Anger mounts over birth certificate law
Trans and intersex Kiwis will have to wait for a law change making it easier to amend incorrect sex details listed on their birth certificates.
Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin recently said because of Covid19, there would likely be no progress on a bill which would allow people to make the change more easily.
Currently, Kiwis who want to amend their birth certificate have to involve the Family Court, and present medical evidence of a physical transition.
Dr Jaimie Veale, a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato, is trans and says the current process is dehumanising.
‘‘I personally haven’t gone through this medical and Family Court process to change my birth certificate, like the 83 per cent of other trans people in New Zealand,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s time-consuming, costly, and dehumanising for me to have . . . first a health professional assess whether I’m trans or not and then have a Family Court judge assess that. I also think it’s a waste of scarce public resources.’’
However, Veale said she recognised that she was privileged enough to live a stable life, where she didn’t have to rely on her birth certificate for anything meaningful at the moment.
The bill that would make the process easier – the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill – was originally deferred in 2019.
The change would see a selfdeclaration model for sex being used, bringing birth certificates into line with drivers’ licences and passports.
A working group was previously formed to provide advice to Martin on improvements to the current Family Court process, which included confi
dential interviews with trans and intersex people. The interviews were organised with the help of Kiwi rainbow organisations.
But now those organisations feel betrayed, as the findings of the working group have not even been publicly released, and progress on updating current laws looks unlikely to happen this election term.
‘‘People told us they gave up their time to be interviewed because they wanted to share the barriers they had faced, so that the process would improve for other Pasifika people in the future,’’ said Phylesha Brown-Acton, director of queer organisation F’INE.
Tabby Besley, managing director of
InsideOUT, said progress on the bill, and the working group’s findings, were needed urgently.
Qtopia spokesperson Jennifer Shields said the current process involving the court system created a barrier to access for trans people, especially trans youth.
Joey Macdonald, training lead for Te Nga¯kau Kahukura, agreed, saying it was a human rights issue.
‘‘Our current law presents unacceptable barriers to trans and intersex young people amending their official documents to match their identity.’’
A recent health survey, Counting Ourselves, found New Zealand’s trans communities face serious mental health inequities versus the general population.
That poll also revealed that 83 per cent of survey participants had the incorrect gender listed on their birth certificate.
The most common reason why trans Kiwis didn’t have identification documents with the correct marker was because they could only choose male or female.
Recent research from Canada has found trans people who had identification documents changed to an appropriate sex designation were three times less likely to have attempted suicide.
Martin said she did not want to make any comment on the matter.