Kuwait court overturns law criminalizing transgender people
A general view of Kuwait's national assembly hall during a special session to mourn the late emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, in Kuwait City on October 7, 2020. (Photo by YASSER AL-ZAYYAT / AFP)
Kuwait’s constitutional court strikes down a contentious law long used to criminalize transgender people by forbidding the “imitation of the opposite sex.”
After weeks of deliberation and years of campaigning by human rights groups, the court rules that the vague law policing people who dress and behave like the opposite sex was “inconsistent with the constitution’s keenness to ensure and preserve personal freedom.”
The decision is hailed as a liberal counterweight to the conservative politics in Kuwait, a Gulf Arab sheikhdom where homosexual relations are criminalized with up to seven years in prison.
Conservative Islamist lawmakers in Kuwait blast the court ruling as shameful and vow to fight it.
