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LAST WEDNESDAY EVENING, I went about the usual domestic chores of an Irish twenty-something (making dinner, tackling the ironing, filling out job applications…). Just after 9 o’clock, the TV background noise grabbed my attention with Stephen Fry’s BBC documentary Out There. This two-part programme followed the eloquent broadcaster as he examined what it means to be gay in Uganda, the USA, Russia, Brazil and India.
On his travels Fry met with members of India’s hijra community – a varied societal group that do not identify themselves as male or female. The term ‘hijra‘ can refer to India’s intersex community, sections of the transgender community or other groups. Estimated to number 6 million, and once revered, now hijra are outcasts living on the margins of Indian society. Stephen Fry’s conversations throughout the programme revealed the powerful sense of community that hijra have developed together.
Most chillingly, however, was the acute vulnerability of the hijra and how their social exclusion can leave them open to discrimination and abuse.
Usually, we can console ourselves that nothing quite so depressing could happen in Ireland. Documentaries like Out There shine a light on human rights abuses and oppression happening in distant places, right? Such practices would be alien in our modern Western society. Wouldn’t they?
Yet Ireland’s transgender community remains on the fringes, despite frequent attempts at home and abroad to change the status quo. Dr Lydia Foy applied for a birth certificate in her female gender in March 1993 and in doing so, began a legal journey that would last over two decades. Represented by FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres), Lydia fought tirelessly and selflessly for transgender recognition legislation in the Irish courts.
On 19 October 2007, the High Court held that Ireland had breached Lydia Foy’s Article 8 rights to respect for private and family life. In doing so, the Court handed down the first ever declaration of incompatibility under the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003. The State did appeal this to the Supreme Court but withdrew the appeal in 2010 and the decision became final and binding. Hope that Ireland would move quickly to rectify this situation proved sadly misplaced.
As of October 2013, six years after Lydia’s High Court victory, Ireland still has not introduced transgender recognition legislation, despite political promises and statements from both FF and FG-led governments.
In making outcasts of the transgender community, Ireland has also made itself an outcast in Europe. Ireland is the only EU member state that does not provide a legal mechanism for recognition of transgender persons.
This uncomfortable fact has been highlighted by many international human rights advocates, such as the former Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg as well as the incumbent Commissioner, Nils Muiznieks. In fact, Mr Muiznieks wrote to several Irish Government ministers in November 2012 urging them to implement transgender recognition legislation without delay.
This unjustifiable failure to legislate calls into question how much we value our transgender citizens – and indeed how much we value the European Convention on Human Rights, a key treaty to which Ireland willingly signed up.
This week, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection meets to discuss the General Scheme of the Gender Recognition Bill 2013.
This is a draft document, not a definite bill. FLAC made a detailed submission on the general scheme to the Joint Oireachtas Committee in September and the independent legal rights body will speak at a Committee hearing today (Thursday), along with other NGOs, civil society groups, healthcare professionals and academics.
FLAC welcomes any progress in this area but we harbour several concerns with the proposed legislation. Chief among these is the government’s proposal to force married transgender people to divorce their partners before they can apply for gender recognition. For the tiny number of married transgender persons who wish to remain married, this means a cruel Sophie’s Choice-style scenario : to choose between their marriage and true gender recognition.
European countries such as Germany and Austria have already struck down equivalent laws, stating that forced divorce was unconstitutional. A case before the European Court of Human Rights is putting Finland on trial for the same issue.
Already behind its peers, Ireland is now proposing to introduce law that has already become outmoded elsewhere and that is in breach of our human rights commitments. This is starkly highlighted by the almost unanimous accord on this and indeed other issues in the bill among groups appearing before the committee this week.
Twenty years into her painful and all-consuming legal battle, Lydia Foy was forced to issue new legal proceedings in February due to government inaction. Having met Lydia on numerous occasions (and witnessed first-hand both her indomitable bravery and the hurt that she has suffered) it pains me that our government still refuses to help her.
Last month, she was recognised as a prominent and courageous human rights campaigner when she was shortlisted for European Diversity Awards ‘Campaigner of the Year 2013’ at a ceremony in London. How much longer will she have to wait to have the simple human right of being recognised at home in her true gender?
Emma Cassidy (@cassidyemma) is a legal intern and communications assistant with FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres – @flacireland). A briefing note on the Foy case is available to download from FLAC’s website.
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This country is sinking in debt and us the taxpayers are fed up.
@James: Does this include Eamon Ryan’s “special appointment” Cara Augustenborg? She’s doing some amount of posting photos from fancy hotels on social media. Wonder if these are going down as expenses?
Great. More tax
@Shaun Gallagher: Green policies cost I’m afraid. We can try and ignore climate change but it won’t save us from the inevitable economic crash that will follow increased temperatures
@Mickety Dee: Green policies, what does that mean exactly? More tax on fuel when there are no alternatives will not save the planet.
@Mickety Dee: increased temperatures will have very little direct effect on ireland or Irelands economy. The effect it may have on the world wide economy is a different matter but since no matter what we do will have any impact on climate change then we should be the last people to make the changes not the first. It’s like two people at the top of a cliff looking at doing a dive, one says you go first I’ll follow, first person jumps and splats on a hidden rock under the water, ends up paralysed for the rest of their life. The second person looks on and says nah, I’ve changed my mind and decides to walk down to a much lower level on a different part of the cliff that they know to be safe and then jumps.
Our government are so eager to be seen to be best in class we are foolishly handing over energy security, driving up costs of homes with rolls Royce building regs for every new home meaning most can’t afford them, on the verge of handing over food security by destroying our aggri sector. We are jumping off that cliff recklessly for no discernable benefit
@Anthony Guinnessy: I think you’ll find the Irish economy is heavily correlated with the world economy. We are a long way from leaders in green policies and even then way behind on targets.
@Steve: An example would be subsidies on wind energy which translates into a tax on your electricity bill. Without subsidies and carbon tax there would be no wind generation on the island. The same would apply to recycling. It is still far cheaper to extract raw materials than recycle them.
It does seem crazy. Just six years ago the doors were thrown open on dairy sector deregulation which drove up investment and quotas and flattened prices. How was the ‘green’ impact of that decision not factored in at the time? Simon Coveney has questions to answer about wildly contradictory policy
@Eoin Roche: there is no plan or long term strategy that planning must align with. There are lobby groups who get what they ask for and over time we end up with a patchwork quilt of lobby appeasing policies that are fit for nothing. We get rid of sugar beet production and increase our dairy herd. Its mind boggling how short term and self serving (for a few) that we have allowed our system to become.
I for one am in favour of the jobs the comet will create.
Irelands headlong dash to be first to the climate action post at all costs no matter who it hurts will have very serious consequences for the economy and future generations
The Irish government practice of showboating on the world stage continues, and we, the people are the ones to suffer.
@Ciaran Maher: yep well said
@Ciaran Maher: yep showboating aptly described it
@Ciaran Maher: Are you really suffering? Doubt it. And certainly not as much as people who live in the areas directly impacted by climate change.
@Paul Whitehead: And these measures will relieve their plight, while China builds more coal fired power stations every week.
have your say