Human Rights and Children Born with Variations of Sex Characteristics with Jameson Garland
In April 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a global resolution calling for an end to “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.”
This resolution follows the publication of a recent decision from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which has affirmed that it will receive future applications for remedies addressing the rights of persons born with variations of sex characteristics. The Court has established that it will assess valid complaints on the grounds of “inhuman and degrading treatment,” in light of a growing body of ECtHR case law regarding non-consensual and medically unnecessary interventions on numerous patients.
This talk will summarize challenges that have impeded reforms of prior clinical practices on children born with variations of sex characteristics and how professionals and experts in civil society are increasingly incorporating human rights into their fields of practice, including not only clinicians and medical ethicists, but also psychologists, sociologists, theologians, and parent-led NGOs advocating for children’s rights to make decisions regarding their own bodily autonomy and integrity.
Comments and questions on the US position in this context will be welcomed.
Jameson Garland, J.D., LL.D., Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor Docent, Faculty of Law, Uppsala University, Sweden, is the author of Equity and Protection for Gender Identity and Characteristics (2022), The Governance of Clinical Research in Sweden (2020) and co-author of Protecting the Rights of Children with Intersex Conditions from Nonconsensual Gender-Conforming Medical Interventions: The View from Europe. (Medical Law Review, Oxford University Press. 27(3): 482-508). He was a Center for the History of Medicine Fellow from 2014 to 2015.