Civil and Political Inclusion
It is advised that countries adopt the following good practice policy actions: ■■ Introduce legislation that facilitates the update of the gender marker in official certifications and documents through inclusive and nondiscriminatory centralized protocols. ■■ Discourage pathologizing and stigmatizing requirements, and instead relate gender marker changes to self-determination alone. ■■ Abolish laws or regulations stipulating discriminatory conditions for gender marker updates, such as surgery, divorce, sterilization, and psychiatric examinations. ■■ Ensure that gender options in passports and national ID cards are inclusive of nonbinary people. ■■ Abolish laws and regulations requiring gender-reassignment surgery for intersex children to receive a birth certificate and ban all unnecessary and invasive medical procedures on intersex children and adolescents. ■■ Introduce laws that prevent gender-reassignment surgery for intersex children at birth and adolescents, and instead allow them to choose their gender on their own when ready.
Partnership and Parental Rights This section covers whether same-sex couples can enter into registered partnerships or civil unions, be legally married, and legally adopt children.54 These three issues are deeply ingrained in the right to form a family and are of the highest importance in sexual and gender minorities’ family life. Fewer than one-third of the analyzed countries allow same-sex couples to enter into registered partnerships, civil unions, and/or marriages (Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, South Africa, and Uruguay) (map 5.1). The same holds for adoption (figure 5.6). In Canada, the Civil Marriage Act recognized same-sex marriage in 2005,55 while joint adoption by same-sex couples is also legal in all Canadian provinces and territories.56 Samesex marriage became legal in Costa Rica on May 26, 2020, after an 18-month grace period given by the court’s constitutional chamber expired.57 Costa Rica was the first country in Central America to recognize same-sex marriage, effectively allowing the adoption of children (stepchild and joint). There is no federal law in Mexico on same-sex marriage, but Mexico City and other jurisdictions have enacted local laws providing for this right.58 In May 2019, Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary announced that all Mexican consulates will allow citizens to marry regardless of gender (Mendos 2019). In December 2019, the Senate received a draft bill providing constitutional endorsement to same-sex marriages. However, legal reforms have
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