Communicated on 4 December 2019
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 55353/19
Nikolo GHVINIASHVILI
against Georgia
lodged on 18 October 2019
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the inability of the applicant, who is a female‑to-male transgender person, to have his gender marker changed according to his self-identification in his identity documents and birth records. The domestic authorities rejected the applicant’s requests for the change of the gender marker on the ground that he had not undergone sex reassignment procedures.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the respondent State’s refusal to grant legal recognition to the applicants’ gender identity amounted to a violation of either Article 3 and/or Article 8 of the Convention (compare, mutatis mutandis, with A.P., Garçon and Nicot v. France, nos. 79885/12 and 2 others, 6 April 2017 (extracts)) or to discriminatory treatment in breach of Article 14 of the Convention?
2. When the domestic courts held in their decisions that the applicant ought to change first his biological sex in order to be able to claim legal recognition of his gender identity, which medical procedures exactly were the courts referring to? Was the courts’ position based on the relevant legal regulations? Can the requirement of changing the biological sex for the purposes of changing the legal gender be equated with the requirement to demonstrate “the irreversible nature of the change in appearance” (see A.P., Garçon and Nicot, cited above, §§ 116-120)?
The Government are requested, in accordance with Rule 33 of the Rules of Court, to treat the case-file material as confidential.
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