Pakistan transgenders pin hopes on new rights

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The BBC's Aleem Maqbool finds out what difficulties transsexuals face in Pakistan

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There has been little opposition to the decision by Pakistan's Supreme Court to allow a third gender category, apart from male or female, on the national identity card. The BBC's Aleem Maqbool meets transgendered people in Karachi buoyed by the ruling, but sceptical about whether it can really end the isolation they face.

In the back streets, in a squalid neighbourhood of Pakistan's largest city, is a tiny, shabby apartment.
It is where we find "Shehzadi" getting ready for work.
Wearing a bright yellow dress, and scrabbling around her make-up box, she is doing her best to cover up her decidedly masculine features.
Shehzadi is transgendered: physically male, but psychologically female.
"When I was about six or seven, I realised I wasn't either a boy or a girl," Shehzadi says.
"I was miserable because I didn't understand why I was different. It was only when I met another 'she-male' that I felt peace in my heart and my mind."
Like so many other of the estimated 50,000 transgenders in Pakistan, Shehzadi left home as a teenager, to live with others from the same community.
"I'm happy being with other transgenders, but there are many problems," Shehzadi says. "People don't understand, and they abuse us. It's hard to get somewhere to live, or even to move about normally. I get teased when I stand and wait for a bus."
Separate identity Shehzadi also shows us her ID card. She is unhappy that it says "male."
But this is something that should soon change.
Remarkably for a conservative country like this, Pakistan is about to introduce a third gender category on its national identity cards.

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“Start Quote

Transgenders wanted recognition for their community. Why not reflect them as having a separate identity ”

End Quote Brigadier Ehsan ul Haq

"Previously, we were having two categories, male and female, for registration," says Brigadier Ehsan ul-Haq, who is in charge of the national database and registration authority in Karachi.

"But this community agitated for a separate identity of their own. They went to the Supreme Court, the court agreed and we will implement it."
Brigadier Ehsan says that to his knowledge there has been no opposition to the ruling, either within the registration authority or outside it.
"I personally feel it is a good decision by our highest court," he says. "Transgenders wanted recognition for their community. Why not reflect them as having a separate identity if it is biologically so?" Continued