ABSTRACT
This chapter critically analyses ND v Attorney General and the Registrar of National Registration, Botswana High Court. The analysis is conducted with a view to removing barriers to legal gender recognition for transgender persons in Botswana. It uses critical feminist theory and identity-based critiques of dominant cultural practices to contest the objectivity of the judgment and demonstrate how it reinforces exclusionary and hierarchical norms.
The chapter argues that the Court not only pathologized gender diversity but made legal recognition conditional on medical interventions. This is notwithstanding a restrictive public health environment that precludes gender affirming treatment and which makes access to such services income-based. The paper proposes more balanced approaches to legal gender recognition, in tandem with international standards and responsive to the lived experiences of transgender persons in Botswana.
