Origin of civil status

Under the "Republic", in Ancient Rome, the "Cens" is the count which remains the basis of civil status and which is authentic in the event of a legal problem. However, registration was done on simple declaration, without any supporting document. Only the implausibility of the statement could call it into question.

Regular reporting of births and deaths in Rome traditionally dated back to the dynasty of Etruscan kings under "Servius Tullius". It seems that this official birth service, the center of which was the Temple of Juno Lucina, continued under the Republic.

The existence of an "official statistics" of births in the city of Rome has been attested since the 1st century BC. It has its place in the official public journal of Rome, the "Acta Urbis". These give the total number of births per day and per sex.

And in Belgium ?

In what is now Belgium, civil registration was created in 1796 after the annexation of the Austrian Netherlands by France. In 1804, Napoleon introduced the Napoleonic Civil Code which remained in force until 1954.

In this code, there is nothing planned concerning transgender people. People who wished to have their civil status changed legally were subject to the goodwill of a judge of the court of first instance who had the option of accepting or refusing the change of identity without giving any valid reason.

The refusals were often motivated by pseudo disturbances of public order, more imaginary than real, originating in the intimate conviction of the magistrate influenced by the Judeo-Christian and patriarchal organization of Belgian society.

Two avenues have been used with varying success over time: legal action to rectify the birth certificate (which presupposes establishing an error in the drafting of the certificate) and state action (which presupposes establishing proof of a complete and irreversible gender reassignment linked to an “irresistible force” making it possible to distinguish the – absolute – unavailability of civil status from its relative immutability. divergent will push the legislator to finally consider enacting a law worthy of the name.

The law of June 25, 2017

It took two years after the condemnation by the UN, for a secretary of state for equal opportunities to declare on a Flemish television set "that it is high time to legislate to finally respect the human rights of transgender people".

But this declaration was only an announcement effect because in fact, a law had been in preparation in parliament since the end of 2014, the year in which Belgium was condemned by the UN. It is at the start of the 2016 parliamentary term that the text of the law drawn up will be discussed in the Justice Committee and that the associations defending the rights of transgender people will be invited to send delegates to present their opinions and considerations on this new text.

A favorable wind will allow the leaders of the group to be informed of the evolution of the debates concerning this law. This is how an exchange of letters will take place between the Minister of Justice at the time and the leaders of the group. In her letters, which each time received a response, one of the group's leaders will try to modify or even delete certain provisions based not only on her experience in the field in contact with transgender people but also in her capacity as a former police officer.

This is how she will try, until the end of the debates, to have the intervention of the King's Prosecutor in the procedure removed, but the Minister's last response will inform her that this intervention is provided for by the Civil Code and is mandatory. in the event of a possible disturbance of public order.

The untimely intervention of the public prosecutor's office in the proceedings, by having the people who have made use of the provisions of this new law heard, will prove that this person in charge was right to want to delete this provision.