Minorities Several transgender and non-binary people have been trapped in Ukraine because of the gender marking of their passports

Several transgender and non-binary people have been trapped in the middle of the war in Ukraine because of their ID cards.

Among other things, they talk about it news channel CBS and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity branch of the news agency Reuters parent company.

The gender identity of a transgender person does not match the gender defined at birth. Non-binary means a person who does not feel like a woman or a man.

Many European rainbow organizations are trying to help stuck minorities in Ukraine through their networks.

The German Alliance for Queer Emergency Aid for Ukraine has contacted some 40 transnational and non-binary people in need of evacuation. The people’s personal data has been passed on to the German government.

“Unfortunately, the current situation in Ukraine does not allow for government-organized evacuations,” a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said.

24 years old transwoman Valeria Kolosova cannot escape from Ukraine because a man is marked as sex in his passport.

That means he will have to stay in Ukraine to fight, as all men between the ages of 18 and 60 have been ordered to register for military service.

On Sunday, Kolosova fled her hometown of Kiev to the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. He would like to cross the border into Poland, but is too scared to try.

“But if I stay in Lviv, there is no hope of a normal life. I do not see my future in Lviv or destroyed Kiev. My hopes are low, ”Kolosova told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a text message.

More than a million people have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its attack on 24 February. Most of the fugitives have been women or children.

Is not statistics on how many Ukrainians belong to sexual and gender minorities. They are often the target of harassment by extremists.

“This is not a very rainbow-friendly country,” says a transgender interviewed by CBS Zi Faámelu.

He said in an article published on Tuesday that he was still in Kiev. He does not believe Ukrainian border guards will allow him to cross the border because his passport is marked with a gender.

According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, strengthening the legal sex in Ukraine requires, among other things, a long-term psychiatric evaluation, which is generally considered too burdensome or humiliating in the trans community.