Daily Times

The transgender community has appreciated the government’s decision to issue passports with a newly established transgender identity.

Previously, transgenders were exceedingly marginalised and had no category to call their own as official records only list either Male or Female identities, therefore this step, taken by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a milestone for the transgender community which has a history of discrimination based on the fact that they don’t fall on either sides of the gender spectrum.

The initiative started with Trans rights activist, Farzana Jan who was issued a passport with the category “X” to symbolize the third sex.  Jan, president of the charity Trans Action Pakistan thought this was a significant step in the community’s struggle for legal recognition.

Jan, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation said, “Men and women both have been given their identity, but we were deprived of this right. We are happy there is a growing realisation that we should be given our identity,”

“We also want to see how the outside world is. But we have been facing many problems with regard to complications in our travel documents. But, thank God, this issue has now been resolved,” she added.

Another reason why this is being regarded as an important milestone is because it will help the government better conduct the national census and help garner a more accurate figure on official records on the population of the Transgender community who previously had no choice in the matter.