Colombia’s Expanded Gender Labels Raise Questions About Privacy, Safety, and Policy
As Colombia prepares to let citizens mark “trans” and “non-binary” on ID cards, we should pause. In a country with lethal anti‑LGBTIQ+ violence and fragile institutions, symbolic recognition can backfire if it outpaces protection on the streets and in bureaucracy.
Democracy, Paperwork, and Unintended Consequences
The announcement sounded, at first hearing, like progress. The Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil reported that Colombians will now be able to select “trans” and “no binario” in the “sex” field of their identity documents. The change will apply to cédulas, civil registries and youth identity cards, and, as registrador Hernán Penagos explained in Bogotá, it will be rolled out across more than 1,200 integrated service stations throughout the country.
For Penagos, this is “a key step” toward recognizing and guaranteeing the right to identification for people with diverse gender identities, and “a clear example of the democracy that Colombia needs.” Looking ahead to the 2026 elections, he insisted that the institution is working so that everyone can exercise political rights without discrimination. The Registraduría recalled that since 2022 it has organized 17 special identification drives for the LGBTIQ+ community, delivering more than 750 documents in those jornadas alone.
None of this emerges in a vacuum. In 2024, at least 164 people were killed in Colombia for reasons related to sexual orientation or gender identity, a 3.8 % increase over 2023, according to Caribe Afirmativo. Trans women were the most affected group, making up 18 % of victims of homicidal violence. Those numbers are not abstractions; they are names, faces, neighborhoods. When the state says it wants to recognize people who are at such high risk, the impulse seems not only legitimate but urgent.
And yet, writing from a Latin American perspective marked by both rights struggles and institutional weakness, I cannot help feeling uneasy. I do not question the dignity or existence of trans and non‑binary Colombians. I question whether turning the “sex” box of an ID card into a label such as “trans” or “non‑binary” is the wisest way to protect them, especially in a country where that same rectangle of plastic must be shown to police, public officials, employers and strangers in contexts often soaked with prejudice.
Research published in the Latin American Research Review has shown that in our region, “rights by decree” — changes enacted in forms and laws without deep institutional reform — often produce sharp backlash, particularly when they touch symbolic terrain like gender and family. A measure that looks simple inside a press conference can become something very different at a police checkpoint in a small town, or in the waiting room of an overcrowded public hospital.
Violence That No Document Field Can Fix
If we take seriously the figure of 164 killings in a year, and the fact that trans women are disproportionately targeted, then the first obligation is to ask what actually reduces that violence. Studies in the International Journal of Transgender Health point out that the risk faced by trans people is shaped by poverty, policing practices, lack of family acceptance and exposure to criminal groups far more than by what their documents say. Identity recognition can support dignity, but it does not in itself dismantle the structures that produce attacks.
In that light, we have to ask what happens when “trans” or “non‑binary” appears in the sex field. On a practical level, we are mixing different kinds of information. Sex, as used by the state, has historically served as a biological category for health statistics, demographic planning, even prison assignment. Trans and non‑binary are identity categories that cut across sex. Confusing the two in a single field may satisfy a political demand today, but it risks muddling data that are crucial for future policy, including policies that could benefit the very communities meant to be recognized.
More worrying still is the issue of forced disclosure. Many trans and non‑binary people live in a delicate balance, “out” in some spaces, cautious in others, carefully reading each room before revealing themselves. An identity document that shouts “trans” in the sex box removes that choice. Every interaction with a police officer, a border agent, a school administrator or a clinic receptionist becomes an involuntary coming‑out, backed by the force of the state. In a country where deaths linked to gender identity are rising, that is not a minor design detail; it is a potential risk factor.
The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies has argued that in societies marked by inequality and political polarization, highly visible symbolic measures can become lightning rods, attracting resentment that then spills over onto the most vulnerable. In Colombia, where conservative and progressive forces fight over every inch of cultural ground, putting “trans” and “non‑binary” directly onto the national ID could easily be weaponized by those who already seek to demonize gender diversity. The people who will have to carry that risk in their pockets are not the officials in Bogotá, but young trans women on the outskirts of Barranquilla, non‑binary teenagers in Valle del Cauca, migrants crossing militarized borders.
A Slower, Sturdier Path to Dignity In Colombia
To say this measure worries me is not to deny the suffering it seeks to address. On the contrary: the figures from Caribe Afirmativo should haunt us. They demand action. But action is not the same as speed, and symbolism is not the same as security. If the goal is that every person in Colombia can “exercise political rights without discrimination,” as Hernán Penagos put it, then the priority ought to be strengthening mechanisms that protect people regardless of what a small box on their card says.
That means better training for police and public servants, so that discrimination actually has consequences. It means resourcing investigations of hate‑motivated killings, so that the 164 victims of 2024 are not just numbers in a report. It means ensuring that trans and non‑binary people can access health, education and employment without being humiliated or turned away at the door. None of those changes require placing “trans” or “non‑binary” in the sex field; all of them require political will and budget.
From a Latin American historical lens, we have seen many times how our states rush to adopt global progressive language while leaving intact the structures that produce death and exclusion. The risk today is that Colombia, eager to present itself as a rights‑protecting democracy, settles for an easy gesture instead of the harder, slower work of transforming everyday life.
Respectfully, then, we stand against this specific step: not against trans or non‑binary Colombians, whose safety and dignity are non‑negotiable, but against the idea that exposing their identities on an all‑purpose document is the right way to honor them. Let us demand more than a new option in a drop‑down menu. Let us demand a country where no one fears showing any ID, because the person reading it has finally learned that every life, whatever its gender story, deserves protection long before it deserves a label.
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