UN expert on gender identity calls on Scottish Parliament to adopt Gender Recognition Reform Bill

GENEVA (16 December 2022) – The UN human rights expert on gender identity urged the Scottish Government to complete its deliberations and adopt the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, bringing the Scottish system closer into line with its international human rights obligations. The Bill has completed Stages 1 and 2 and is expected to reach the third and final stage in the coming days.

Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, said he was worried that efforts to postpone consideration of the Bill, or to weaken its contents, may be the result of stigma and prejudice against trans women. He also expressed concerns about the misrepresentation of the longstanding position within the UN – including of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – on the imperative to legally recognise the gender identity of trans, non-binary and other gender-diverse persons through systems of self-identification.

“Trans women are among the most vilified, disenfranchised, and stigmatized people on this planet,” Madrigal-Borloz said. “Through my work in dozens of countries I have witnessed shocking acts of violence to which they are subjected, including killings, torture, beatings, and systematic social exclusion from health, employment, housing, and education.

“United Nations human rights bodies that have spoken on the matter have constantly found that legal recognition of gender identity through self-identification is the most efficient and appropriate way to ensure the enjoyment of human rights, and I am yet to learn of a country in which this is not the case.”

Madrigal-Borloz provided testimony to the Scottish Parliament on the Bill in June 2022, and on 16 December 2022 published a letter restating his advice to the Scottish authorities on relevant international standards that will be met under the new legislation. He also provided evidence of the United Nations’ consensus on the imperative of legal recognition of gender identity under a standard of self-identification.

The Independent Expert also said that the State has the duty to put in place measures and safeguards against violence against women and girls in all their diversity, and that this has been at the core of recommendations from his own mandate and other UN bodies working on the rights of women and gender equality. At the same time, he expressed deep concern that the proposals to perpetuate arbitrary obstacles for legally recognizing the gender identity of trans women appear to be based on unfounded negative stereotypes about trans women as violent or predatory.

“Arbitrary obstacles to legal recognition of gender identity directly violate State human rights obligations, and they are by definition authoritarian and anti-democratic,” Madrigal-Borloz said.

The accumulated experience from other countries and regions that have self-identification as the standard, which by now cover some 350 million people, does not support any concerns about abuse of the system by predatory males, he said.

“Throughout history, unsubstantiated myths falsely portraying marginalised groups of people as dangerous to others have been levelled to try to justify imposing arbitrary and deeply discriminatory restrictions on their human rights,” said Madrigal-Borloz.

“As recently as a few decades ago in the UK, and still today in many other countries around the world, such harmful myths falsely portrayed lesbian women and gay men as predatory – causing great harm. Today, we see such harmful narratives repackaged and redeployed against trans women.

“The only connection between obstacles to legal recognition for trans women and freedom of all women from gender and sexual-based violence is based on erroneous views of trans women as being predatory or, equally shockingly, as not existing at all,” he said.