Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights

The question here is...

Why are they saying now that they are going to deport him and they are in appeal, are in appealing to ECHR Article 8, which, by the way, allows for deportations?

I mean, I assume it's because he's not claiming to be a refugee, right?

Yeah, I'm happy that they say they're going to deport him.

So in 2004, Parliament enacted the Gender Recognition Act, which gave effect to the human right that transgender people have to legal recognition of their acquired gender or their acquired sex in certain circumstances.

Now, the right to gender recognition is protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

So it's a qualified right.

And what that means is there'll be some circumstances where States are under an obligation to give effect to an individual's gender identity or their change in sex or change in gender as far as the law is concerned.

So some of the provisions that were made in the Gender Recognition Act says that a gender recognition certificate will not change your legally recognized sex in circumstances such as parentage, so whether you're recognized as the father or mother of a child, sport, inheritance, peerages, and other areas.

And this additional carve out, this more general carve out in Section 9 establishes that where other legislation makes provision that would be subjecting the Gender Recognition Act to limitation, the Gender Recognition Act, Section 9 , which confers this change in sex status, will not apply for the purposes where that other legislation applies.

So if we look at that, we can see that one important thing that the Gender Recognition Act did was give effect to the full meaning of the Article 8 right to gender recognition, which includes some of the carve outs and exceptions to the general principle that an individual has a right to have their gender identity recognised by the state.

And there's two important things to write from this.

But back to the 80s, and the 17th of October 1986, which saw the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, rule on the case of Rees versus the United Kingdom.

The case was brought by Mark Rees, a trans man, in regards of ECHR Article 8, which is essentially a right to a private life, and Article 12, the right to marry.

The court found there had been no breach of Article 12.

However, in respect of Article 8, although no violation was found, it was not unanimous, but by a majority of 12 votes to 3.