The Dutch government on Tuesday issued a formal apology to transgender and intersex citizens who were required to undergo sterilization surgeries to legally change their gender and agreed to compensate some of those who underwent the procedures.
The law, which was in place from 1985 to 2014, mandated that trans and intersex people had to undergo sterilization surgeries to change their official gender registration.
The government agreed to pay 5,000 euros to about 2,000 trans people who had the sterilization surgeries. This comes after years of work by activists who demanded the government acknowledge the harm caused by the law.