Following the global trend, and responding to the wave of terrorism since the start of the twenty-first century, there has been an increased focus by the state agencies in Pakistan to make sure that every citizen has a legal ID. This politico-legal environment has seen the khawaja sira—who traditionally did not have legal IDs—increasingly becoming concerned about having a legal ID. As mentioned in Chapter 5, a survey by the SWD found that only 16 per cent of the khawaja sira had legal IDs by 2019.1 While there were multiple factors due to which a very low percentage of khawaja sira had a legal ID, a major reason was that they seldom needed a formal ID in their routine lives. Shunned from formal institutions and workplaces, acquiring a legal ID rarely used to be a priority for them.

Owing to the mushrooming security checkpoints in all major urban centres of Pakistan and overall increased state surveillance, getting the legal ID has gradually become a major concern for the khawaja sira in recent years. For example, Rania, a khawaja sira rights advocate, mentioned that she had never felt the need to have a legal ID for anything until recently. However, due to the heightened security situation in Pakistan, she felt the obligation to acquire a legal ID. Similarly, another khawaja sira whose ID had been stolen a while back said that she never thought of applying for a new ID until recently as ‘one can't live without having a legal ID anymore’. Many other khawaja sira also reported increasingly being asked to prove their (legal and sexual) identity at security checkpoints by the police. Another factor contributing to the increased importance of legal IDs was the introduction of the legal third gender category by the government. As noted in the previous chapter, for some khawaja sira the legal ID represented a document that legitimized their unique identity.

While having a legal ID had become increasingly important for their everyday lives, at the time of my fieldwork most khawaja sira found it difficult to acquire it due to lack of cooperation by family members and harassment by cis-gender applicants at the frontline offices of NADRA.