Envision Diversity Project “Bu poster Avrupa Birliği

Envision Diversity Project
Dear Our Friends
Ref: North Cyprus Transgender Project and Transgender Rights
Envision Diversity is a newly founded initiative which works on diversity, gender and human rights
issues. Initiative serves as a platform to build network, establish solidarity and experience sharing
between communities and people to raise their voice and become active agents of advocacy. Envision
Diversity works towards engaging different groups to create a collective mind in terms of serving as
delegates of advocacy, awareness and democracy for advancement of equality and rights.
We are writing this letter to introduce our TransAct project which is a stream under our umbrella
project LGBTI+. LGBTI+ is financed by Grow Civic as part of the EU funded Civic Space NGO Support
Mechanism. TransAct project works on involving transgender community to engage actively in
advocacy and right-based claims for their rights. We aim to create a dynamic interest from transcommunity to take legal action against the government for neglecting their basic human rights such as
right to surgical sex change operation and gender re-assignment as well as right to change their names
on identification cards. North Cyprus still does not have any legislation regulating gender reassignment surgery for trans community and it is considered to be a plastic surgery operation. It is not
compensated by the government and neither there is a provision to provide financial support to those
who would opt to do it in Turkey. Therefor most transgender community fails to go through gender reassignment surgery hence they cannot prospectively change their names on ID cards therefore cannot
relish their gender identity. This also causes a problem once they have to find a job as their names and
appearances does not match henceforth leading to heavy discrimination. We aim to bring a lawsuit
against the government in ECoHR demanding changing legislation or bringing measures to alleviate
and mitigate such unfavourable circumstances for transgender community. We are also running a
legislative and legal screening to map out areas of discrimination in different areas which will turn into
a report with a LGBTI survey.
We would like to see whether we could co-operate and collaborate mutually on this project specifically
in the strategic litigation process at ECoHR. We would be happy if we could have a short meeting
during the coming ILGA Conference in Cyprus and with AcceptCY to seek mutual ways of pushing
ahead for change in the North.
“Bu poster Avrupa Birliği tarafından finanse edilen Sivil Büyü – Aktif Yurttaşlık Mekanizması desteğiyle hazırlanmıştır. Bu yayının
içeriği yalnızca Envision Diversity sorumluluğu altındadır ve hiçbir şekilde Avrupa Birliği’nin görüşlerini yansıttığı şeklinde
algılanmamalıdır.”
With our warmest and sincere regards
Envision Diversity Project
Envision Diversity Initiative
“Bu poster Avrupa Birliği tarafından finanse edilen Sivil Büyü – Aktif Yurttaşlık Mekanizması desteğiyle hazırlanmıştır. Bu yayının
içeriği yalnızca Envision Diversity sorumluluğu altındadır ve hiçbir şekilde Avrupa Birliği’nin görüşlerini yansıttığı şeklinde
algılanmamalıdır.”