The World Health Organisation has sparked concern from intersex rights activists by maintaining existing guidelines on intersex people and even adding a new diagnosis for intersex children.

On Monday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that they will remove the classification of being transgender as a mental illness, in a move that has been widely praised by trans rights activists.

While this move has been widely praised and is part of the first edit of the ICD since 1992, intersex activists have expressed concerns about another part of the ICD that was not edited. Intersex is the term used to refer to people with variations of physical characteristics – such as chromosomes or reproductive organs – that do not fit as either traditionally defined “male” or “female”.

OII Europe, one of the main intersex advocacy groups in the continent, highlight that the WHO did not remove the classification of intersex as a disorder, despite criticism of the ICD from human rights bodies and intersex people themselves.

Dan Christian Ghattas, Executive Director of OII Europe said on Tuesday: “Removing trans identities from the list of mental health chapter is an important and overdue step. However, we are very concerned that WHO has let the chance pass to depathologise intersex people and hence to work towards decreasing human rights violations intersex people face in medical settings.”