Legal recognition of intersex people

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".

According to the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, few countries have provided for the legal recognition of intersex people. The Asia Pacific Forum states that the legal recognition of intersex people is firstly about access to the same rights as other men and women, when assigned male or female; secondly it is about access to administrative corrections to legal documents when an original sex assignment is not appropriate; and thirdly it is not about the creation of a third sex or gender classification for intersex people as a population but it is, instead, about self determination.

The Asia Pacific Forum, Council of Europe, and the Malta declaration of the Third International Intersex Forum have called for non-binary gender classifications to be available on a voluntary, opt-in basis. The Council of Europe has called for greater consideration of the implications of new sex classifications on intersex people, while the Third International Intersex Forum called for the long term removal of sex or gender from official identification documents.

In some countries, legal recognition may be limited, access to any form of birth certificate may be difficult, while some other countries recognise that intersex people may have non-binary gender identities. Sociological research in Australia, a country with a non-binary gender marker, has shown that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics may prefer that option.

In European societies, Roman law, post-classical Canon law, and later Common law, referred to a person's sex as male, female or hermaphrodite, with legal rights as male or female depending on the characteristics that appeared most dominant. Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female. The 12th-century Decretum Gratiani states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails". The foundation of common law, the 16th Century Institutes of the Lawes of England described how a hermaphrodite could inherit "either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile." Single cases have been described in Canon law and other legal cases over the centuries.

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Wikipedia