Mexico issues first birth certificate recognising non-binary gender

Fausto Martinez is the first recipient of the historic official document

Mexico issues its first birth certificate that officially recognises non-binary as a gender (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

An LGBT+ activist has become the first person in Mexico to be issued a birth certificate recognising his gender as non-binary.

Fausto Martinez received the historic birth certificate from the Civil Registry of Guanajuato, a central Mexican state, on 11 February.

The 26-year-old took to Twitter to share the process of obtaining the document, which now lists “NB” (non-binary) as their official sex.

Martinez said they made their first request to be identified as non-binary in September 2021, but it was denied. With the help of human rights NGO Amicus, Martinez received the support of a judge who ruled that they should be given the gender recognition.

In a Twitter thread, they wrote: “I have always said what is not named does not exist. For this reason, the transcendence of this fact, the Mexican state recognises that non-binary people exist and with that we are subject to rights and obligations.”

Martinez said in a further statement to Mexican news agency EFE: “It is a collective achievement of non-binary people in Mexico, that our existence is legally recognised with all that that implies, making us a legal entity with rights and obligations.”

Mexico approved a gender identity law in 2014 to make it easier for transgender people to change their legal gender.

In 2019, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that trans people should be issued a new birth certificate after changing their name and gender, as “everyone has the right to define their own sexual and gender identity”.

The Supreme Court added that denying a trans person recognition of their legal name and gender was a violation of constitutional rights.

Trans people can notify their local civil registry that they wish to charge the gender information on their birth certificates without requiring sex reassignment surgery, therapy or any other type of diagnosis.

However, Martinez’s certificate is the first to be issued for a non-binary person.

They said: “This is a result that occurred in Guanajuato, but what we want is for it to be a simpler procedure than carrying out an injunction trial and everything that entails spending time and money, and we anticipate that it will be like this, that more people are interested in the subject.”