EU Human Rights Commission Recommends Extending Specific Protections to Transpeople

The European Union’s Commission on Human Rights has released its report concerning gender identity and basic human rights. This paper is something of a study on a given topic with regards to the Human Right’s Charter of the European Union. It often refers back to the Charter, and deals with specifics of law regarding human rights and that given topic. It is intended to make suggestions with regards to changes that the various European Union nations need to make in order to adhere to and change their laws with regards to this particular topic.

The first and biggest news out of this paper is that gender identity is a fundamental right according to the Commissioner for Human Rights, which is currently Thomas Hammarberg. According to this paper, transpeople suffer from a great deal of discrimination, which in turn violates their fundamental rights “including the right to life, the right to physical integrity and the right to health.” The paper goes on to discuss in detail each of these issues.

The big news for the transgender community in Europe are the recommendations. The paper outlined twelve different areas that the EU nations needed to improve upon and address. The paper calls for the recognition of gender identity as a separate issue from sex or sexual orientation discrimination and it should be protected as such, and it calls upon member nations of the EU to enact specific hate crimes legislation to combat transphobia.

Additionally, it calls upon member nations to provide gender reassignment procedures including hormone replacement, surgery and psychological support accessible through the public health systems. For many transpeople, this would be a major boon since the cost of transitioning is often incredibly high. The paper also calls upon the member nations to not automatically revoke the marriages of anyone who transitions while married.

There are, of course, several other areas that they make recommendations upon. The biggest is that the nations should consult with transpeople and their organizations as to what needs to be done within their nation in order to protect the rights of transpeople. In some nations such as Great Briton and Spain, this is not necessarily a major issue. Both nations are already making some progress along these lines; however, nations such as Poland could pose greater issues with regards to the human rights of transpeople. Their track record for many gays and lesbians is not exactly stellar, and the notion that they might be willing to extend human rights to transpeople seems dubious.

The Commission’s papers are not binding law, but rather guidelines and recommendations to the EU member nations. The European Union is a conglomerate super-state which has twenty-seven members currently. They are the most unified of the various super-state organizations. Most organizations like this are loose confederations of states which meet every so often in order to hash out a unified front on particular issues such as the economy. The European Union is the only super-state organization which has its own elected governing body.

In theory, the EU is suppose to respect the tribal level differences of each member nation. It does not always work perfectly. There are also several issues with regards to the level of bureaucracy in the EU. The Human Rights Commission is suppose to guide the EU states on issues of human rights including the protection of linguistic, racial, ethnic, and other minorities. Linguistic minorities include any group that speaks a minority language within the borders of that nation. Great Britain has six minority languages- Cornish, Scots, Gaelic, Manx, Scots Gaelic and Welsh; Spain has three- Galician, Basque and Catalan.

Human Rights Commission Paper
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