During the 51st UN Human Rights Council, ILGA World delivered a statement, in collaboration with GATE, Iranti, OII Europe, Mulabi, SIPD, Intersex Asia and Intersex Human Rights Australia, on behalf of 82 intersex-led organisations worldwide.
Together, we are calling on the Human Rights Council to address human rights violations against intersex persons, and on States to ban harmful interventions against them.
Watch the intersex statement being delivered at the UN
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKmXkBq54c[/embedyt]Read the full text of the intersex statement
HRC51
General Debate -Item 8
Statement by the International Lesbian and Gay Association
Mr President,
In the spirit of Item 8 and the universality of human rights stated by the VDPA, I, as an intersex
person, am delivering a statement on behalf of 82 intersex-led organizations worldwide.
In most countries, intersex children are routinely subjected to unnecessary treatments, surgeries,
and other interventions without expressed personal free and informed consent due to stigma
and misconceptions about their sex characteristics.
These harmful practices forcibly modify our appearance and physical development in order to
align our bodies to biomedical and societal expectations.
The impacts of these practices – and their framing as human rights violations and abuses – have
been highlighted by several human rights mechanisms, including the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, multiple UN treaty bodies, and UN Special Rapporteurs on
Health, torture, and violence against women.
At the 45th Human Rights Council session, a group of 37 states delivered a joint statement calling
on states to protect intersex persons. Following up on this, a similar joint statement was delivered
at the 48th HRC session on behalf of 53 states.
Mister president,
Actions must follow these statements,
We call on this Council and its mechanism to address these serious human rights violations. We
call upon states to ban non-vital, medically unnecessary surgeries, forced hormonal treatments,
and other harmful interventions in infants and children, and establish integral, psychosocial, peerbased, rights-affirming standards of care that protect intersex people’s bodily and mental integrity
in medical settings.
States must investigate and prosecute medical abuse and ill-treatment.
Thanks Mr President.