Refugee Travel Documents
This page explains how transgender refugees in Aotearoa can apply for a Refugee Travel Document to travel overseas—especially for gender-affirming care like SRS or FFS—and how to transfer their visa to the new document, with step-by-step guidance based on lived experience.
The Department of Internal Affairs can provide the refugee with a travel document to travel overseas if they need. The trans refugee may need that to travel overseas , to undergo the Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) and Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS), if needed. To get on your travel document you would need to download and fill the form from the internal affair department: You can find the form here.
How to get your travel documents
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You start filling the form with your personal details in the pages 1 and 2. In the page 3 you need to write the reason of why you need to obtain the travel document and you cannot have a passport. In the trans refugee case the passport shows the old photo, the old name and the old gender which isn’t represent your new identity. Consequently we need a travel document that represents our new name, gender and the recent photo. You would need to show that why you need to leave NZ in the page 6 and which country you would need to travel to as well as for how long time you would need to stay oversea well.
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You would need to write a statutory of declaration about your gender in the page 4. This might be sort of this thing: “I would like to identify as a female in my passport, I identified as a female for past XX years, I was born as a male”
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In the page 7 you would need to have a witness who confirms that you are the same person in the new photo that you have provided with you and all the information is belonged to you. Usually, this witness should know you for the past one year, but that might be flexible to six months.
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You would need to pay $105 for processing your case - Naming NZ may be able to assist with funding this.
After you finish all these requirement you would need up to 10 working days to get your travel document, if you are approved from the internal affair department.
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The next step to travel oversea is to transfer the visa from your old passport/travel document to the new one that you obtained from the internal affair department. You would need to fill the form from the NZ immigration website:
You can find the form here.
In case of transferring the visa you wouldn’t need any of the previous three steps and you need to pay a fee of $110. This might take about 5 days to get your travel document with the new visa transferred onto it.