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(Mexico City) – Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentary released today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.

The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.

“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.” 

Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.

“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”

Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”

In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.

Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.

Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.

In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.

In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.

In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.  

In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.

The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.

“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”

Click to expand Image Baha’i cemeteries have been desecrated or destroyed in several cities and towns. These tombstones in the Baha'i cemetery near Najafabad were left in a heap when the entire burial ground was bulldozed. © Private Iranian authorities’ decades-long systematic repression of Baha’is simply because they belong to a faith group amounts to the crime against humanity of persecution. Government agencies arrest and imprison Baha’is arbitrarily, confiscate their property, restrict their school and job opportunities, and even deny them dignified burials. UN member states should support national prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction and renew the UN Fact-Finding Mission's mandate.

(Beirut) – Iranian authorities’ decades-long systematic repression of Baha’is amounts to the crime against humanity of persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 49-page report, “‘The Boot on My Neck’: Iranian Authorities’ Crime of Persecution Against Baha’is in Iran,” documents Iranian authorities’ systematic violation of the fundamental rights of members of the Baha’i community through discriminatory laws and policies that target them. Human Rights Watch found that Baha’is face a spectrum of abuses. Government agencies arrest and imprison Baha’is arbitrarily, confiscate their property, restrict their education and employment opportunities, and even deny them dignified burial.

“Iranian authorities deprive Baha’is of their fundamental rights in every aspect of their lives, not due to their actions, but simply for belonging to a faith group,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “It is critically important to increase international pressure on Iran to end this crime against humanity.”

The report draws on extensive documentation by Human Rights Watch and Iranian human rights groups regarding violations against Baha’is in Iran. Researchers reviewed government policies, court documents, and communications with Baha’is. Information was accessed through the Archive of the Persecution of Baha’is in Iran and documents from the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Human Rights Watch also conducted interviews with 14 Baha’is remotely in Persian, both within Iran and abroad place between May 2022 and March 2023.

Baha’is are the largest unrecognized religious minority in Iran. They have been the target of harsh, state-backed repression since their religion was established in the 19th century. After the 1979 revolution, Iranian authorities executed or forcibly disappeared hundreds of Baha’is, including their community leaders. Thousands more have lost their jobs and pensions or were forced to leave their homes or country.

Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has codified its repression of Baha’is into law and official government policy, vigorously enforced by security forces and judicial authorities. Judicial authorities interpret vague national security laws to label Baha’is an outlawed religious minority, branding them as a threat to national security. Human Rights Watch believes that this sustained systematic repression deliberately deprives Baha’is of their basic rights, constituting the crime against humanity of persecution.

The Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, defines persecution as the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of “the identity of the group or collectivity,” including on national, religious, or ethnic grounds. Under international law, crimes against humanity are some of the most serious crimes “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”

Court documents demonstrate authorities' characterization of the Baha’i faith as a “deviant cult” and its adherents as members of an “illegal group.” Official state policies outlined in documents reviewed by Human Rights Watch explicitly bar them from employment and education opportunities, deny them pensions, and seize their property.

Baha’is who spoke to Human Rights Watch described their persecution as a series of violations that begin with their first encounters with the Iranian state and affect every aspect of their lives, including education, employment, and marriage.

“[When I left Iran to continue my education], I did not intend to emigrate,” said Negar Sabet, 38-year-old daughter of Mahvash Sabet Shahriari, a prominent member of the Baha’i community currently imprisoned in Iran. She said:

But my experience at the university outside of the country was very different, as if for the first time a burden was lifted off my shoulders and the boot on my neck had disappeared … There [abroad] I experienced a strange freedom, and for the first time I was equal with other people, and no one was pulling themselves away from me.

Iranian authorities’ 1991 Iranian Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council memorandum outlines state policies systematically discriminating against Baha’is, restricting their access to jobs, education, and economic opportunities. Iranian authorities also use legal provisions to deny Baha’is employment, pensions, and benefits, alongside targeting Baha’i-owned businesses, economically strangling the community by confiscating hundreds of members’ properties.

United Nations member states should support accountability measures, including investigation and prosecution at the national level under the principle of universal jurisdiction, and renew the UN Fact-Finding Mission's mandate, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Human Rights Council established the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations related to the protests that began on September 16, 2022, after the death of a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman in the custody of the country’s abusive morality police especially with respect to women and children.

“The Iranian government's systematic oppression of Baha'is casts a shadow over every aspect of their lives and is a distressing testament to its discriminatory treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, leaving no aspect of their lives untouched by injustice,” Page said.