Belgian Government Considering Scrapping Gender on All Identity Cards

In the not too distant future, any mention of gender could completely disappear from Belgian identity cards. A proposal has been laid out in a bill drafted by Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD), Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), and State Secretary for Equal Opportunities Sarah Schlitz (Ecolo).

In 2019, the Constitutional Court partially overturned a transgender law from the year before, because it did not allow ‘non-binary’ persons—that is, people who self-identify as neither male nor female—to register as such.

To appease the concerns of this group, the Belgian government is now considering the deletion of gender on all Belgian identity cards, reports The Brussels Times.

Some technical aspects—such as to what extent removing gender could make travel more difficult and how the new cards are to be rolled out—still need to be resolved, however.

“Once the final technical aspects have been cleared up, we want to proceed to quick implementation,” said Jessika Soors, Schlitz’s spokesperson.