Vietnamese transgender Nguyen Huong Giang won Miss International Queen 2018 - the world’s largest transgender pageant last March (Photo: Dep.com.vn) Hanoi (VNA) – The lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer(LGBTQ) community in Vietnam has faced legal barriers as the law currently onlyrecognises two genders, without any acknowledgement of other genderidentifications or of same-sex marriage, said Dinh Thi Thu Thuy, head of the Departmentof Law under the Ministry of Health.
Addressing a conference in Hanoi on September 26, Thuy noted thatVietnam is home to some 300,000-500,000 transgender people. In the face ofoppressive social, cultural, and judicial difficulties, they are considered avulnerable group.
Transgender people often encounter discrimination and rejection from societyand their families, and are given fewer opportunities to access employment andhealthcare services, she noted. Even when these institutions are available, theexperience can often be isolating and traumatic.
Thuy underlined that sexual abuse and harassment against the transgendercommunity is particularly high, with 23 percent of those interviewed admittingthat they had been forced to have sex with others, and another 16 percenthaving suffered from sexual violence. At the same time, 83 percent hadexperienced humiliation and degradation for being transgender.
Nguyen Kim Dung, manager of a transgender support programme at theCentre for Supporting Community Development, said that currently, transgendersurgery procedures are not widely available to the community due to theirexcessive costs.
The building of the law on transgender confirmation aims to improveliving conditions and health of the community by observing their righta to liveby their true gender, she said.
The issuance of the law with regulations, in line with the globallyprogressive trend, is the wish of not only transgender people, but alsorelevant service providers, as well as the whole community, said Dung, addingthat once the legal corridor for transgender people is built, they will havechance a better chance of living equally with access rights to marriage andhappiness in a society that recognises them.
At the conference, participants highlighted just some of the many difficulties,obstacles, and barriers facing the transgender community and discriminationagainst them.
They also agreed on the need to build a law on gender transitioning and confirmation,while discussing recommendations from the transgender community towards thebuilding of a legal corridor and legal recognition.–VNA
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