Kenya will become the first country in Africa to collect data on intersex people in its national population census, in a major victory for rights activists.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has added the intersex as the third gender in the upcoming national census to be conducted in 27 days.
Kenyans will be given the option to identify themselves as either male, female or intersex
According to KNBS, the inclusion of a third gender was a recommendation from the task force of Intersex Persons Society of Kenya (IPSK).
“Getting information about intersex people in the census will help people understand the challenges we go through,” Ryan Muiruri, founder of the Intersex Persons Society of Kenya (IPSK), said.
Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, “do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies”.
There are thought to be more than 700,000 of them out of a general population of 49 million.
As recently reported by The Sauce, the 2019 census will be the first to make use of technology. It will be a paperless process and will use mobile technology for Cartographic Mapping as well as Enumeration.
