ISLAMABAD: The Feminist Collective and Khwaja Sira Society has drafted the Transgender Rights Protection Bill, 2017 to ensure legal protections for transgender community, with the lawmakers. The proposed draft was presented before the taskforce created on the matter under the Federal Ombudsman of Pakistan, on 3rd and 4th July, 2017. The Feminist Collective announced on social media that the members of the taskforce approved all the recommendations of the drafting committee and presented the Bill before the Senate on July 7, 2017. The country’s Supreme Court has in recent years taken steps towards recognizing their basic rights. In 2009, the court ruled that “hijras” which include transvestites, transsexuals and eunuchs – could get national identity cards as a “third sex.” In fact, a few weeks prior, Pakistan’s transgender community welcomed the government’s decision to issue a passport to prominent transgender activist Farzana Riaz with an “X” to symbolize the third sex printed under the gender category of the travel document. Since 2009 it has also declared equal rights for transgender people, including the right to inherit property and assets, the right to vote and to be counted as a separate category in the country’s national census. The support for the rights of the transgender community in Pakistan is ever increasing with said supporters’ presence on social media, who extended their help to the communities cause. Published in Daily Times, July 11th , 2017.