Background Note on Human Rights Violations against Intersex People
The UN Human Rights Office has issued a new Background Note on Human Rights Violations against Intersex People, which has been developed as a follow-up to various initiatives by the Office, UN agencies and regional human rights mechanisms including: the Intersex Expert meeting held in 2015, public education awareness campaigns by UN free and Equal on Intersex Awareness in 2015 and the Joint Statement by UN and regional human rights mechanisms in 2016.
The background note analyses the specific human rights violations faced by Intersex people and the corresponding human rights obligations of States, identifying gaps, challenges and positive developments and charting the way forward to ensure that the human rights of intersex people are respected, protected and fulfilled.
Introduction
Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of innate bodily variations in sex characteristics. Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions for male or female bodies, including sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal patterns, and/or chromosome patterns.
In recent years, awareness of intersex people, and recognition of the specific human rights abuses that they face, has grown, thanks to the work of intersex human rights defenders. These include risks of forced and coercive medical interventions, harmful practices and other forms of stigmatisation due to their physical traits. To date, only a handful of countries have implemented measures to prevent and address such abuses, and the effectiveness of existing measures remains to be fully documented.
In response, the United Nations Human Rights Office has undertaken a series of activities to raise public awareness of intersex human rights issues and deepen understanding of relevant international human rights law standards and recommendations and how they apply to the situation of intersex people. In September 2015, the United Nations Free and Equal campaign released a first fact-sheet on the rights of intersex people.1In the same month, UN and regional human rights mandate holders, intersex experts, UN agency staff, experts from national institutions and academia, civil society representatives and health professionals convened for the first UN Expert Meeting on ending human rights violations against intersex persons (see appendix 11.1). In October 2016, in part as a follow up to the Expert Meeting, a joint call by United Nations and regional human rights experts was published (see appendix 11.2), calling on Governments to prohibit forced and coercive surgeries and other medically unnecessary treatments on intersex children without their consent. The United Nations Human Rights Office also launched the first UN public education campaign on the rights of intersex people, United Nations for Intersex Awareness, with a dedicated website and a video watched by more than a million people in its first week of release.
This paper complements and builds on these initiatives, documenting the specific human rights abuses faced by intersex people and the corresponding human rights obligations of States, identifying gaps, challenges and positive developments, and charting the way forward to ensure that the human rights of intersex people are respected, protected and fulfilled.