(New York) – Transgender people in El Salvador experience significant discrimination in daily life because there is no procedure for legal gender recognition, Human Rights Watch and COMCAVIS TRANS said in a report released today. The Legislative Assembly should comply with a recent Supreme Court ruling and create a simple, efficient procedure to allow trans people to accurately reflect their self-declared gender identity on identity documents.

July 18, 2022

“We Just Want to Live Our Lives”

El Salvador’s Need for Legal Gender Recognition

Download the full report in English

The 40-page report, “‘We Just Want to Live Our Lives’: El Salvador’s Need for Legal Gender Recognition,” exposes the pervasive discrimination that trans people experience due to a mismatch between their gender and their identity documents. The researchers focused on discrimination in four key areas: health, employment, voting, and banking. Human Rights Watch and COMCAVIS TRANS found that a lack of accurate documents, often in combination with anti-trans bias, seriously impedes the realization of these rights for trans people.

“El Salvador’s Supreme Court has made patently clear that trans people have a right to their identity, and now the Legislative Assembly should comply with the ruling and ensure the rights of trans people,” said Cristian González Cabrera, LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Without such legislation, trans people will continue to be disadvantaged in society, exacerbated by the generalized violence and discrimination they face in all aspects of life.”

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© 2022 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch

In February 2022, the constitutional chamber of El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled that the constitution prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and gave the legislature one year to create a procedure so that trans people can change their names in identity documents. To fully comply with international human rights standards and minimize discrimination, the Legislative Assembly should also allow trans people to modify the gender markers in their documents, via a simple, efficient, and inexpensive administrative procedure based on self-declaration.

To understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in El Salvador, Human Rights Watch and COMCAVIS TRANS interviewed 43 transgender people in San Salvador, San Luis Talpa, Santa Ana, Santa Tecla, La Unión, and Zacatecoluca, as well as remotely.

In August 2021, lawmakers, in collaboration with trans organizations, introduced a draft Gender Identity Law that would create a legal gender recognition procedure, but members of the parliamentary Committee on Women and Gender Equality have not yet discussed it. In May 2021, the same committee blocked a similar bill introduced in 2018 in the previous legislature, along with 29 other bills on various other subjects calling them “not in accordance with reality.” Trans activists sharply criticized the move.

Most trans people interviewed told researchers that they experienced discrimination when they visited public healthcare facilities. They said that clinic staff exposed them as transgender by calling out their legal names in waiting rooms, subjected them to onerous questioning about their identities, and humiliated and mocked them.

People interviewed also described their experiences seeking jobs, with potential employers realizing the interviewees were trans when they looked at their documents. In some cases, potential employers explicitly told trans people they would not be hired because they are transgender.

Most of the trans people interviewed said that they faced obstacles accessing bank deposits and remittances from family living abroad, with bank employees questioning their identity because it didn’t match their documents.

Many of the people interviewed said they faced no impediment to their right to vote in the February 2021 elections. But two trans women said that they were not allowed to vote because their identity document did not match their gender, while several others said they were allowed to vote but faced questioning that left them feeling humiliated.

A growing number of countries in Latin America have created procedures for legal gender recognition, such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Uruguay, providing for simple administrative processes based on self-declaration. The president of neighboring Honduras recently announced that country would make the necessary reforms to allow for this right, in compliance with a 2021 Inter-American Court of Human Rights landmark ruling in a case involving Honduras.

In 2017, the Inter-American Court, which is charged with interpreting the American Convention on Human Rights, affirmed that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and stigmatizing requirements.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which El Salvador is also a party, provides for equal civil and political rights for all, everyone’s right to recognition before the law, and the right to privacy. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in charge of interpreting the ICCPR, has called on governments to guarantee the rights of transgender people, including the right to legal recognition of their gender.

In 2017, the Salvadoran government acknowledged in a report that LGBT people face “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, excessive use of force, illegal and arbitrary arrests and other forms of abuse, much of it committed even by public security agents.” A 2021 Human Rights Watch report confirmed the Salvadoran government’s assessment and found that social and economic marginalization further increase the risk of violence, making trans people especially vulnerable to abuse.

“El Salvador has a historic debt to the trans community, which the creation of a legal gender recognition procedure can begin to address,” said Bianka Rodríguez, executive director of COMCAVIS TRANS. “We will continue to be objects of violence and discrimination in society until our self-determination, dignity, and freedom are recognized.”

One in five people is affected by mental health disorders in post-conflict settings, says WHO. If left without treatment and adequate support, people from Ukraine face long-lasting effects.

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Idle cargo and oil tanker ships at the port of Hodeida, Yemen. 
© 2018 AP Photo/Hani Mohammed

(Beirut) – Governments should immediately support a salvage operation to prevent a supertanker moored off Yemen’s coast from spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Red Sea, 20 human rights and humanitarian groups said in a joint statement released today.

The FSO Safer, an oil storage tanker moored 32 nautical miles from the key port city of Hodeida, could explode or rupture at any time, threatening an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe, according to the United Nations. On June 13, the UN announced that salvage operations could not begin due to insufficient funding and opened a US$20 million crowdfunding campaign to make up the funding gap.

“The lack of urgency from governments has brought Yemen perilously close to a new humanitarian and environmental disaster,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s incomprehensible that the UN is now reduced to crowdfunding $20 million when the potential damages could be a thousand times greater. Donors should immediately step up to address this looming risk.”

The Safer has been stranded without maintenance off Yemen’s coast since 2015 and holds an estimated 1.14 million barrels of light crude oil, four times the amount of oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez, and enough to make the Safer the fifth largest oil spill in history. The supertanker is at imminent risk of explosion because of increased corrosion from the lack of maintenance – the former head of the Yemeni oil company that owns the tanker described it to a journalist as “a bomb” – and the UN reports that with the necessary funding, it is ready to begin an emergency salvage operation that would transfer the oil to a secure vessel.

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Satellite image of the Safer supertanker off Yemen’s coast taken on June 17,  2020, one month before experts warned the UN Security Council that unless Houthi authorities let the UN secure the aging vessel, its 1.1 million barrels of crude oil could spill and wreak environmental and humanitarian havoc.  Satellite Image
© 2020 Maxar Technologies/Getty Images 

The UN estimates that the cost of cleanup for an oil spill from the Safer would be at least $20 billion, excluding broader economic consequences.

The Houthi authorities, who control Hodeida, signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN on March 5 agreeing to facilitate a two-stage UN-coordinated plan to prevent a disaster. The transfer of the oil from the Safer to a secure vessel is the first step. This four-month long operation would cost $80 million, one-quarter of which is still needed. The second stage involves installing a replacement vessel within 18 months. A total of $144 million is required for both stages.

Fossil fuel use is not only driving the climate crisis, but its extraction risks a series of environmental and human rights harms. These risks are even greater in conflict areas, like Yemen, the groups said, because of diminished environmental governance and government oversight due to shrinking budgets, access constraints or other safety and security issues, alongside the possibility of deliberate or accidental attacks on fossil fuel sites.

The UN has warned that the emergency salvage operation will become even more dangerous by October as high winds and volatile currents increase in the Red Sea.

In July 2020, the UN Environment Programme warned that an oil spill from the vessel could have “serious, long-lasting environmental impact” on one of the most important repositories of biodiversity on the planet, possibly destroying coastal wetlands, mangroves, seagrass, and coral reefs for generations.

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Location of the Safer supertanker.
© Human Rights Watch

The environmental destruction would have devastating long-term economic consequences for the approximately 28 million people in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, and Djibouti, who rely on these areas for their livelihoods. Given that the Safer is also located close to critical global shipping lanes, there are numerous other likely harmful economic consequences that would result from a spill.

An oil spill could shut down Hodeida’s port, affecting millions of Yemenis who depend on imports of food and other essential goods. Between 80 and 90 percent of the Yemeni population’s basic needs are delivered by commercial imports and aid, approximately 70 percent of which enter through Hodeida.

Thousands of civilians in Yemen have died and been injured since 2015 in the armed conflict  between the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led coalition and the Houthi armed group, which contributed to what the UN called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The Yemeni state-run Safer Exploration and Production Operations Company (SEPOC), which owns the FSO Safer, has not been able to maintain the vessels since 2015, causing corrosion. Seawater entered the supertanker’s engine compartment in May 2020, heightening concerns about a possible oil spill or explosion. Before Houthi authorities signed the March agreement with the UN in March to allow for a salvage plan to be implemented, they had held up UN access to the ship.

In May, donors pledged $33 million to support the UN plan. Donors included the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Qatar, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The United States and Saudi Arabia also reportedly committed to donating to the salvage effort.

“Donating $20 million today to end the Safer tanker explosion risk means averting a disaster that will cost billions in environmental clean-up costs alone, while the human rights, humanitarian, and other environmental costs will be incalculable,” Page said.

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Yusuf Zahab in a photo that he sent Human Rights Watch from al-Sina’a prison during the Islamic State (ISIS) siege in January 2022.
© 2022 Private

(Canberra, July 18, 2022) – Family members reported that an Australian teenager, wrongfully detained in northeast Syria after being forced as a child to live under the Islamic State (ISIS), has died, Human Rights Watch said today. For several years, the family had begged the Australian government to repatriate Yusuf Zahab, who was last heard from when he sent desperate pleas for help during an ISIS siege of Al-Sina’a prison in al-Hasakah city in January 2022. 

A family representative told Human Rights Watch that an Australian government official had informed relatives on July 17 that Zahab, who would have turned 18 in April, had died from uncertain causes. The family said it had learned in January 2021 that Zahab had caught tuberculosis in a severely overcrowded, makeshift prison run by a Kurdish-led armed group holding Syrian and foreign ISIS suspects and that his treatment had stopped. In January 2022, Zahab was wounded in the head and arm during the battle by the Kurdish-led group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the US-led, anti-ISIS coalition to recapture the prison from ISIS. 

“Tragically, the reported death of teenage Yusuf Zahab should be no surprise to Australia and other governments that have outsourced responsibility for their nationals held in horrific conditions in northeast Syria,” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “His death should prompt these countries to urgently bring their detained citizens home.” 

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Yusuf Zahab in Australia in 2014. 
© 2014 Private

The Syrian Defense Forces and other regional security groups are currently holding between 69 and 80 Australian nationals, including 19 women and 39 children, as ISIS suspects and their family members in northeast Syria, said Kamalle Dabboussy, the representative for the Zahab’s and other detainees’ families.

The previous Australian government repatriated only eight citizens, all unaccompanied children, in 2019. The party of the new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in 2019 that the government had a “moral duty” to bring home women and children taken to ISIS territory against their will.

“Today we are heartbroken and angry,” Zahab’s family said in a July 18 statement. “Yusuf didn’t need to die. The previous Australian Government knew about Yusuf’s predicament for more than three years. We are unaware of any efforts to support, care or inquire about him.… We are pleading with the Albanese Government. Please repatriate the remaining Australian women and children. Please act before another life is lost.”

Less than an hour earlier, The Australian newspaper reported, “The Australian understands Kurdish [northeast Syrian] and Australian authorities believe Yusuf is dead” and may have been killed after ISIS attacked the prison. The Australian government and northeast Syrian authorities have not yet commented on Zahab’s death. Zahab’s father, Hicham Zahab, died in detention in northeast Syria in 2020, most likely of tuberculosis, Dabboussy said.

More than 41,000 foreigners from dozens of countries have been held since at least 2019 in life-threatening and often inhuman conditions in camps and prisons by authorities in northeast Syria. The majority are children, most under age 12. None have been brought before a court to determine the necessity and legality of their detention.

Zahab was among three detainees who sent desperate voice messages to Human Rights Watch when ISIS seized Al-Sina’a prison on January 20. The detainees said they had no food or water and that many detainees were dead or wounded.

“I got injured in my head and my hand,” Zahab said. “I lost a lot of blood.… There’s no doctors here, there’s no one who can help me. I’m very scared. I need help. Please … [M]y friends got killed in front of me, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old.… There’s a lot of bodies, dead bodies, and there’s a lot of injured people screaming from pain.”

Human Rights Watch tweets and a February news release withheld Zahab’s identity from publication at his family’s request.

Zahab said he was hit in a US Apache helicopter attack. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify this information. The US-led coalition against ISIS conducted air-strikes and provided ground support to the Syrian Democratic Forces to recapture the prison. UK special forces also assisted. Satellite imagery and videos analyzed by Human Rights Watch showed extensive damage to the prison compound.

During a visit to northeast Syria in May, Human Rights Watch repeatedly asked to interview Zahab and to visit Al-Sina’a and other prisons where boys were held. Regional authorities declined on unspecified security grounds.

Zahab was born in southwest Sydney, Australia. He was 11 when relatives took him to Turkey on a pretext by his adult brother, who then forced the family to cross into Syria, Dabboussy said. In 2019, Zahab was among family members taken into custody by the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIS.

He was immediately separated from his mother and became one of about 700 Syrian and foreign boys detained in Al-Sina’a prison. Initially, the boys were held with men in cells so crowded that their bodies touched when they slept.

Tuberculosis and deaths from untreated wounds and disease were widespread in some prisons for ISIS suspects, Human Rights Watch found in 2020 and 2021. In May and June, sources with information about the detainees told Human Rights Watch that several detained boys were still not receiving adequate medical care for tuberculosis or serious injuries sustained during and before the battle in Al-Sina’a.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said on January 31 that nearly 500 prison staff, fighters, civilians, ISIS attackers, and prisoners had been killed in the battle to recapture Al-Sina’a. The armed group has provided no breakdowns on the number of detainees killed, injured, and unaccounted for despite queries from United Nations bodies, as well as from Human Rights Watch, the media, and aid groups.

Northeast Syrian authorities have repeatedly urged countries to repatriate their nationals, help them prosecute those suspected of ISIS crimes, and improve detention conditions, saying they lack the means to do so. The government of Iraq has repatriated about 2,600 nationals. At least 34 countries including the United States and Germany have repatriated or helped bring home more than 1,500 others. Most are children. But most countries have refused to take all or even any back, citing security concerns.

Governments have a responsibility to take steps to protect their citizens when they face serious human rights violations, including loss of life and torture. This obligation can extend to nationals in foreign countries when reasonable action by their home governments can protect them from such harm. Indefinite detention of civilians based on the alleged culpability of their relatives amounts to collective punishment, a war crime. Children may only be detained as an exceptional measure of last resort, including those linked to armed groups, who should be treated first and foremost as victims.

Australia and other countries should take urgent steps to repatriate or help repatriate their nationals for rehabilitation, reintegration, and prosecution as appropriate, provided they can guarantee humane treatment and due process. These countries, regional authorities, and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, which includes Australia, should work to immediately improve conditions in camps and prisons, provide aid workers and independent monitors unfettered access to all detainees, and allow evacuations of detainees needing lifesaving treatment abroad. Detainees at risk of abuse if repatriated should ultimately be resettled in safe third countries.

“Yusuf Zahab survived being forced to live under ISIS, the battle to rout ISIS, and an ISIS prison attack, only to die while in the custody of the internationally backed forces who rescued him,” Tayler said. “How many more detainees will die before countries bring home their nationals?”