Every year, Transgender Europe publishes the Trans Rights Map. This report shows how European countries are doing concerning human rights of transgender people. This shows a worrying trend for the Netherlands: the human rights of transgender people are stagnating.

Every year since 2013, Transgender Europe has published the Trans Rights Map: Human Rights Situation of Trans People in Europe and Central Asia. In this annual overview, Transgender Europe takes stock of the human rights situation of transgender people in 49 European countries and five Central Asian countries. The results are published on the Trans Rights Map website.

Human rights Dutch transgender people at 53%

With 17 of the 32 subjects The Netherlands score a meager 53.1%. This means we lose for the fifth year in a row and drop to 14th place, behind countries such as Belgium (5th place), Greece (9th place) and Slovenia (13th place). As a prosperous Western country that is still convinced of its own tolerance, we should be ashamed of this poor result!

The Netherlands is even explicitly mentioned in the news item about the Trans Rights Map: “There was also concerning stagnation in many countries and policy areas, such as The Netherlands’ failed LGR reform.” This refers to the continuous postponing of the revision of the 2014 ’transgender law’.

The Trans Rights Map research contains six main categories: Legal Gender Recognition (14 topics), Asylum (3 topics), Hate Speech/Crime (3 topics), Non-Discrimination (8 topics), Health (2 topics) and Family (2 subjects). Principle 17 looked at these main categories separately to see how the Netherlands are doing.

Asylum rights decrease

Until a few years ago, the Netherlands did perfectly with the asylum rights of transgender people! But in 2022 we dropped to 50% and nothing has changed since then…

This year’s seemingly (!) increase is due to the addition of a new indicator to the assessment: access to the right to legal gender recognition for refugees. In the Netherlands, asylum seekers can have their legal gender changed – on paper. But the complexity of the regulations unfortunately makes reality difficult, are the signals from practice.

Legal gender recognition & non-discrimination rights stagnate

The legal gender recognition rights of transgender people have remained below 60% for years.
Here too, this year’s slight increase is due to the addition of a new indicator. Because of the active opposition to the human rights of transgender people in some European countries, the extremely basic indicator ‘ban on legal gender recognition’ has been added.

In 2019, the Netherlands the non-discrimination rights for transgender people increased significantly. But since then these rights remained stuck at 87.5%. Not a bad result in itself, but something as fundamental as human rights should be really properly regulated!

Family rights, hate speech/crime rights & health rights are absent

Transgender people in the Netherlands still have no human rights for three main categories. This is a very sad outcome that needs to change as soon as possible.

Transgender people have no family rights in the Netherlands. This means that parental recognition is not possible in the Netherlands for transgender and non-binary people. This has not changed since 2018. Countries such as Finland, Belgium and Slovenia can be an example for us.

The hate speech/crime rights are also absent for transgender people. This means, among other things, that there is no legislation in the Netherlands against hate speech/crime against transgender people. The Netherlands scores equal to countries such as Italy, Poland, Turkey and Russia. Let’s go on a working visit to Denmark or Luxembourg!

Finally, transgender people have no health rights. This means that transgender people still need a psychiatric diagnosis to access somatic health care. Also, ‘conversion therapies’ are still not prohibited by law. Spain is the only country that is doing well, although we can also learn a lot from countries such as Norway, Portugal and Greece.

Many transgender people face this lack of health rights on a daily basis. Because a psychiatric diagnosis as a condition for somatic health care is unheard of! Everyone would find it absurd if you first had to obtain a psychiatric diagnosis to treat heart disease or diabetes. And especially if you have to wait about 5.5 years for that.
In addition, the waiting times for an intake at the largest gender team have further increased to 3 years and 11 months for adults and 2.5 years for adolescents (*). After the intake, you will be placed on the next waiting list for the (forced) psychiatric assessment of 1.5 years for adults and 12 months for adolescents. This means that the waiting times are even longer than earlier this year.

(*) Current waiting times for transgender health care at the Amsterdam UMC, consulted on 9 June 2024.

Conclusion

The Trans Rights Map of Transgender Europe clearly shows that the human rights situation of transgender people in the Netherlands has not changed. The stagnation of these fundamental rights is a worrying development.

Human rights in three of the six main categories are entirely absent in the Netherlands. Dutch transgender people therefore have no family rights, no rights regarding hate speech/crime and no health rights. That is a shocking result. The other three main categories remain at 57.1% (legal gender recognition), 67.1% (asylum rights) and 87.5% (rights surrounding non-discrimination). This is a very depressing conclusion about the human rights situation of transgender people in the Netherlands.

Principle 17, together with many others, continues to call on our government to improve the human rights of transgender people in the Netherlands!