The Center for the Defense of Homoaffective Rights and Sexual Diversity of the Public Defender of Rio de Janeiro (Nudiversis) guaranteed 96 favorable court decisions for transgender and non-binary people to update their documents. The judgments will force the registries to immediately change the civil identification record.
The event was held with the support of the Itinerant Justice project Maré/Manguinhos, which set up a structure at the headquarters of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz). The Defender’s Office had the support of the Court of Justice of Rio and the support of the City of Rio de Janeiro to ensure that those assisted left the place with favorable court decisions in hand. In a few hours, 47 non-binary people conquered the right that only five had conquered in Brazil.
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In force since 2017, the guidance of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) for notary offices to carry out civil requalification without legal action has not been extended to non-binary ones, that is, people who do not identify with a gender exclusively. In practice, the group needs to resort to the Judiciary to obtain a change in the first name and gender in its documentation, a time-consuming, exhausting process with little chance of success.
In the sentences issued during the social action, the magistrate referred to the group as “non-binary”, an unprecedented nomenclature in the Brazilian justice system. The term refers to people who do not identify themselves as either a man or a woman. This is the case of history student Angel Roberto, who attended the social action accompanied by her mother.
“In seeking to amend our civil records, we are trying to validate that we are people. When the State refuses to recognize our gender identity, it is asserting that we do not exist for society,” he said.
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The Nudiversis and TJRJ teams also assisted 45 transgender people. Of these, 22 were women and 27 were trans men. There were those who just wanted to change the gender in the civil registry, but most also changed the name.
Nudiversis also has a multidisciplinary technical team, made up of psychology and social service professionals, who produce technical documents to instruct lawsuits and extrajudicial procedures. The team also works to strengthen the network of protection services and enables the production of multidisciplinary knowledge on access to justice for LGBTQIA+ people.
Source: BoF Rio de Janeiro
Edition: Jaqueline Deister
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