The UK government’s growing hostility toward trans and intersex people just earned it a chilling label — a “red flag” warning from a genocide prevention group. The Lemkin Institute, known for identifying early signs of mass atrocities, has condemned the country’s recent legal rulings and policies, saying they amount to a systematic campaign to erase trans identities and deny basic human dignity.
At the center of the storm is the UK Supreme Court’s controversial ruling from April, which declared that the legal definition of “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refers strictly to “biological sex.” That decision, now championed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who said he’s “really pleased” by the outcome — has emboldened a series of anti-trans measures across British institutions. These include guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that encourages banning trans individuals from gender-appropriate facilities and undermines their rights to privacy.
The Lemkin Institute didn’t hold back in its assessment. In a searing statement, it warned that the UK is exhibiting “evidence of genocidal intent and actions” against trans and intersex communities. “We see a broader process of erasure,” the group wrote, citing an atmosphere poisoned by a “media narrative that has fuelled hostility to and debate about the humanity of trans and intersex people.”
Retired High Court judge Dr. Victoria McCloud, the UK’s only openly trans judge, urged the Institute to step in. She posted that trans Brits face an increasingly brutal environment: “We in the UK face bathroom bans, violence, abuse, deliberate social exclusion, strip searches of trans women by male police, and calls to photograph us in toilets and other spaces.”
Rights Rolled Back and Identities Denied
The Lemkin Institute slammed the EHRC’s leadership, particularly chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner, who publicly questioned whether trans people have a “right to privacy.” Such statements, the group argues, violate the European Convention on Human Rights — which the UK is still bound to follow — and show the EHRC’s transformation into what it calls “a lobby group for erasing the rights of intersex and trans people.”
One especially worrying legislative attempt came in May, when a proposed amendment to the UK’s Data Bill sought to require all public data collection to be based on sex assigned at birth — not current gender markers. Though the amendment failed, the government’s continued reliance on the Sullivan Review, which is steeped in gender-critical ideology, keeps the threat alive.
The Lemkin Institute connected all of this to what it identifies as a textbook warning sign in genocide prevention: the “Denial and/or Prevention of Identity,” a tactic aimed not at immediate violence, but long-term cultural annihilation. “Genocide does not only manifest in the killing of an entire group,” it warned. “In the case of trans and intersex people, genocide is often perpetrated by making it impossible for individuals to exist as their true selves.”
Erasure in Plain Sight
This isn’t just about politics — it’s about survival. Trans and intersex people in the UK are facing a creeping campaign of exclusion, surveillance, and dehumanization. This “hostile environment,” as the Lemkin Institute calls it, isn’t just accidental. It’s deliberate, systematic, and dangerous.
By identifying these patterns early, the Lemkin Institute is doing what too many governments and global leaders often fail to do: listen to the lived realities of trans people. The community has long warned that these policies are not isolated acts, but part of a calculated ideology to marginalize them out of public life. Whether disguised as “feminist” dogma or right-wing panic, the outcome is the same — a world where trans people are treated as legal anomalies, not human beings.
The LGBTQ community, especially trans and intersex people, deserve global solidarity now more than ever. What’s happening in the UK may not look like genocide in the traditional sense, but its harm is no less real. Erasure starts with policy — and too often ends in violence.