Genital Autonomy, Children’s Rights, and Competing Rights Claims in International Human Rights Law

Abstract

Claims that genital autonomy should be considered a human right call into question medically unnecessary genital alterations, including genital cutting of both boy and girl children, the forced or coerced circumcision of adults, and surgical alterations performed on the genitals of intersex children prior to the age of consent. To date, global norms suggest only a narrow applicability of any right to genital autonomy. International organizations, states, and non-governmental organizations increasingly condemn genital cutting of girls and women but generally tolerate both the genital cutting of boys and men and the surgical alteration of the genitals of intersex children. In examining assertions that genital autonomy should be considered a human right, the article considers competing rights claims, including religious and cultural rights, parental rights, and contending perspectives on health rights. Ultimately, this article highlights the limitations of international human rights law as a tool for promoting a right to genital autonomy.

The child as a gendered rights holder

“…While international actors, children’s rights advocates and researchers strongly condemn female genital cutting, male circumcision is a less questioned intervention performed on young children’s genitals without their consent. Thus, female genital mutilation is prohibited in most parts of the world, but there are very few formal legislative restrictions on circumcising boys for religious and non-medical reasons (DeLaet, 2012).…”

“…Genital surgery on infants diagnosed with atypical sex characteristics is also typically not regarded as a form of genital mutilation (DeLaet, 2012). The UN condemns forced surgery on intersex adolescents but does not mention the rights of young intersex children (UN, 2001–2019: no.…”

Intersex children: Who are we really treating?

“…124 DeLaet argues that genital autonomy is sovereign and that no parent has the authority to consent to surgery, referring to any such intervention as 'mutilation'. 125 Central to this perspective are considerations of bodily integrity and autonomy of the intersex child, which are considered key ethical considerations in surgical management. 126 Autonomy is easier to contextualize for a more mature child, but difficult to consider for an infant child, being a concept that involves consideration of potential future intellectual, physical and emotional development.…”

Intersexuality and the ‘Right to Bodily Integrity’

“…In this regard, Ramachandran (2009: 3) has argued that a right to bodily integrity in itself is descriptively and normatively wrong, as the emphasis should be put not so much on the actual bodily integrity of the individual but on the necessity of impeding a monopolistic control over individuals’ bodies. In addition, as DeLaet (2012: 556) has pointed out, no such right to ‘bodily integrity’ has yet been explicitly codified and recognized in international human rights law. Therefore, using the right to bodily integrity as the core principle that enables the regulation and/or proscription of practices such as FGC, religious circumcision and intersex normalizing surgeries can constitute, at the very least, a shaky theoretical basis.…”

“…Increasingly, however, there is a call to understand and contextualize these practices within the cultural context in which they take place, rather than separately from it, with the objective of enabling radical social, cultural and legal change. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh (2009), along with DeLaet (2012), has suggested that more than legal change alone is needed to eradicate FGC, particularly in relation to the need to understand the motivations that push parents to subject their daughters to these practices. Similarly, Nnamuchi (2012: 86) has argued that interventions from ‘outsiders’ have usually lacked an acknowledgement of the tight link between these practices and the ‘cultural ethos’ of the various countries, thus failing in their objective of triggering and enabling change.…”