Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights (HR) Friday passed 'The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2017' - an amended bill that was drafted after clubbing two separate bills moved by Senator Karim Khawaja and Senator Rubina Khalid.
The meeting was held with Senator Nasreen Jalil in the chair and attended among others by Senators Karim Ahmed Khawaja, Mufti Abdul Sattar, Sehar Kamran and Sitara Ayaz, Chairman Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) Professor Qibla Ayaz, and officials from the Ministry of Human Rights, Ministry of Law and National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR).
The committee had sought recommendations from the CII on the issue of mechanism to determine the gender of transgender persons in general and their issues of inheritance in particular. The CII chairman told the meeting that the council has held detailed meetings and deliberations on the matters concerning transgender persons and has reached consensus on three things.
The first and prime responsibility of determining the gender of such persons is with the parents, he said, adding if the parents are not known and have disowned the person then the determination of gender will be based on self-presumed identity of the transgender concerned.
He further said that only in the cases when inheritance issues emerge and clear evidence of gender is required, then the court may prescribe a medical board to determine the gender of the specific person otherwise such check-up wouldn't be necessary.
The committee appreciated the detailed insight and work conducted by the Human Rights Ministry, the NCHR and especially CII. The bills were passed with similar recommendations as those given by the CII.
The matter of considering procedural changes to check misuse of blasphemy law in Pakistan was deferred while making clear that the discussion on the matter is not to debate the blasphemy law in itself but an attempt to reduce the wrong use of law. The committee briefly discussed the matter of missing persons and abductions, and unanimously called for a new commission on enforced disappearances with a new head of the commission.
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