By Sonia Elks
LONDON, March 31 (Openly) - On the 10th International Day of Transgender Visibility, here are 10 stories from the last year about an estimated 25 million people whose gender identity does not match their birth sex:
1. The World Health Organization stopped classifying trans people as having a mental illness in a change hailed as a major breakthrough by activists.
2. A global backlash against gay and trans conversion therapy gathered pace, with New Zealand, Australia and Britain all considering new laws against the practice
3. A nine-year-old girl in Ecuador won a court battle to get an official gender change, in a ruling that could set a precedent for other trans youth.
4. In Chile, a law was passed allowing anyone over age 14 to legally change their name and gender marker in official records.
5. Portugal passed new legislation, allowing people to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis.
6. Rights campaigners suffered a setback in Japan, where the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring that trans people undergo sterilisation to legally change their gender.
7. Donald Trump moved to bar many trans people from the military on the grounds they impose "tremendous medical costs and disruption", despite efforts by LGBT+ groups to block the policy.
8. Trans people suffered a year of "horrifying" violence, with at least 369 killed worldwide since the last International Day of Transgender Visibility, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project.
9. In Thailand, Pauline Ngarmpring became the first trans person to stand for prime minister, with rights groups saying she was helping challenge conservative ideas about gender.
10. Growing calls for trans visibility in popular culture saw Scarlett Johansson pull out of a role playing a trans man as activists called for more trans actors on screen. (Reporting by Sonia Elks @soniaelks; Additional reporting by Lucy Crayton; Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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