Gender Recognition in Mexico by State

We celebrate the progress made in recognizing transgender identities in Mexico and urge continued efforts toward the full recognition of the human rights of transgender individuals. If you have additional information, we invite you to contact Human Rights Watch at lgbt@hrw.org.



International Standards

In November 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion stating that, in order to uphold the rights to privacy, nondiscrimination, and freedom of expression under the American Convention on Human Rights, states must establish simple, efficient procedures that allow people, including children, to change their names and gender markers on official documents. The advisory opinion said this must be possible through a process of self-declaration, without invasive or pathologizing requirements such as medical evaluations.

The court emphasized that such procedures should be “executed as quickly as possible” given they are of “such significance” and any delays can cause detrimental effects on an individual. It recommended an “administrative or notarial” procedure (instead of judicial proceedings, which often involve delays) and made clear that the State has a responsibility to ensure gender identities are updated in different records, to avoid an individual having to undertake “several procedures” involving “numerous authorities” and “unreasonable burdens.”

In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition, which it found to be a fundamental right protected both by the constitution and international law through provisions that guarantee the free development of personality, the right to privacy, the recognition of legal personality, the right to a name, and the right to identity. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity.”

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides for equal civil and political rights for all (article 3), the right to recognition for everyone before the law (article 16), and the right to privacy and family (article 17). Governments are obligated under the ICCPR to ensure equality before the law and the equal protection of the law of all persons without discrimination on any ground, including sex (article 26).

The Human Rights Committee, the treaty body responsible for overseeing implementation of the ICCPR, has specifically recommended on multiple occasions that governments should guarantee the rights of transgender people, including the right to legal recognition of their gender on the basis of self-identification, and that states should repeal abusive and disproportionate requirements for legal recognition of gender identity.

In his report to the UN General Assembly in 2018, the UN independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity noted that “lack of legal recognition negates the identity of the concerned persons to such an extent that it provokes what can be described as a fundamental rupture of State obligations … [W]hen States deny legal access to trans identities, what they are actually doing is messaging a sense of what is a proper citizen.” He has said that legal gender recognition must be a simple administrative procedure based on self-determination and without abusive requirements such as medical certification. Notably, the independent expert highlights trans people’s “systematic exclusion from education, employment, and housing, health care and all other sectors of social and community life” as reason for why gender recognition is a “human rights imperative.”

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the treaty body responsible for overseeing the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), has also made an explicit link between the lack of gender recognition for trans people and violations of socio-economic rights. It has accordingly called on at least one state to ensure that trans people have “effective access to economic, social and cultural rights.”

The Yogyakarta Principles, written by a group of international human rights experts who met in 2006 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and updated in 2017, also urge states to ensure that administrative procedures exist whereby a person’s self-defined gender identity can be indicated on all state-issued identity documents that include gender markers. The principles also endorse an individual’s right to choose how and when to disclose their gender identity under the right to privacy.