UN makes history with first-ever resolution supporting intersex rights

The United Nations Human Rights Council has made history by issuing its first-ever resolution supporting the rights of intersex people. Intersex people are individuals born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of female or male. An estimated 1.7% of infants are born intersex — many are forced to undergo irreversible surgeries to “correct” their anatomy and are subject to stigma and discrimination.

The resolution — entitled “Combating Discrimination, Violence and Harmful Practices Against Intersex Persons” — directs the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a report on the challenges intersex people face and the best ways to ensure intersex people’s “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” The Human Rights Council will discuss the report in September 2025.

Related: Three leading intersex activists released memoirs in 2023

Intersex people are sharing their stories of life with bodies outside the binary.

“[The U.N. expresses] grave concern about the violence and harmful practices that persons with innate variations in sex characteristics, including children, face in all regions of the world, including medically unnecessary or deferrable interventions, which may be irreversible, with respect to sex characteristics, performed without the full, free and informed consent of the person, and in the case of children without complying with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” the resolution states.

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The resolution notes that intersex people may face “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination in all areas of life, such as access to education, health, employment, sports, and social security, as well as restrictions on the exercise of legal capacity and in access to remedies and justice.”

The resolution also encourages member nations to collaborate with relevant international and regional
organizations to address the root causes of anti-intersex discrimination — including “stereotypes, the spread of misconceptions and inaccurate information, stigma, and taboo” — in order to combat discrimination, violence, and harmful practices against intersex people.

“Throughout their lives, persons with innate variations in sex characteristics may face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination in all areas of life, such as access to education, health, employment, sports, and social security, as well as restrictions on the exercise of legal capacity and in access to remedies and justice,” the resolution adds.

This isn’t the first time that the U.N. has mentioned intersex individuals. Last year, at the U.N.’s yearlong commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 13 experts with the UN’s Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council released a policy position on the protection of human rights in sport that mentioned intersex people.

They noted with concern “attempts to use the male-female categorization to argue for the exclusion of trans women and women with intersex variations (or persons perceived as such) from female categories.”

In recent years, many international sports organizations have introduced new rules and restrictions aimed at excluding transgender and intersex women from competing against cisgender women. 

They denounced “the sexist scrutiny and suspicion” of all women’s bodies based on “stereotypical notions of a woman athlete’s performance and body type” and “interventions intended to alter the targeted women’s naturally occurring and healthy hormonal levels simply for the reason of altering their performance in sport.” They also noted that such interventions have historically “disproportionately impacted Black women athletes and women athletes of Asian descent, predominantly from the Global South.”

The U.N. called on states and international sporting federations to review rules related to intersex people to ensure compliance with human rights norms and standards and to stop “targeting trans and intersex women under the guise of protecting women’s sports.”

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