Bodies of citizens: Can a non-binary body be the subject of human rights?

This dissertation aims to present a critical assessment on the question of a subjects of human rights by focusing non-binary bodies, specifically transgender and intersex bodies, which do not fit into gendered citizenship categories and investigates how the sovereign makes those non-binary bodies legally absent by categorizing citizenship only in two categories: male and female. By theoretically scrutinising the tension between the universality claim of human rights and the question of the subject of human rights, the dissertation first argues that the subject of human rights is not the human beings but the citizens. Accordingly, locating who are the beneficiaries of citizenship status, it investigates the role of gender and sexuality in identifying and classifying citizens. Determining the citizenship status belongs only to two types of citizens, namely female and male citizens, it argues that non-binaries who do not fit into these given citizenship categories or whose gender is not legally recognized are excluded from citizenship status therefore, from the subject of human rights. The dissertation also analysis the legal standards and practices on legal gender recognition. While it examines the normative framework provided by international and regional human rights law on the legal recognition of gender and various state practices on legal recognition of gender, it simultaneously reveals that state practices not only diverge dramatically from international human rights standards, but also radically diverge from each other. Lastly, drawing on theoretical frameworks by Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Michel Foucault, it offers the reader a novel theoretical path to follow on the relationship between legal recognition of gender, right to have rights and the subject of human rights, and argues that the sovereign "who decides the exception" does also decide that only certain bodies come to be recognized as a person thus, unrecognized bodies are excluded from having right to have rights and subject of human rights. Accordingly, the dissertation concludes that citizenship is not the only requirement for being the subject of human rights: a national can be still 'abandoned in the bare life' by the sovereign decision since the question of the subject of human rights goes beyond citizenship, indeed, it is a question of gendered citizenship. Keywords: Universality of human rights, the subject of human rights, citizenship, legal recognition of gender, sovereign decision, right to have rights, biopower, bare life, gendered citizenship.