Part I Experiences of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex in the Asia Pacific A May 2015 statement from the UN and other international human rights experts, including the Committee on the Rights of the Child, noted that these surgeries and treatment “may constitute torture or ill-treatment”.258 This was reiterated in a July 2015 report by the Special Rapporteur on the right to health.259 4.3.1. Evidence in this region There is limited information available about the human rights issues experienced by intersex people in the Asia Pacific region. Evidence of the continued use of so-called ‘sex-normalising’ surgeries and other medical interventions has been identified through reports from Indonesia, China, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.260 There is no material identifying any countries in this region where the prevailing medical approach is to prohibit or discourage such practices. In 2013, an Australian Senate Committee carried out an official inquiry into the involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people. It concluded that ‘sex-assignment surgery’ is still occurring in infancy and childhood and that “normalising appearance goes hand in hand with the stigmatisation of difference”. The Committee stressed that any decision-making around medical treatment of intersex children must take human rights considerations into account.261 Surgeries and hormonal interventions to ‘normalise’ intersex bodies currently take place on a routine basis in Australia, such as when girls’ clitorises are deemed too big, or when boys are unable to stand to urinate.262 Thoughts and stories of being Being LGBTI by Being LGBTI in Asia. 258 Joint statement by a group of United Nations and international human rights experts on the occasion of the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, ‘Discriminated and made vulnerable: young LGBT and intersex people need recognition and protection of their rights’, 13 May 2015; at www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews. aspx?NewsID=15941&LangID=E. 259 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, 2015, A/70/213 paras 84-85. 260 UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: Indonesia Country Report, 2014; UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: China Country Report, 2014; UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: Viet Nam Country Report, 2014; Small Luk, Intersex Report from Hong Kong, produced for the Being LGBT in Asia Regional Dialogue, February 2015; New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s Intersex Roundtables; Australian Senate, Community Affairs References Committee, Involuntary or Coerced Sterilisation of Intersex People in Australia, October 2013; personal communication with Nada Chaiyajit, Thailand, 15 September 2015. 261 Australian Senate, Community Affairs References Committee, Involuntary or Coerced Sterilisation of Intersex People in Australia, October 2013, paras. 3.45 and 3.128, pp. 49 and 74. 262 M. Carpenter, ‘Intersex rights and freedoms’ in Court of Conscience, University of New South Wales Law Society Journal, Issue 9, 2015, pp. 27-33. Chapter 4: Being intersex in Asia and the Pacific | 69