals may harm physical and mental health.”
The Yogyakarta Principles – drafted and signed in 2006 by a group of experts, including a former Nepal parliament member, Sunil Babu Pant – state that each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is “integral to their personality” and is a basic aspect of identity, personal autonomy, dignity, and freedom. The principles are clear that gender recognition may involve, “if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means.” Put simply, the process for legal recognition should be separate from any medical interventions. But if an individual’s personal transition process requires medical support, those services should be available and accessible.
Based on the Yogyakarta Principles, the Supreme Court in 2007 said that “self-feeling” is central to securing the rights of transgender people. Subsequent court decisions have further emphasized this principle. Nepal authorities should consistently apply this principle, and its application should not allow medical practitioners or bureaucrats to confirm or deny an applicant’s self-declared gender identity, Human Rights Watch said.
Nepal’s lack of a clear procedure for self-declaration of gender identity has led to decisions in individual cases based on government officials’ perceptions rather than the person’s “self-feeling.” Trans people who approach different administrative offices are given different advice and instructions, which sometimes contradicts what their peers are told for the same process elsewhere. One trans woman interviewed said: “The state just throwing in medical steps is a way they think they’re stabilizing something that was confusing, whereas we experience it as yet another barrier and yet another way in which we have to beg for our rights.”
“Forcing our community to undergo medical procedures that are expensive, unavailable, and in many cases unwanted by the individuals themselves, is a violation of our rights,” said Simran Sherchan, executive director at the Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities-Nepal. “International consensus is that medical procedures for transitioning and legal procedures for transitioning need to be completely separated, and Nepal needs to make that clear.”
We are calling on Facebook and Instagram to do more to make their social media platforms safe for LGBT users who face digital targeting and severe offline consequences including detention and torture.ACT NOW
In February 2023, Human Rights Watch published a report on the digital targeting of LGBT people in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia, and its offline consequences. The report details how government officials across the MENA region are targeting LGBT people based on their online activity on social media, including on Meta platforms. Security forces have entrapped LGBT people on social media and dating applications, subjected them to online extortion, online harassment, doxxing, and outing; and relied on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information in prosecutions. In cases of online harassment, which took place predominantly in public posts on Facebook and Instagram, affected individuals faced offline consequences, which often contributed to ruining their lives.
As a follow up to the report and based on its recommendations, including to Meta, the “Secure Our Socials” campaign identifies ongoing issues of concern, and aims to engage Meta platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram, to publish meaningful data on investment in user safety, including regarding content moderation in the MENA region, and around the world.
On January 8, 2024, Human Rights Watch sent an official letter to Meta to inform relevant staff of the campaign and its objectives, and to solicit Meta’s perspective. Meta responded to the letter on January 24.
Social media platforms can provide a vital medium for communication and empowerment. At the same time, LGBT people around the world face disproportionately high levels of online abuse. Particularly in the MENA region, LGBT people and groups advocating for LGBT rights have relied on digital platforms for empowerment, access to information, movement building, and networking. In contexts in which governments prohibit LGBT groups from operating, organizing by activists to expose anti-LGBT violence and discrimination has mainly happened online. While digital platforms have offered an efficient and accessible way to appeal to public opinion and expose rights violations, enabling LGBT people to express themselves and amplify their voices, they have also become tools for state-sponsored repression.
Building on research by Article 19, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Association for Progressive Communication (APC), and others, Human Rights Watch has documented how state actors and private individuals have been targeting LGBT people in the MENA region based on their online activity, in blatant violation of their right to privacy and other human rights. Across the region, authorities manually monitor social media, create fake profiles to impersonate LGBT people, unlawfully search LGBT people’s personal devices, and rely on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information taken from LGBT people’s mobile devices and social media accounts as “evidence” to arrest and prosecute them.
LGBT people and activists in the MENA region have experienced online entrapment, extortion, doxxing, outing, and online harassment, including threats of murder, rape, and other physical violence. Law enforcement officials play a central role in these abuses, at times initiating online harassment campaigns by posting photos and contact information of LGBT people on social media and inciting violence against them.
Digital targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region has had far-reaching offline consequences that did not end in the instance of online abuse, but reverberated throughout affected individuals’ lives, in some cases for years. The immediate offline consequences of digital targeting range from arbitrary arrest to torture and other ill-treatment in detention, including sexual assault.
Digital targeting has also had a significant chilling effect on LGBT expression. After they were targeted, LGBT people began practicing self-censorship online, including in their choice of digital platforms and how they use those platforms. Those who cannot or do not wish to hide their identities, or whose identities are revealed without their consent, reported suffering immediate consequences ranging from online harassment to arbitrary arrest and prosecution.
As a result of online harassment, LGBT people in the MENA region have reported losing their jobs, being subjected to family violence including conversion practices, being extorted based on online interactions, being forced to change their residence and phone numbers, delete their social media accounts, or flee their country of residence, and suffering severe mental health consequences.
Meta is the largest social media company in the world. It has a responsibility to safeguard its users against the misuse of its platforms. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, are significant vehicles for state actors’ and private individuals’ targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region. More consistent enforcement and improvement of its policies and practices can make digital targeting more difficult and, by extension, make all users, including LGBT people in the MENA region, safer.
As an initial step toward transparency, the “Secure Our Socials” campaign asks Meta to disclose its annual investment in user safety and security including reasoned justifications explaining how trust and safety investments are proportionate to the risk of harm, for each MENA region language and dialect. We specifically inquire about the number, diversity, regional expertise, political independence, training qualifications, and relevant language (including dialect) proficiency of staff or contractors tasked with moderating content originating from the MENA region, and request that this information be made public.
Meta frequently relies on contractors and subcontractors to moderate content, and it is equally important for Meta to be transparent about these arrangements.
Outsourcing content moderation should not come at the expense of working conditions. Meta should publish data on its investment in safe and fair working conditions for content moderators (regardless of whether they are staff, contractors, or sub-contractors), including psychosocial support; as well as data on content moderators’ adherence to nondiscrimination policies, including around sexual orientation and gender identity. Publicly ensuring adequate resourcing of content moderators is an important step toward improving Meta’s ability to accurately identify content targeting LGBT people on its platforms.
We also urge Meta to detail what automated tools are being used in its content moderation for each non-English language and dialect (prioritizing Arabic), including what training data and models are used and how each model is reviewed and updated over time. Meta should also publish information regarding precisely when and how automated tools are used to assess content, including details regarding the frequency and impact of human oversight. In addition, we urge Meta to conduct and publish an independent audit of any language models and automated content analysis tools being applied to each dialect of the Arabic language, and other languages in the MENA region for their relative accuracy and adequacy in addressing the human rights impacts on LGBT people where they are at heightened risk. To do so, Meta should engage in deep and regular consultation with independent human rights groups to identify gaps in its practices that leave LGBT people at risk.
Meta’s over-reliance on automation when assessing content and complaints also undermines its ability to moderate content in a manner that is transparent and lacking bias. Meta should develop a rapid response mechanism to ensure LGBT-specific complaints [in high-risk regions] are reviewed by a human with regional, subject matter, and linguistic expertise, in a timely manner. Meta’s safety practices can do more to make its platforms less prone to abuse of LGBT people in the MENA region. Public disclosures have shown that Meta has frequently failed to invest enough resources into its safety practices, sometimes rejecting internal calls for greater investment in regional content moderation even at times of clear and unequivocal risk to its users.
In the medium term, Human Rights Watch and its partners call on Meta to audit the adequacy of existing safety measures and continue to engage with civil society groups to carry out gap analyses on existing content moderation and safety practices. Finally, regarding safety features and based on uniform requests by affected individuals, we recommend that Meta implement a one-step account lockdown tool of user accounts, allow users to hide their contact lists, and introduce a mechanism to remotely wipe all Meta content and accounts (including from WhatsApp and Threads) on a given device.
Some of the threats faced by LGBT people in the MENA region require thoughtful and creative solutions, particularly where law enforcement agents are actively using Meta’s platforms as a targeting tool. Meta should dedicate resources towards research and engagement with LGBT and digital rights groups in the MENA region, for example, by implementing the “Design from the Margins” (DFM) framework developed by Afsaneh Rigot, a digital rights researcher and advocate. Only with a sustained commitment to actively centering the experiences of those most impacted in all its design processes, can Meta truly reduce the risks and harms faced by LGBT people on its platforms.
Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, social media companies, including Meta, have a responsibility to respect human rights – including the rights to nondiscrimination, privacy, and freedom of expression – on their platforms. They are required to avoidinfringing on human rights, and to identify and address human rights impacts arising from their services including by providing meaningful access to remedies and to communicate how they are addressing these impacts.
When moderating content on its platforms, Meta’s responsibilities include taking steps to ensure its policies and practices are transparent, accountable, and applied in a consistent and nondiscriminatory manner. Meta is also responsible for mitigating the human rights violations perpetrated against LGBT people on its platforms while respecting the right to freedom of expression.
The Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation provide useful guidance for companies to achieve their responsibilities. These include the need for integrating human rights and due process considerations at all levels of content moderation, comprehensible and precise rules regarding content-related decisions, and the need for cultural competence. The Santa Clara Principles also specifically require transparency regarding the use of automated tools in decisions that impact the availability of content and call for human oversight of automated decisions.
Human rights also protect against unauthorized access to personal data, and platforms should therefore also take steps to secure people’s accounts and data against unauthorized access and compromise.
The Secure Our Socials campaign recommendations are aimed at improving Meta’s ability to meet its human rights responsibilities. In developing and applying content moderation policies, Meta should also reflect and take into account the specific ways people experience discrimination and marginalization, including the experiences of LGBT people in the MENA region. These experiences should drive product design, including through the prioritization of safety features.
Regarding human rights due diligence, Human Rights Watch and its partners also recommend that Meta conduct periodic human rights impact assessments in particular countries or regional contexts, dedicating adequate time and resources into engaging rights holders.
Many forms of online harassment faced by LGBT people on Facebook and Instagram are prohibited by Meta’s Community Standards, which place limits on bullying and harassment, and indicate that the platform will “remove content that is meant to degrade or shame” private individuals including “claims about someone’s sexual activity,” and protect private individuals against claims about their sexual orientation and gender identity, including outing of LGBT people. Meta’s community standards also prohibit some forms of doxxing, such as posting people’s private phone numbers and home addresses, particularly when weaponized for malicious purposes.
Due to shortcomings in its content moderation practices, including over-enforcement in certain contexts and under-enforcement in others, Meta often struggles to apply these prohibitions in a manner that is transparent, accountable, and consistent. As a result, harmful content sometimes remains on Meta platforms even when it contributes to detrimental offline consequences for LGBT people and violates Meta’s policies. On the other hand, Meta disproportionately censors, removes, or restricts non-violative content, silencing political dissent or voices documenting and raising awareness about human rights abuses on Facebook and Instagram. For example, Human Rights Watch published a report in December 2023 documenting Meta’s censorship of pro-Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook.
Meta’s approach to content moderation on its platforms involves a combination of proactive and complaint-driven measures. Automation plays a central role in both sets of measures and is often relied upon heavily to justify under-investment in content moderators. The result is that content moderation outcomes frequently fail to align with Meta’s policies, often leaving the same groups of people both harassed and censored.
Procedurally, individuals and organizations can report content on Facebook and Instagram that they believe violates Community Standards or Guidelines, and request that the content be removed or restricted. Following Meta’s decision, the complainant, or the person whose content was removed, can usually request that Meta review the decision. If Meta upholds its decision for a second time, the user can sometimes appeal the platform’s decision to Meta’s Oversight Board, but the Board only accepts a limited amount of cases.
Meta relies on automation to detect and remove content deemed violative by the relevant platform and recurring violative content, regardless of complaints, as well as in processing existing complaints and appeals where applicable.
Meta does not publish data on automation error rates or statistics on the degree to which automation plays a role in processing complaints and appeals. Meta’s lack of transparency hinders independent human rights and other researchers’ ability to hold its platforms accountable, allowing wrongful content takedowns as well as inefficient moderation processes for violative content, especially in non-English languages, to remain unchecked.
In its 2023 digital targeting report, Human Rights Watch interviewed LGBT people in the MENA region who reported complaining about online harassment and abusive content to Facebook and Instagram. In all these cases, platforms did not remove the content, claiming it did not violate Community Standards or Guidelines. Such content, reviewed by Human Rights Watch, included outing, doxxing, and death threats, which resulted in severe offline consequences for LGBT people. Not only did automation fail to detect this content, but even when it was reported, the automation was ineffective in removing harmful content. As a result, it barred LGBT people who complained and their requests were denied from access to an effective remedy, the timeliness of which could have limited offline harm.
Human Rights Watch has also documented, in another 2023 report, the disproportionate removal of non-violative content in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook, often restricted through automation processes before it appears on the platform, a process that has contributed to the censorship of peaceful expression at a critical time.
Meta also moderates content in compliance with government requests it receives for content removal on Facebook and Instagram. While some government requests flag content contrary to national laws, other requests for content removal lack a legal basis and rely instead on alleged violations of Meta’s policies. Informal government requests can exert significant pressure on companies, and can result in silencing political dissent.
Meta’s insufficient investment in human content moderators and its over-reliance on automation undermine its ability to address content on its platform. Content targeting LGBT people is not always removed in an expeditious manner even where it violates Meta’s policies, whereas content intended by LGBT people to be empowering can be improperly censored, compounding the serious restrictions LGBT people in the MENA region already face.
As the “Secure Our Socials” campaign details, effective content moderation requires an understanding of regional, linguistic, and subject matter context.
Human content moderators at Meta can also misunderstand important context when moderating content. For example, Instagram removed a post of an array of Arabic terms labelled as “hate speech” targeting LGBT people by multiple moderators who failed to recognize the post was being used in a self-referential and empowering way to raise awareness. One major contributing factor to these errors was Meta’s inadequate training and a failure to translate its English-language training manuals into Arabic dialects.
In 2021, LGBT activists in the MENA region developed the Arabic Queer Hate Speech Lexicon, which identifies and contextualizes hate speech terms through a collaborative project between activists in seventeen countries in the MENA region. The lexicon includes hate speech terms in multiple Arabic dialects, is in both Arabic and English, and is a living document that activists aim to update periodically. To better detect anti-LGBT hate speech in Arabic, as well as remedy adverse human rights impacts, Meta could benefit from the lexicon as a guide for its internal list of hate speech terms and should actively engage LGBT and digital rights activists in the MENA region to ensure that terms are contextualized.
Meta relies heavily on automation to proactively identify content that violates its policies and to assess content complaints from users. Automated content assessment tools frequently fail to grasp critical contextual factors necessary to comprehend content, significantly undermining Meta’s ability to assess content. For example, Meta’s automated systems rejected, without any human involvement, ten out of twelve complaints and two out of three appeals against a recent post calling for death by suicide of transgender people, even though Meta’s Bullying and Harassment policy prohibits “calls for self-injury or suicide of a specific person or groups of individuals.”
Automated systems also face unique challenges when attempting to moderate non-English content and have been shown to struggle with moderating content in Arabic dialects. One underlying problem is that the same Arabic word or phrase can mean something entirely different depending on the region, context, or dialect being used. But language models used to automate content moderation will often rely on more common or formal variants to “learn” Arabic, greatly undermining their ability to understand content in Arabic dialects. Meta recently committed to examining dialect-specific automation tools, but it continues to rely heavily on automation while these tools are being developed and has not committed to any criteria to ensure the adequacy of these new tools prior to their adoption.
Meta’s policies prohibit the use of its Facebook and Instagram platforms for surveillance, including for law enforcement and national security purposes. This prohibition includes fake accounts created by law enforcement to investigate users, and applies to government officials in the MENA region that would entrap LGBT people. Accounts reported for entrapment could be deactivated or deleted, and Meta has initiated legal action against systemic misuses of its platform, including for police surveillance purposes.
However, Meta’s prohibition against the use of fake accounts has not been applied in a manner that pays adequate attention to the human rights impacts of people who face heightened marginalization in society. In fact, the fake account prohibition has been used against LGBT people. False reporting of accounts on Facebook for using fake names has been used in online harassment campaigns; unlike Facebook, Instagram does not prohibit the use of pseudonyms. Facebook’s aggressive enforcement of its real name policy has also historically led to the removal of LGBT Facebook accounts using pseudonyms to shield themselves from discrimination, harassment, or worse. Investigations into the authenticity of pseudonymous accounts can also disproportionately undermine the privacy of LGBT people.
The problems that Human Rights Watch and its partners hope to address in this campaign do not only occur on Meta’s platforms. Law enforcement agents and private individuals use fake accounts to entrap LGBT people on dating apps such as Grindr and WhosHere.
Before publishing its February report, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Grindr, to which Grindr responded extensively in writing, acknowledging our concerns and addressing gaps. While we also sent a letter to Meta in February, we did not receive a written response.
Online harassment, doxxing, and outing are also prevalent on other social media platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter). X’s approach to safety on its platform has come under criticism in recent years, as its safety and integrity teams faced significant staffing cuts on several occasions.
Meta continues to operate the largest social media company in the world, and its platforms have substantial reach. Additionally, Meta’s platforms cover a range of services, ranging from public posts to private messaging. Improving Meta’s practices would have significant impact and serve as a useful point of departure for a broader engagement with other platforms around digital targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region.
The targeting of LGBT people online is enabled by their legal precarity offline. Many countries, including in the MENA region, outlaw same-sex relations or criminalize forms of gender expression. The criminalization of same-sex conduct or, where same-sex conduct is not criminalized, the application of vague “morality” and “debauchery” provisions against LGBT people emboldens digital targeting, quells LGBT expression online and offline, and serves as the basis for prosecutions of LGBT people.
In recent years, many MENA region governments, including Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, have introduced cybercrime laws that target dissent and undermine the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Governments have used cybercrime laws to target and arrest LGBT people, and to block access to same-sex dating apps. In the absence of legislation protecting LGBT people from discrimination online and offline, both security forces and private individuals have been able to target them online with impunity.
Governments in the MENA region are also failing to hold private actors to account for their digital targeting of LGBT people. LGBT people often do not report crimes against them to the authorities, either because of previous attempts in which the complaint was dismissed or no action was taken, or because they reasonably believed they would be blamed for the crime due to their non-conforming sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. Human Rights Watch documented cases where LGBT people who reported being extorted to the authorities ended up getting arrested themselves.
Governments should respect and protect the rights of LGBT people instead of criminalizing their expression and targeting them online. The five governments covered in Human Rights Watch’s digital targeting report should introduce and implement legislation protecting against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, including online.
Security forces, in particular, should stop harassing and arresting LGBT people on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression and instead ensure protection from violence. They should also cease the improper and abusive gathering or fabrication of private digital information to support the prosecution of LGBT people. Finally, the governments should ensure that all perpetrators of digital targeting – and not the LGBT victims themselves – are held responsible for their crimes.
Spread the word about potential harms for LGBT users on social media platforms and the need for action.
The #SecureOurSocials campaign is calling on Meta platforms, Facebook, and Instagram, to be more accountable and transparent on content moderation and user safety by publishing meaningful data on its investment in user safety, including content moderation, and to adopt some additional safety features.
You can take action now. Email Facebook President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Vice President of Content Policy Monika Bickert to act on user safety.
The administration led by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made important progress in the protection of the Amazon, women’s rights, and other rights during 2023, but has failed to tackle the chronic problem of police abuse or defend human rights consistently abroad, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2024.
“President Lula ends his first year in office with a mixed record on human rights,” said César Myñoz, acting Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. “He reversed some anti-rights policies of his predecessor, but significant challenges remain, including the use of excessive force by police, which disproportionately affects Black Brazilians, and a foreign policy that fails to promote human rights in a consistent manner.”
In the 740-page World Report 2024, its 34th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In her introductory essay, Executive Director Tirana Hassan says that 2023 was a consequential year not only for human rights suppression and wartime atrocities but also for selective government outrage and transactional diplomacy that carried profound costs for the rights of those not in on the deal. But she says there were also signs of hope, showing the possibility of a different path, and calls on governments to consistently uphold their human rights obligations.
President Lula reversed some of the disastrous anti-environmental policies of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, during whose term deforestation in the Amazon rose by 53 percent. From January 2023, when Lula took office, to November, Amazon deforestation dropped 50 percent, compared with the same period of 2022, according to preliminary data.
President Lula also broke with Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous rights stance, resuming titling of Indigenous lands and appointing the first Indigenous leaders to direct a newly created Indigenous Peoples Ministry and Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court also rejected an attempt to block Indigenous people from obtaining title to their traditional lands. Yet, Congress reacted by approving a bill—and later overturning a presidential veto of the bill— that runs counter to the ruling.
Lula’s administration also improved Brazil’s targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and sent Congress the Escazú Agreement, a regional treaty requiring governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to protect environmental defenders and guarantee access to information and public participation in environmental matters.
But the government failed to contain the destruction of wooded savanna, known as the Cerrado – where deforestation increased by 41 percent by November, according to preliminary data – and has plans to significantly increase both oil and gas production in the coming decade. In December, President Lula announced at the annual United Nations climate conference, COP 28, that Brazil plans to join the OPEC+ group of oil-producing nations as an observer.
The Lula administration introduced a bill to ensure equal pay for women and repealed a regulation that required health professionals to report to police rape survivors seeking to terminate pregnancies. It also resumed an initiative to promote sexual and reproductive health education.
While the Lula administration created a new Racial Equality Ministry, it failed to take decisive measures to tackle the police violence that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of African descent in Brazil. Police have killed more than 6,000 people every year since 2018 – more than 80 percent of them were Black in 2022. From January through June 2023, police killings went up in 16 states, compared to the same period of 2022, data collected by the nongovernmental group Brazilian Public Security Forum show.
Over the last decade, Human Rights Watch has documented serious flaws in investigations led by state police forces known as civil police, including an inquiry in 2023 into the killing of 28 people during an operation by São Paulo police.
While governors oversee state police, the federal government has authority to coordinate the efforts of states and municipalities, develop nationwide public policies, and ensure that federal public security funding is conditioned on reductions in police killings. The Lula administration is reviewing Brazil’s national plan on public security. The plan should include targets and concrete measures to curb killings by police nationwide, Human Rights Watch said. Critically, that plan needs close coordination with the Attorney General’s Office, which should improve police oversight and ask prosecutors to lead investigations into police abuses, instead of letting police investigate themselves.
A key measure to ensure judicial independence and the protection of human rights is having an attorney general who makes decisions based on the law, instead of political interests. In Brazil, that independence has been traditionally preserved by the presidential practice of choosing from a list of three candidates elected by prosecutors across the country. But Lula followed Bolsonaro’s negative example by handpicking a name not on that list.
Brazil’s foreign policy has been inconsistent on human rights under President Lula. His administration advocated for stronger protections for the right to education, and pushed for humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza amid the escalating hostilities in Israel and Palestine. However, President Lula called concerns about the undermining of democratic institutions in Venezuela a “constructed narrative,” despite the long list of authoritarian actions and abuses by the Nicolas Maduro government.
“President Lula promised that he would bring Brazil back to the world stage,” Muñoz said. “He should use Brazil’s new world profile, including membership in the UN Human Rights Council, the BRICS, and presidency of the G20 in 2024, to promote human rights and condemn abuses regardless of geopolitical interests or the ideology of the government responsible for violations.”
Events in recent months have raised fear among Ghana’s human rights activists, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and allies.
In October, police stopped a 30-year-old who was carrying sex toys at a checkpoint, detained and threatened them with jailtime. The police demanded a bribe of 500 cedis (40 USD) for the person to be released, an unlawful and cruel expense, particularly in a context of severe economic hardship.
In September, school authorities dismissed a 17-year-old student over allegations that he was gay from a boys’ boarding school in Accra, activists told Human Rights Watch. According to one activist, their investigations revealed other forms of homophobic acts against the child, including a death threat, because he appeared effeminate. A petition organized by local activists was sent to the district and regional education offices, and the student was allowed to return to register for the senior school certificate examination.
A bill before parliament proposes heavier criminal penalties for same sex activities, increasing the maximum penalty from three years in prison to five and expanding criminalization for anyone who identifies as LGBT, or as queer, as pansexual, an ally, or any other non-conventional gender identity. It would also punish anyone providing support or funding or publicly advocating for sexual and gender minorities rights.
In my former capacity as a lecturer in political science, I used to cite Ghana as a stable country in West Africa where the rule of law prevailed. However, challenges such as the current discrimination against LGBT people, alongside other obstacles including the underrepresentation of women in politics and the shrinking of civic space, are compromising Ghana’s success story. Today, there is a deepened trepidation among human rights defenders and civil societyorganizations working on social justice and sexual and gender diversity.
In February 2021, police raided and closed down an LGBT resource center which, among other things, provided community-based interventions services and information about HIV/AIDS. It has since been increasingly difficult to provide health services to marginalized groups disproportionately affected by HIV and related infections. As Nasser, a community leader, told Human Rights Watch,“Even spaces that were opened before are now closing doors for us because of what is happening. It is extremely difficult to operate properly.”
Since the bill was presented in June 2021, Rightify Ghana, an organization that advocates for sexual ad gender minorities in Ghana has documented multiple accounts of people who have been arbitrarily evicted from their homes. According to activists, landlords say that they are protecting themselves and their families or use the bill as a pretext to unfairly raise LGBT people’s rent.
Some parliament members have been actively provoking anti–LGBT sentiment and practices. Sam George, who presents himself as a “charismatic Christian,” and eight other Members of Parliament from the National Democratic Congress party and the New Patriotic Party are pushing to get the anti-LGBT bill passed before the year’s end. Statements, by George and allies, claiming that sexual and gender equality are incompatible with African culture attract the support of religious and traditional leaders, and many Ghanaians.
But they conveniently ignore Ghana’s secular status and African principles such as ubuntu, dignity, equality, non-discrimination, empathy, protection from violence and care for each other. These African principles have shaped Ghana’s independence struggles and continue to contribute to the consolidation of a democratic state.
These same principles have led other African countries like Mozambique (2015), Botswana (2019), Angola (2021), Gabon and Mauritius (2022) to overturn colonial-era laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Some countries go further to imbed human rights standards and not only adopt anti-discrimination laws, but recognize same sex marriage, like South Africa in 2006.
Ghana’s parliament should consider the disastrous social, political, and economic consequences that the anti-LGBT bill will have on journalists, human rights defenders, women, families, and on other minorities in the country. If passed into law, the bill will not only imperil fundamental human rights enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, but also violate regional and international human rights obligations, such as the principles of nondiscrimination and equality enshrined in the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights.
There are also serious economic risks. If the bill is passed, it could represent a risk to Ghana’s negotiating power in debt restructuring negotiations for example, lending ability from international investment institutions like the World Bank or IMF, and trade and circulation, a not insignificant concern given the country’s economic challenges.
Parliament should immediately withdraw the bill. Not only is it inconsistent with the Ghana’s human rights obligations, including in the constitution, and incites fear, hatred, and violence against fellow Ghanaian citizens, but its passage would be an anti-democratic and authoritarian turn for Ghana.
The Uzbekistan government should urgently act on recommendations made on November 8, 2023, during its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should take particular action to uphold the rights of human rights defenders, journalists and bloggers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
Several UN member states also said that Uzbekistan should ensure accountability for human rights abuses during protests in 2022 in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan.
“The range and scope of concerns and recommendations that governments expressed during Uzbekistan’s review shows just how much work Uzbekistan has to do to meaningfully improve human rights conditions in the country,” said Mihra Rittmann, senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It’s important for Uzbekistan to act upon all the recommendations and not to pick and choose among the issues raised.”
All UN member states participate in the UPR process, a comprehensive review of the human rights record of each UN member state every four and a half years. The country under review, local and international organizations, and the UN itself can provide written input to inform the review process. Human Rights Watch submitted a briefing on Uzbekistan’s human rights record in March.
The Uzbekistan government claimed that out of 198 recommendations received at its last review, in 2018, it had fully implemented 171. At the review, countries praised Uzbekistan, including for ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, criminalizing domestic violence, and progress in eradicating forced labor in the cotton fields since its last review.
Yet, despite noting improvements in Uzbekistan’s law, countries from across all regions called on Uzbekistan to take concrete action to end gender-based violence, to uphold the rights of women and children, and to uphold the rights of people with disabilities.
Over a dozen UN member states urged Uzbekistan to improve the environment for nongovernmental organizations and to better protect the rights of human rights defenders, including streamlining the burdensome registration process for civil society groups. At the review, the Uzbekistan delegation dismissed the criticism. Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have documented that the registration process is a barrier to independent human rights groupscarrying out their activities in Uzbekistan.
It is disappointing that other countries that had previously urged Uzbekistan to carry out an independent investigation into the human rights violations committed during the Karakalpakstan events, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and EU member states other than the Czech Republic, did not reiterate that call during the review process, Human Rights Watch said.
Over a dozen countries commented on rights issues pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, urging the Uzbekistan government to decriminalize consensual same-sex conduct and stop subjecting detainees in prosecutions of gay men to forced anal exams, an abusive practice that constitutes cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment that can rise to the level of torture and sexual assault under international human rights law.
The Uzbekistan government supported all the recommendations expressed by states, except for the 15 recommendations related to the rights of LGBT people. The government official’s reference to “generally accepted norms” to deny LGBT people’s rights deflects responsibility for abusive state practices and laws that exclude LGBT people from accessing their basic human rights, Human Rights Watch said.
With a notable increase in prosecutions of bloggers and journalists in the last two years, 14 countries spoke to the worrying situation for media freedom in Uzbekistan, making recommendations that Uzbekistan should create a “safe environment” for journalists, bloggers, and media workers, and ensure they can “work free from intimidation” both online and offline. Norway urged Uzbekistan to “immediately grant pardons” to all imprisoned journalists, bloggers, and activists.
Multiple countries also urged Uzbekistan to investigate allegations of torture, and to hold those responsible for torture and other forms of ill-treatment accountable, with a view of ending impunity. Many countries, including Brazil and Maldives, recommended that Uzbekistan ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
“Given how serious the human rights situation is in Uzbekistan, it’s important for UN member states to follow up with the Uzbekistan government directly,” Rittmann said. “The work begins now to ensure that Uzbekistan takes concrete, meaningful action to advance the human rights of everyone, including LGBT people, in line with the UPR recommendations and international human rights law.”
In its review of the United States’ record on civil and political rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) condemned a flood of discriminatory state legislation restricting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
The United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992. Every four years, the HRC reviews laws and policies in countries that have ratified the treaty to evaluate where they are in compliance with the treaty and where they fall short. The review of the US was postponed during the Covid-19 pandemic, making this the first review of the US in nine years.
In advance of the review, released on November 3, the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, the University of Miami School of Law Human Rights Clinic, and partner organizations submitted a report to the committee identifying how Florida and other US states have aggressively rolled back LGBT rights in recent years.
Among the worrying US laws are those restricting access to gender-affirming care and prohibiting transgender children from participating in school sports or using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. Also concerning are laws banning books as well as prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBT people, and their families in schools.
As our groups noted, these laws jeopardize a range of civil and political rights, including rights to nondiscrimination, expression, information, privacy, security of the person, life, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
In its concluding observations, the committee expressed concern about laws limiting transgender people’s access to healthcare, athletics, and public accommodations, and restricting discussions of race, slavery, sexual orientation, and gender identity in schools. It underscored the prevalence of discrimination against LGBT people in the US, including in housing, employment, correctional facilities, and other domains. The committee also condemned derogatory speech aimed at LGBT people, including from public officials, and violence against LGBT people and members of other minority groups.
The Committee’s findings should be a wake-up call for state and federal lawmakers in the United States. Amid an aggressive backlash, state lawmakers should stop actively undermining US human rights obligations and repeal discriminatory laws, and the federal government should both enact comprehensive legislation to safeguard LGBT people’s rights and enforce existing civil and human rights guarantees.
A Japanese family court has ruled that the country’s requirement that transgender people be surgically sterilized to change their legal gender is unconstitutional. The ruling is the first of its kind in Japan, and comes as the Supreme Court considers a separate case about the same issue.
In 2021, Gen Suzuki, a transgender man, filed a court request to have his legal gender recognized as male without undergoing sterilization surgery as prescribed by national law. This week the Shizuoka Family Court ruled in his favor, with the judge writing: “Surgery to remove the gonads has the serious and irreversible result of loss of reproductive function. I cannot help but question whether being forced to undergo such treatment lacks necessity or rationality, considering the level of social chaos it may cause and from a medical perspective.”
In Japan, transgender people who want to legally change their gender must appeal to a family court. Under the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Special Cases Act, applicants must undergo a psychiatric evaluation and be surgically sterilized. They also must be single and without children younger than 18.
In 2019, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that stated the law did not violate Japan’s constitution. However, two of the justices recognized the need for reform. “The suffering that [transgender people] face in terms of gender is also of concern to society that is supposed to embrace diversity in gender identity,” they wrote. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a trans government employee using the restrooms in accordance with her gender identity. Her employer had barred her from using the women’s restrooms on her office floor because she had not undergone the surgical procedures and therefore had not changed her legal gender.
The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.
