update/videoOutgoing minister Ingrid van Engelshoven (Emancipation) this afternoon apologized on behalf of the cabinet for the old transgender law.
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Domestic editors
Latest update:
18:36
That law stipulated that a gender change in the passport was only possible after a physical transition, in which people also had to sterilize themselves. The law was in effect from 1985 to 2014.
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None of you should have gone through what you went through
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‘Dehumanizing’, is how the outgoing minister calls the requirements in the transgender law. “For decades, there have been people who have undergone medical treatment that they did not want at all. But they knew there was no other option,” says Van Engelshoven. “Others have just been waiting for this law. They have been forced to postpone becoming themselves. For years.”
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Van Engelshoven apologized during a meeting in the Ridderzaal, where transgender and intersex people also talked about the impact of the law on their lives and what consequences they have experienced. “None of you should have gone through what you went through. And I am deeply sorry that it was so,” Van Engelshoven said to those present.
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great injustice
People who have been harmed by the law can claim compensation of 5000 euros per person. “We have been wronged greatly,” says Willemijn van Kempen, who took the initiative in 2019 to ask the state for apologies, recognition and compensation for the damage the law has caused in many lives.
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The Transgender and Intersex collective is happy that there is an arrangement, but finds the compensation too low. In Sweden, where there were no public apologies but a compensation, the amount was more than four times higher.
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Yet the collective sees great value in the public apology. “The government has structurally disadvantaged and damaged transgender and intersex people for almost thirty years. It is important that she now apologizes for that,’ says van Kempen.
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According to her, this is also the moment when the government will better protect rights. “For example, by banning non-medically necessary operations on intersex children, so that they can decide later whether they want surgery. But also by better recognizing non-binary identities legally, and by making the law more inclusive for trans parenting.”
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