EDITORIAL: The transgender people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are the most threatened humans. Abandoned by families and ostracized by society the transgender people live on the periphery of society and fear of death.
They are soft targets — according to available information, since 2015 about 90 transgender people have been killed, and none of the accused has been punished. In most cases, the killers are the male companions or boyfriends of the transgender victims.
That being their place in society they hesitate to be counted and registered in official records as transgender people.
Although their actual number is nearly 40,000, only about 1,000 have them described as transgender on their national identity cards. But everyone knows how hapless and helpless they are and how in clear violation of Article 38(a) of the Constitution they are denied the government protection and patronage.
Hopefully, all of that may change now. The KP government on Monday introduced a bill in the assembly providing for setting up a Rs 50 million endowment fund for the welfare of thousands of transgender people in the province. The bill also seeks to provide for additional grants and grants from philanthropists and non-governmental organisations.
A management committee will utilise the fund for the welfare activities of the transgender persons to bring them into the mainstream of society, and ensure provision of financial assistance and small-scale interest-free loans to transgender persons.
“It is a good initiative as for the first time a bill has been tabled in the assembly for providing financial assistance to transgender persons,” says Qamar Naseem, chief of Blue Veins, a civil society organisation working for the transgender people.
How come does the move to treat transgender people, who are also called hijras and khwajasiras and eunuchs, turns into a bill for law-making comes so late while the world over their physical inabilities have been relegated to their human rights as equal citizens? Not that no one tried at that; in 2009 Dr Mohammad Aslam Khaki filed a case in the Supreme Court of Pakistan for rightful place in society for the transgender people and material government help in that respect.
And the court, headed by the then Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had upheld Khaki’s petition. But not much was done as a follow-up mainly because of an unfavourable socio-cultural milieu that obtains in Pakistan, including the KP province, against transgender people. So, forget about the real number of the transgender people.
Forget about their own crude ways that they employ to seek or receive socio-cultural acceptance. Treat them as human beings and citizens of Pakistan first and then anything else. That being the need the KP assembly is expected to pass the bill seeking official patronage of transgenders as early as possible — or before the anti-transgender lobbies get into stride and subvert its passage as law.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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