Transgenders & Human Rights

Abstract

 Much of the twentieth century, especially its later half is known as the ‘Age of Human Rights’ and rightly so as no preceding century in human history witnessed such a provision of human rights enunciations on a global scale. Never before have the languages of human rights sought to supplant all other ethical languages. No previous century has witnessed the proliferation of endless normativity of human rights standards as a core aspect of the politics of the intergovernmental desire. Never before has this been a discourse so varied and diverse.[1]It was this sheer importance which prompted the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Boutros Boutros Ghali,  to term it, in his inaugural address at the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights, as a ‘common language of humanity’.

This article attempts to discover how far the changing dimensions of the human right discourse has helped the Transsexuals (or Transgenders, as they are preferred to be called now) as well as Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and other such sexual and gender minorities in attaining the social, economic and political status they have been  fighting for all these years.

[1] Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights 1(2^nd ed. 2006).