Hombres Trans Panamá is a trans-led organization advancing human rights, dignity, and opportunity for trans and gender diverse people across the country.
Today, their work spans both national and regional levels, including collaborations with REDCAHT+, a network of trans men across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Through these partnerships, they contribute to broader movements advancing trans rights in the region. Their five key areas of work include access to employment, comprehensive healthcare, community empowerment, legal recognition, and strategic international litigation.
What do they do for trans and gender diverse communities?
Hombres Trans Panamá works to address everyday barriers faced by trans communities.
Their work focuses on:
- Expanding access to employment through inclusive job initiatives
- Improving access to comprehensive, respectful healthcare
- Supporting legal gender recognition processes
- Strengthening community leadership and participation
- Advancing human rights through national and international advocacy
These efforts respond directly to the realities many trans people face, including discrimination, limited access to services, and exclusion from decision-making spaces.
Hombres Trans Panamá made history!
With GATE’s financial and technical support, Hombres Trans Panamá made history in submitting the first trans-led report to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review in Panama.
In 2025, Hombres Trans Panamá received a grant from GATE to support their submission to the 4th cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, in collaboration with the Panamanian Coalition, composed of Asociación Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panamá (AHMNP), Fundación CONVIVE Panamá, Asociación Wigudun Galu, Salva el Grillo, and Asociación Trans Diversa (ATD). The grant supported a series of key activities, including:
- Virtual training workshops on UN human rights mechanisms and report writing.
- Comprehensive desk research to gather and synthesize critical information informing the submission.
- Participatory consultations with trans organizations across the country, ensuring inclusive and community-driven input into the report.
- Consolidating findings into a coordinated and evidence-based advocacy document.
Why is this important?
The UPR report highlights how Panama continues to systematically fail to protect the rights of trans and gender diverse people. It documents structural exclusion through discriminatory legal frameworks, the lack of self-determined legal gender recognition, the absence of hate crime legislation, and ongoing impunity for violence. It also shows how trans communities are disproportionately affected by police abuse, social violence, and persistent barriers in access to health, education, and employment.
This submission resulted in a significant number of LGBTI-specific recommendations from Member States: of 24 recommendations, 5 were accepted and 19 noted.
As a result, this advocacy helped push the government to explicitly address trans, gender diverse, and broader LGBTI rights during the UPR session and in its National Report. Additionally, it also included concrete references to legal gender recognition processes, including 118 name and sex correction procedures managed by the Electoral Tribunal, as well as reaffirmations of access to public and private health services free from discrimination for LGBTIQ+ persons, people living with HIV, and sex workers.
When we went to the United Nations, I didn’t just sit down to talk about my country… I have to talk about the region, because it’s not just about myself and trans men in Panama… there are also other trans men who are going through the same thing in their regions.
Nicolai Wald – Hombres Trans Panamá President
How are Hombres Trans Panamá responding to current challenges?
Hombres Trans Panamá are responding to these challenges through targeted, community-led initiatives. These include employment fairs specifically designed for trans people, creating safe spaces to engage with the private sector and promote more inclusive hiring practices, and supporting trans individuals in the process of legal name and gender recognition.
They have also organized comprehensive health fairs offering a range of services, including general medicine, trans-specific healthcare, gynecology, blood pressure and glucose monitoring, psychological support, nursing services, and sexual and reproductive health prevention.
Through leadership development and training, trans individuals have been supported to actively participate in decision-making spaces and in advocacy.
This year also presents new opportunities for their international visibility, with planned participation in the 2026 human rights advocacy week at the United Nations in Geneva, as well as the 56th Regular Session of the OAS General Assembly in Panama, where both the challenges and progress of trans communities will be presented.
What will the future look like?
2025 was a particularly difficult year for Hombres Trans Panamá, as funding cuts resulted in the suspension of active projects and the loss of part of the team that supported its work. Even so, they continued to hold the line, adapting, persisting, and staying close to their community through collective effort.
This experience further deepened their commitment to advancing a comprehensive rights agenda for trans people in Panama. Going forward, Hombres Trans Panamá will continue building strategic alliances, pushing for legal gender recognition, and expanding work in health, employment, and leadership development.