Daily Times

LAHORE: Multiple community-based organisations representing transgender community of the country have rejected census results that noted the community which is also known as the “third gender” comprises 10,418 persons.

The 2017 population census concludes Pakistan has 10,418 transgender persons which is 0.005% of the total population 207.77 million.

Speaking to Daily Times, Qamar from Trans Action Pakistan stated that their organisation met with nationwide allied organisations in Islamabad on Wednesday and had a thorough deliberation on the census results.

They said the participating organisations included Trans Action Alliance, Sindh Transgender Network and Balochistan Alliance for Transgender and Intersex Community and that the allied organisations are due to make a detailed media statement on Thursday.

Salman Khan from Trans Reach Pakistan said while speaking to Daily Times that the census is inaccurate because of the flawed methodologies used and also because of lack of understanding among the data collectors of the terms.

“The thing is, for example, the census is totally inaccurate and it’s flawed. First of all the thing is the census does not consider the true meaning of like gender identity and the expression,” he said.

Qamar said the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) betrayed the community by not facilitating registration of transgender persons’ data as was originally promised. They said there wasn’t even a separate box along with other genders to record transgender persons.

This is when, they said, they had to move Peshawar High Court (PHC), Lahore High Court (LHC) and Islamabad High Court (IHC) and all three courts ruled for the appropriate recording methods of the transgender persons.

This is when the PBS issued the “Code 3” to denote the transgender persons while recording the data on the form. Qamar said that this still did not resolve the issue because only one code was allotted to represent transgender men, transgender women and intersex persons and they data collector did not have enough training to understand the sensitivity and difference of the terms, effectively compromising the data collected.

They protested that even with Code 3 there wasn’t a separate box included on most of the census forms and the data collectors were told to record details of a transgender person on a plain paper if and when found.

Qamar said this was disappointing and is another reason their community does not accept the results of the population census.

See the glass as half full

The Trans Action Pakistan said that while they were disappointed, they are not hopeless. Qamar said they’re optimistic because Pakistan still is a “world leader” when it comes to pro-transgender legislation. They said it’s clear that the will on the government’s part is there but it’s also a matter of capacity.

One of the campaign banners of Trans Action Alliance – Source: Trans Action Pakistan

“Even the Parliamentary Standing Committee noted its concerns about census results so there are other inaccuracies than just the number of transgender people”, they said.

“Number does not matter”

The Trans Action said that even though they reject the results, they’d like to note that “it doesn’t matter if we’re ten thousand or ten hundred thousand, we deserve equal rights as any other citizen of the country”.