Eliana Rubashkyn

She remained stateless until 3 April 2018, when she was granted with New Zealand citizenship based on her exceptional circumstances

After six years of statelessness in April 2018, the government of New Zealand on behalf of the Ministry of Internal Affairs granted the New Zealand citizenship based on her exceptional and unique circumstances.

On 2 June 2015, Rubashkyn was married in New Zealand to an Israeli man named Itamar but was forced to use her birth name of Luis Alexander on the marriage registration rather than Eliana.

A CNN story about her struggle and a short documentary about her life in Hong Kong won a GLAAD Media Award in May 2015.

In May 2014, New Zealand accepted Rubashkyn as a refugee and granted her asylum, extending a universal recognition of her gender. Her case was the first in the world in which the gender identity of a person was recognised internationally.

On 16 December 2013, the UN passed a resolution recognising Rubashkyn as woman under the UNHCR refugee system. She became the first gender diverse person recognised as a woman in China or Hong Kong without having undergone a sex reassignment surgery.

Rubashkyn learned many languages fluently in the refugee centers she lived during 2012, 2013 and 2014.

In 2013, the UN sought another country to resettle Eliana because of the lack of protections for LGBT people and refugees in Hong Kong. She refused to contact her home embassy to prevent deportation because of the lack of diplomatic assistance they offered and Eliana became stateless de facto from 30 October 2012. Eliana's position as a refugee limited the contact she could have with authorities from the governments of Colombia.

In 2011 Rubashkyn obtained her degree in pharmacy and chemistry at the National University of Colombia., after studying molecular biology in the University of Granada she was granted a scholarship to develop postgraduate studies in public health at the Taipei Medical University, and started at the same time her gender transition in Taiwan.

Eliana Rubashkyn (born 25 June 1988) is a Colombian–born, former stateless, New Zealander, known internationally for being the first birth-assigned male intersex person legally recognised as a woman with a U.N. resolution under the international refugee statute. Rubashkyn is a pharmacist, chemist and polyglot; Eliana currently works as a nicotine harm reduction scientist and develops campaigns of support addressed to LGBTI asylum seekers, refugees and intersex persons in New Zealand.

Rubashkyn was born in Colombia to a Ukrainian Jewish mother who had moved there in the 1970s. She was assigned and raised male but born with an intersex condition known as Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

Rubashkyn's gender was recognised under the United Nations' 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Rubashkyn's case attracted international media and legal attention after her mistreatment following her detention at Hong Kong International Airport because of the lack of congruence between her gender identity and her passport photo, resulting in several years of statelessness in Hong Kong, and inhumane reclusion into several refuge centers across Yuen Long.

With the help of Amnesty International and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she was granted refugee status. However, because Hong Kong is not a signatory of the 1951 refugee convention, it did not recognise her as a refugee and sought to deport her to Colombia.