Hundreds of transgender Indonesians will be able to vote for the first time in the upcoming February 14 election after getting access to government issued KTP physical and digital ID cards, according to Openly.
KTP IDs are needed to access public services, banking, and voting in the country. But many transgender Indonesians leave home as teenagers, find themselves living on the streets, and have a hard time applying for IDs.
Jakarta-based LGBTQ+ rights group Suara Kita has helped some 650 trans women obtain their KTP cards, joining the 95 percent of Indonesians with an e-KTP card, though for many their IDs will still list their gender as male. Trans people in Indonesia can only change the gender on legal documents if they go through reassignment surgery.
Suara Kita volunteers help trans women overcome barriers to ID access. For instance, Indonesians must input their biometrics into the government ID system by the age of 17, but those who have been on the streets from a young age may not have had the opportunity to do so. Volunteers can help by taking photos or acting as a guarantor.
The Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs signed a memo in 2021 to address issues like missing legal identity documents at the local level rather than sending cases to Jakarta. This has reduced processing time for such cases from three months to a week. Sometimes, ID cards are processed within hours.
At the start of 2023, the World Bank proposed US$250 million in funding to Indonesia to address geographical inequality and close the gender divide in financial inclusion.
Countries around the world have made changes to be more inclusive in issuing national IDs. India has created a policy to make it easier for trans people who undergo sex reassignment surgery outside of the country to update their passport. In September 2023 in Pakistan, NADRA was once again allowed to issue ID cards to trans people under a third gender after an activist appealed a ruling from an Islamic court barring the option. And Chile recognized the gender of a non-binary individual on their ID card for the first time in its history in 2022.
