Current Campaigns

By Gavriel Ansara*

What is intersex?

People are born with many different kinds of bodies. Some people’s bodies fit conventional ideas about what it means to be strictly ‘female’ or ‘male’. Some people’s bodies have natural variations that differ from strictly ‘female’ or ‘male’ bodies in terms of chromosomes, hormonal levels, hormone regulation and processing, genital configuration, gonads, body hair distribution, chest appearance, or other physical characteristics. In the UK and abroad, intersex is currently the term most widely preferred by people whose bodies are not strictly ‘female’ or ‘male’.

Who are intersex people?

Intersex people can come from all walks of life, and have many different professions, religions, and ethnicities. You might not be aware that you have already met intersex people, as many intersex people do not look visibly different from any other people whom you might meet in public. According to some researchers, intersex people constitute 1.9-4% of the population.

Why haven’t I heard this information about intersex people before?

Many people with intersex bodies are not aware that they are physically different from others; some received a diagnosis and were able to access their medical records, while others were never given an official diagnosis or were told that their medical records had been ‘lost’ or destroyed. Many intersex people also avoid disclosing their intersex characteristics to other people due to stigma and fear of negative responses. Popular media articles often sensationalise intersex people’s experiences and objectify intersex people by focusing on them as possessing a set of ‘interesting’ genitals rather than recognising them as human beings.

What gender do intersex people have? With whom do they have relationships?

People who are intersex can identify unambiguously as women or men, just like people whose bodies fit standard ideas about ‘female’ or ‘male’. In addition, some intersex people identify as having no gender, as both a woman and a man, or as another gender that is not woman or man—but so do some people who are not intersex. In the UK, intersex adults and young people whose genders have been surgically imposed in infancy may wish to have surgery to correct what was done to them as children. Unfortunately, intersex people in this situation are often routed through trans-oriented gender clinics, especially if they have affirmed a gender different from the one they were assigned. Intersex people can have relationships with people of any gender, and intersex people may identify as lesbian, straight, bisexual, gay, same gender loving, as celibate, or choose not to label their sexual orientation.

Most importantly, intersex people are human beings who deserve equal human rights. Unfortunately, intersex people in the UK continue to face human rights violations and discrimination:

• Intersex people are excluded from equalities legislation. Some UK officials have claimed falsely that protections for transgender people are adequate and necessarily include intersex people. Actually, intersex adults have been denied Gender Recognition Certificates that are granted to transgender people, and intersex people’s reports of these experiences have been repeatedly dismissed by organisations and officials with little knowledge or awareness of intersex-specific concerns. Legislation that includes ‘gender identity’ has not been interpreted to include intersex, as intersex refers to natural biological characteristics that are not strictly ‘female’ or ‘male’. For example, some Councils have told intersex people they ‘do not count’ because intersex is not included in equality legislation. Intersex people continue to experience severe discrimination due to exclusion from legal protection. For example, some intersex people who are elders or who have physical impairments continue to be placed in sex-segregated living facilities that do not match how they designate their gender, and face violence and abuse in those settings. 
• Intersex babies and adults are subject to medically unnecessary genital surgeries that attempt to ‘normalise’ their bodies to be strictly ‘female’ or ‘male’. Whilst urological surgical procedures are often necessary to ensure bladder function, these medically unnecessary genital ‘normalising’ surgeries are risky. These surgeries can lead to permanent incontinence, psychological trauma, genital scarring, and inability to enjoy genital sexual activity. In 2008, the Cologne Regional Court awarded damages for pain and suffering to Cristiane Volling, a nurse and intersex woman in Dusseldorf, Germany, from the surgeon who had performed ‘normalising’ surgery on her as an 18 year old over 30 years before. Volling’s case highlighted a lack of informed consent even when these surgical procedures are performed on intersex adults. Future civil cases are also likely to emerge from claimants who were ‘normalised’ at much younger ages. Many intersex adults who were not ‘normalised’ and who are happy with their bodies say they wish both parents of intersex children and intersex people of all ages were informed they could have full lives without ‘normalising’ genital surgery.
• In England today, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is treated as a serious criminal and human rights violation, while Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM) continues to be practiced. Interdisciplinary teams of psychologists and medical professionals consult parents, but not infants themselves, when making irreversible surgical decisions that will affect these infants throughout their lives. These infants are unable to give informed consent and do not meet the Gillick standard of consent applied to other young people in the UK. These non-consensual surgeries would be considered genital mutilation and outlawed in the UK, if they were performed on babies labelled ‘female’.

What are the aims of this campaign?

• To secure equal legal rights for intersex people throughout the UK, such as equal access to Gender Recognition Certificates and to sex-segregated facilities that match how they designate their gender. Legislation that protects transgender people has not protected intersex people. Intersex-specific language must be added to equalities legislation and policy documents. This language should be inclusive and not use pathologising terms like ‘Disorders of Sex Development’ to describe intersex people. Terminology used in legislative and policy documents should promote equal treatment.
• To end the practice of medically unnecessary genital surgeries, both those that attempt to ‘normalise’ intersex infants’ bodies and those for which adolescents and adult intersex people do not give full informed consent. This includes highlighting current contradictions in medical policies which deny trans adolescents’ requests for reversible hormone blockers on the grounds that they are ‘too young to know what they want’, whilst performing invasive, irreversible surgical procedures on infants who are too young to give informed consent. Trans and intersex young people’s human right to consent to or refuse medical treatment must be respected. Intersex adults must be fully informed of their choices and the consequences of ‘normalising’ surgery. Reparations to intersex victims of genital mutilation must be provided in the form of surgeries to help intersex people correct or change the results of unwanted genital surgeries, without going through trans-focused screening.
• To educate governmental and non-governmental agencies regarding the needs of intersex and trans refugees and asylum-seekers, including the need to implement policies and procedural changes to ensure their services are accessible and safe for intersex and trans people. René Cassin remains committed to protecting the human rights of all refugees and asylum-seekers. Making sure that the unique needs of intersex refugees and asylum-seekers are addressed adequately is an important aspect of this mission.

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks to those whose diverse insights and experiences informed this article, including UK academic and journalist Jennie Kermode, an intersex activist who serves as Chair of Trans Media Watch and as an Equality Network member; the folks at OII Australia; and other intersex people in the UK who wish to remain anonymous.

* Gavriel Ansara is currently completing his PhD in Psychology at the University of Surrey.  He has an MSc in Social Psychology (Distinction) from the University of Surrey and a BA in International and Cross-Cultural Health with Media Studies (minor concentration in African studies) from Hampshire College.  Gavriel has extensive voluntary experience campaigning for LGBT and Intersex rights both in the UK and the US.  In 2011, Gavriel received the National Psychology Postgraduate Teaching Award.  Gavriel was also the recipient of the Keshet Leadership of the Year Award in 2002 for work as founding coordinator of the Tiferet Outreach Project for Orthodox and traditionally observant LGBTQI Jews.

The following is an excerpt from writer and PhotoVoice facilitator/René Cassin volunteer Leila Segal's diary.  Leila Segal spent January in Israel, putting down the foundations for the PhotoVoice and René Cassin project with formerly enslaved women in a safehouse in Petach Tikva. For more information about the project - Voice of Freedom - and to support us in raising the funds to start the workshops, please see below.  To see Rabbi Debbie Young Summers' blog about the project, please click here.

3 January

The women I am working with were raped and kept in chains in the Sinai desert. They were forced to phone home then tortured so their families could hear their screams. When the families paid the ransom, the women were set free to run to the border with Israel where soldiers picked them up and took them to jail.

6 January 

Today I made a cup of tea for an Eritrean woman who crossed the border into Israel three days ago with her eight-year-old son. She is 20. He is nearly as tall as she is and walks slightly in front, reaching back for her arm.

'Make it very sweet,' says Didi. I put three teaspoons of sugar in. The woman is shivering; she has come in to the shelter off the street.

'How long were you in the Sinai?' asks Didi.

'Two months.'

'Good, in the Sinai?' The woman looks down at her lap. 'No good in the Sinai,' says Didi.

There are chocolate biscuits. The woman will not eat hers, but gives it to the boy.

9 January

In the shelter lives a three-year-old girl whose brother was shot dead by Egyptian soldiers as he raised the barbed wire for them to cross into Israel. The girl was in her brother's arms.

An Eritrean girl. She speaks fluent Hebrew. Four years here, she goes to school. An Eritrean girl who lives in a room with three other families; a small bare room crowded with beds. A small dark bare room where three families and their children must live. Israel has taught her Hebrew but all the little brothers cry in Tigrinya.

13 January

I spent this afternoon talking with the Eritrean women in the shelter; they showed me their beautiful children, and we played.
It is hard for me to understand: why would you crush these flowers beneath the heel of your boot?

16 January

Some of the women arrive in Israel pregnant. Children of the slave masters; of fathers with no face, of gang rape. One woman can not keep the child within her; she must put him out. She is too many months. She fights to stop it. She fights against the birth.

“Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.” (Click here to learn more)

Children are a particularly vulnerable group and repeatedly have their rights violated.

The Talmud states that “childhood is a garland of roses” and that “the very breath of children is free of sin.” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 152, 119). In line with our mission to campaign and educate on universal human rights issues drawing on the experience of the Jewish people, René Cassin seeks to promote the rights of the child. We aim to act as a voice for many children whose voices cannot be heard.

Our Aims:

• End child slavery and sexual servitude
• Protect the rights of child asylum seekers and end child detention
• End discrimination on the basis of sexuality
• Promote the right to education and end discrimination in schools

Recent campaign work includes:

• Awareness raising of risks of homophobia within schools
• Working on ending child detention for asylum seekers (worked to successfully end child detention for asylum seekers in the UK)
• Promoting intersex rights issues, and right of choice for the child (lobbying parliament and raising awareness)

This Tuesday 18th October, it’s Anti-Slavery Day

Slavery still needs abolishing, and we want you to join with René Cassin and Anti-Slavery International to end it once and for all. 

Faith groups played a key part in stopping the transatlantic slave trade in the 1800s. 

Members of the Jewish community can and still do play a part today.  At Passover recently, we ate bitter herbs to remind us of our slavery and were asked to engage in Tikkun Olam: healing the world and bringing justice to it.

Slavery is when a person is forced to work, controlled and restricted by their ‘employers’. 

It is when a person is dehumanised, treated as property, and bought and sold.

Affecting children, women and men, it includes trafficking, descent-based slavery and bonded and forced labour.

Slavery has not gone away. 

Please donate today, and support us in our work to create a future free of slavery. 

Thank you. 

The Human Rights Act 1998 (‘HRA’) came into full force at the beginning of October 2000.  The HRA gives further effect to the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights (’ECHR’) by codifying the protections in the ECHR into UK law.

The rights that are protected by the HRA cover several areas and include the right to life, freedom from torture and degrading treatment, freedom from slavery and forced labour, the right to liberty, the right to a fair trial and many other rights that we take for granted.  Importantly, these rights apply to everyone, irrespective of their sex; race; colour; language; religion; political opinion; national or social origin; association with a national minority; property; birth; or other status. 

The HRA provides the domestic legal framework to ensure that all UK public bodies (such as courts, police, local governments, hospitals, publicly funded schools, and others) and other bodies carrying out public functions comply with the ECHR rights.

This means, among other things, that individuals can take their human rights cases to domestic courts; they no longer have to go to Strasbourg to argue their cases in the European Court of Human Rights. With the HRA in place, rights are increasingly becoming part of the normative framework of our society, meaning that we often do not need to resort to litigation to enforce them.  Rights are real, meaningful and are protected here in the UK under the HRA.

Some additional significant points worth highlighting about the HRA are that it:

• Protects vulnerable people, some of whom are targets of popular or media hostility.
• Offers important guarantees of a fair hearing and treatment for people accused or suspected of offences.
• Provides vital safeguards for people detained for compulsory assessment and treatment, for example under the Mental Health Act, to ensure that such detention is proportionate and appropriate.
• Ensures that minorities are protected against unfair treatment resulting from decisions or views of the majority.

The HRA is a UK Bill of Rights (even if it is not referred to as such in public discourse), and therefore, the discussion around introducing a ‘UK Bill of Rights’ and replacing the existing HRA is somewhat misleading. It would be a bizarre outcome if the UK replaced its existing HRA with a ‘UK Bill of Rights’ and the outcome was that UK citizens did not have recourse to the full array of rights that are available for other European citizens.

As such, René Cassin is working to ensure that the existing HRA is protected, and that any changes build upon the safeguards already provided by enshrining additional rights in law, rather than subtracting from them.  Legal protection for human rights could be seriously limited by the repeal, amendment or replacement of the HRA. 

It is also worth noting that repealing or significantly amending the HRA would be a “legal and political nightmare” in the context of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution frameworks.  Alan Miller, Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has stated that “repeal of the HRA could also create a two-tier system of the level of human rights protection within the UK”. Scottish people would potentially enjoy greater rights protection than the English and Welsh if the HRA was replaced by an additional Bill of Rights.

It also goes without saying that making major constitutional changes is a serious matter and not one to be undertaken lightly. 

René Cassin therefore urges greater awareness and understanding about the HRA and its benefits for all.  We were recently involved through our participation in the Equality and Diversity Forum (‘EDF’) with preparing a response to the Commission on a Bill of Rights Consultation.  If you wish to read the EDF response, please click here.  We also prepared our own response, which you can read here.

To learn more about the Bill of Rights Consultation, please click here.

Some useful links

• The Equality and Human Rights Commission
• The Equality and Diversity Forum
• Justice
• Directgov
• Article: 'From the Human Rights Act to a Bill of Rights', by Alexander Horne and Lucinda Maer
• Response from the LSE Human Rights Futures Project
• Response from René Cassin to the Commission on a Bill of Rights Consultation
• René Cassin's submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review
• Bill of Rights and reform of the European Court of Human Rights - a view from Stephen Grosz, Bindmans LLP
• Joint Statement: Strengthening the Protection of Human Rights in Europe
• Podcast of talk by Shami Chakrabarti on the Human Rights Act, March 2012

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go.’ This is a kind of opening chapter in a continuing story.”

- Martin Luther King, Nobel Lecture 1964

About modern slavery

Slavery calls to mind images of biblical slaves in Egypt, or the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.  However, slavery is an ongoing problem, even though it is illegal in most countries where it is practiced, and prohibited by a multitude of international laws and conventions. In fact, there are more enslaved people in the world today than at any point in history. 

Another misconception is that slavery is a problem only in the developing world.  Actually, slaves live in both the developing and the developed world.  At any point in time, as many as 5,000 people in the UK are victims of slavery or trafficking.

Modern slavery exists in many forms including forced labour, forced marriage, and child labour.  The practice of slavery and its effects impact all of our lives, in ways we often do not even realize.  For example, when we purchase clothes from the high street, we may be contributing to modern slavery.  To learn more about the forms of modern slavery, read our policy paper on modern slavery.

The Jewish connection

During Biblical times, the Jewish people were enslaved. Today, particularly during the festival of Pesach, we remember that we are free.  René Cassin believes that as we celebrate our freedom through our every day activities and choices, we must remember that there are many people around the world, including in our own countries, who are still not free, and take actions to end enslavement for all people. To learn more about why the Jewish people should work to end modern slavery, and improve the lives of workers around the world, take a look at our policy paper on modern slavery.   Or, download our Passover Haggadah Companion to incorporate modern slavery into your Passover Sedar.

What we do

René Cassin seeks to end modern slavery through education and advocacy.  We run unique educational programmes and events for children, university students and professionals, which aim to raise awareness of modern slavery around the world, in the UK and in Israel.  We also advocate for change to relevant laws and policies both in the UK, and on the international stage using our status through the CCJO as a United Nations-accredited organisation.

In addition to our ongoing campaign and educational work in this area, we have two current projects on foot that you can support:

• Slavery Free London 2012: Events like the Olympics bring jobs, tourists and infrastructure when they come to town, but they also bring an increased risk of human trafficking as the demand for cheap, temporary labour goes up.  Join our Slavery-Free London 2012 campaign to help leave a positive, slavery-free legacy for the games.
• Voice of Freedom: A joint project with PhotoVoice, Leila Segal, and the Ma'agan Safe House for Trafficked Women in Petach Tikva, Israel. To learn more, please click here.

What you can do 

Ending modern slavery is truly an area in which a single individual’s decisions and actions can make a difference.  You have already taken the first step, by learning more about the issue!  Regardless of your age or profession, you can help us as we seek to raise awareness of, and put an end this practice.

Here are some things you can do:

• Sign Antislavery International's Slavery-Free London 2012 Pledge and encourage your friends and family to do the same.
• Measure your slavery footprint and support companies who subscribe to ethical guidelines. 
• Raise awareness of the issue by talking about it with your friends and family, or attending one of our upcoming events. 
• At work, encourage your company to adopt a responsible business practices policy.
• Support the women at the Ma'agan Safe House for Trafficked Women through the Voice of Freedom Project by clicking here.

If you:

• are a lawyer, you can assist us in our legal work to pursue the enactment of such laws.
• are involved in politics, you can assist us in our advocacy work with domestic and international politicians.
• would like to talk to us about how you can be involved in or contribute towards our campaign, please email us.
• celebrate Passover, you can also read our Haggadah Companion around your seder table this year.  It will inform you and the other participants at your seder about the facts and give you a greater insight into our slavery and human trafficking campaign.

You can and will help us make headway in the fight to provide people worldwide with fair working conditions and protection from individuals looking to take advantage of the vulnerability of others.

Events

On 1st March, 2012, René Cassin hosted a party to raise awareness about its work to make the London 2012 Olympic Games slavery free.  You can download a flyer for the event by clicking here.  If you would like to support this particular area of work, please click here and quote 'Slavery Free London 2012' to have your donation restricted to this campaign.