MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. Changing your gender on passports or any other documents should be prohibited by law in Russia, the country’s Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko said in an interview with TASS, as he described this as one of the first steps toward reinforcing family values in Russian legislation.

"Changing the gender on passports or other documents should be prohibited by law. The option of changing your gender was enshrined in Russian law in 1997. Back then, various international institutions, including the World Health Organization, set the tone in establishing certain norms," the minister said.

At present, a medical certificate on gender reassignment is required to amend a passport or any other document, Chuichenko said. "Meanwhile, a citizen does not need to undergo a sex change operation to obtain a gender reassignment certificate," he added, citing statistics under which more than 2,700 such certificates were issued between 2018 and 2022. Based on those certificates, some 190 marriages were registered in the country.

"Therefore, we can see how a person who changed his or her gender on his or her passport can get married or adopt children without any physiological changes whatsoever. <…> We come across not just legal collisions associated with gender reassignment, but mostly discrepancies between the existing conceptual documents and constitutional priorities," the minister explained. According to him, the Russian Justice Ministry will soon embark on work to amend the law on the civil status act.

"This will make it possible to prevent citizens from having their gender reassigned by simply amending his or her papers in our country," Chuichenko concluded.