2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) Citizenship for trans individuals can be considered ineffective when their posttransition personal identity does not correspond with pre-transition legal identity. In some instances, reactions to hormone treatment can accentuate the physical disparity. Likewise, some intersex individuals who are born with characteristics of both sexes may be particularly reactive to hormones, resulting in dramatic changes in physical appearance such that — even without surgery — they may no longer correspond physically to their pre-hormone appearance. This was the case for Eliana Rubashkyn, whose story received high levels of press coverage after she was detained in Hong Kong International Airport. 78 Moreover, she became the first birth-assigned male intersex person to be legally recognised as a woman through a UN resolution under the international refugee statute. Originally from Colombia, Eliana was assigned as male despite being born as a variant of intersex usually raised as female. After being stabbed by violent militia groups engaging in social cleansing practices back in Colombia, Eliana received a scholarship to study in Taiwan. There, she says, ‘I finally felt safe to explore my self-identity. I met a doctor who could help me with my intersex condition and realising my gender expression’. 79 When she began treatment, the hormones reacted aggressively with her body, resulting in a striking transformation in Eliana’s physical appearance. Her university in Taiwan required her to update her Colombian passport identification picture to more accurately resemble her current appearance. She therefore travelled to Hong Kong in order to visit the Colombian embassy yet on arrival at the airport, Eliana reports, ‘officials did not accept my identification and I was issued with a deportation notice’. The Colombian authorities refused to acknowledge and assist her. In order to change her name and gender on documents, Eliana would need to return to Colombia, but cannot re-enter Colombia because the country does not recognise anything about her current existence except her fingerprints. Also, while Colombia permits dual citizenship, it is illegal for a Colombian to enter the country on a non-Colombian passport, making it impossible for Eliana ever to update her documents once outside the country. Unable to benefit from her citizenship due to the incongruence between her physical appearance and image on legal identity documents, Eliana opted to renounce her citizenship entirely in order to avoid deportation to Colombia, becoming officially stateless. ‘For me’, she says, statelessness was initially a protection mechanism as I was desperate not to return to the dangers I had faced in Colombia, particularly after media had highlighted the links to the militia groups who had already targeted me in reporting on my situation in Hong Kong. 80 Having succeeded in avoiding deportation, Eliana was mistreated while stranded in Hong Kong. As well as suffering physical abuse at medical facilities, authorities housed her alone in a shipping container: ‘this shows on many levels that they didn’t know where to put me … with the men or the women? ... They 78 79 80 ‘Misunderstood and Stateless in Hong Kong: A Transgender [sic] Woman's Nightmare’, CNN (online, 5 September 2014) <https://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/05/world/transgender-asylumhong-kong/>. The article incorrectly identifies Eliana as a transgender woman, while she identifies as an intersex woman. Interview with Eliana Rubashkyn (Thomas McGee, 8 January 2020). Interviewee consented to have her name known. ibid. 79