For the Country

Serving in the army is a job of pride for any citizen of any state, so does the state start discriminating against those willing to serve? Animesh Ranjan, reporting from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), glances at some recent developments, in this regard, in one of the superpowers of the modern world.

How do you choose personnel fit for joining an army? Apparently, the United States of America(USA) has found a solution to this issue. They have decided to indefinitely ban the inclusion of transgender in the US military service. The US military, which has between 1000-7000 active service members from the community, need not bear the cost of medical assistance to them now.

This line of reasoning, however, did not go well with a lot of local news agencies which have started to cite a Reuters report on studies conducted regarding the same. These studies claim that the portion of the budget that would be required to cover their medical expenses will be less than 1 percent of their overall military health care budget. This study was commissioned by the then defense secretary Mr. Ashton B. Carter. It claimed that the cost and the effect on the readiness of the army were negligible.

This agenda was a part of a series of reforms that the Obama administration hoped to achieve. As a first step, in 2011, they repealed the “don't ask, don't tell” policy that banned openly gay, lesbians and bisexual people from serving in the military. In 2015, the then vice president, Mr. Biden Junior, called the transgender rights as the " the civil rights issue of our time."

However, the US government under Trump administration discarded this decision. This decision came after a decision to delay the inclusion of new transgender recruits in the army by a period of 6 months, but their policy stated that the community should refrain from serving in the military altogether. The "don't ask, don't tell" required the servicemen to be quiet about their orientation or risk discharge.

However, two federal courts banned this decision by the US government. It is not a new fact that the paths of the parliament and the judiciary system have crossed many times in the US, with the most recent issue being the Muslim ban by Mr. Trump.

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According to a Reuters report published on 30 December 2017, the Pentagon has decided to start enlisting the transgender while it conducts studies to determine how to implement the ban by the Trump administration.

How all of this will come together to form the new US army policy, and how this will affect the next US presidential elections, only time will tell.