Also facing increased demand for its services is the Gender Recognition Panel, which furnishes transgender people with certificates documenting their gender transitions.

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Under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, the UK does not require genital surgery before allowing individuals to obtain official recognition of their new gender.

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Talackova could compete provided "she meets the legal gender recognition requirements of Canada, and the standards established by other international competitions, " the Miss Universe Organization said.

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The draft Gender Recognition Bill was published one year after a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that current UK law breached transsexuals' human rights.

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The bill would also allow same-sex couples to convert a civil partnership to a marriage and enable married transsexual people to gain legal recognition in their acquired gender without having to end their marriage.

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It then feeds data into facial-recognition software, and would log age, gender and race of the people it sees.

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So the government is anticipating a "noticeable increase" in the panel's workload as "those who may have changed gender some years ago but decided not to apply for legal recognition, since they wished to remain in their existing marriage", adapt to the change in the law.

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