E/CN.4/2004/SR.29

Commission on Human Rights

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

30. Ms. CABRAL (MADRE), speaking on the issue of intersexuality in the context of the right to health, said that the term “intersexuality” covered a wide variety of situations in which a person’s genitals did not correspond to current social, cultural and political stereotypes. In conventional medicine, such persons were considered to have ambiguous, deformed or pathological genitalia. For the intersex movement and its human rights allies, the difference in genital appearance did not imply the existence of a deformation or pathology. Studies had shown that at least one in every 2,500 people was born with genitalia that differed from the stereotypes. Many of those people would be subjected to medically superfluous and mutilating cosmetic surgery soon after birth, during childhood or even during adolescence. Intersex people were often denied access to the records of such surgery.
31. The attempt to transform intersexual bodies into culturally acceptable ones was a violation of bodily integrity. Interventions that changed legal gender and bodily shape and sensitivity should not be conducted without informed consent. Genital mutilation of intersex children caused post-surgical trauma and the internalization of prejudice that stigmatized the diversity of the human body. Mutilation did not normalize but constituted a human rights violation with lifelong implications.
32. Invoking the right to health, she called for a review of medical practices relating to intersexuality and the adoption of concrete measures to eliminate genital mutilation of intersex children.