Health Minister Bent Høie with new law. Photo: Vidar Ruud / NTB scanpix A total of 190 people have applied to change their legal gender in Norway in the month since a new law came into force allowing them to do so without gender reassignment surgery.

Norway on July 1 brought in one of the world’s most liberal laws for transgender people, allowing citizens to change their legal gender without surgery or even securing the approval of a medical professional.

“This shows that the right to change legal gender was eagerly awaited, and that many have been waiting for this opportunity,” Lisbeth Normann, a State Secretary in the Ministry of Health, told Norwegian newswire NTB. “It is about the right to be who you are. When we introduced this, Norway went from the rearguard to the vanguard when it comes to human rights.”

“Of the 190, there are many who have been waiting a very long time, some have been waiting their whole lives,” she said.

Until the law came into effect on July 1, people wishing to change gender in Norway had get a medical diagnosis, medical treatment and then undergo gender reassignment surgery which many argued amounted to compulsory sterilisation.