The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has sentenced Romania for violating the right to private life after the Romanian authorities had refused to recognize the change of gender identity of two persons on the ground that they had not undergone a sex-change surgery.
The two persons, Romanians citizens, aged 44 and 38 and being registered in the civil registry as being females, reclaimed that the court had rejected their requests to change their civil status on the ground that they had not presented a proof of a sex-change operation.
ECHR argued that the two female applicants had been in a situation of being “vulnerable, anxious and humiliated”, which “doesn’t comply with the fair balance between the general interest and the personal interest of the persons in question”.
So, the Romanian state must pay a fine of EUR 7,500 “as emotional distress” for each of the two plaintiffs, as well as other EUR 1,153 as “material compensations” for one of the two women, who underwent two sex-changed surgeries.