COC Netherlands against minister: come up with a multi-parent law this year

COC Netherlands wants Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) to present a multi-parent law this year. The interest group of the LGBTI community advocates this in a letter to the new minister, also on behalf of four other organizations.

The multi-parent law should ensure that children can have several legal parents and not a maximum of two, as is currently the case. This law is part of COC's Rainbow Agreement, which the new cabinet intends to implement in accordance with the coalition agreement.

"Children have the right to a good legal relationship with all their parents, whether there are one, two, three or four," says COC chairman Astrid Oosenbrug. "There is a wonderful opportunity for Minister Weerwind to arrange this quickly and we will be happy to help him with that."

Gender Registration

COC Netherlands also argues in the letter to Weerwind that every Dutch person should be able to easily change the gender registration in the passport to an 'X' instead of 'M' or 'V'. This is for people who, for example, do not feel like a man or woman or who do not want their gender to be included in their passport. D66 MP Lisa van Ginneken recently submitted a proposal on this point.

The interest groups also say they want a good surrogacy arrangement and an improvement of the law that makes it possible to change the gender registration. In addition, the organizations propose to make intercountry adoption possible again from countries where no problems regarding adoption have been identified. The government stopped intercountry adoption in February 2021 due to serious abuses in a number of countries.

COC Nederland also sent the letter on behalf of Transgender Netwerk Nederland (TNN), the Dutch organization for gender diversity (NNID), Bi+ Nederland and the Dutch foundation for rainbow families More than Gewenst.