Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions Based on the higher estimate, there are as many intersex people in the world as people with red hair or people with green eyes. 4.2. HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES 239 All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. Those foundational, bedrock principles of universality and equality mean that all of us, without exception, and regardless of our sex characteristics, are equally entitled to the protections of international human rights law. Unfortunately, the myth that all human beings belong to one of two distinct and separate sexes is deep-rooted, and it contributes to the stigma, and even taboo, attached to being intersex. This is linked to … very serious human rights violations … They include … infanticides of intersex babies; and widespread and life-long discrimination, including in education, employment, health, sports [and] accessing public services … Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, High Commissioner for Human Rights239 At an expert meeting on ending human rights violations against intersex persons held in September 2015, the High Commissioner for Human Rights reflected a more sustained focus on intersex human rights issues within the international human rights mechanisms and UN agencies. His comments also demonstrated the evolution of terms being used to describe discrimination against intersex people. Following on from the April 2014 Malta law, the High Commissioner identified ‘sex characteristics’ as a prohibited ground of discrimination. This terminology has subsequently been used by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.240 4.2.1. Invisibility, secrecy and shame There is typically very limited knowledge and experience, including within NHRIs, of human rights violations against intersex people. In his 2015 statement, the High Commissioner for Human Rights spoke about this relative invisibility, highlighted the seriousness of the human rights issues that intersex people face and called for their bodily diversity to be protected and celebrated: When I started as High Commissioner a year ago, I knew little about intersex people. I don’t think I was alone in this: it reflects a general lack of awareness. Too many people assume, without really thinking about it, that everyone can be fitted into two distinct and mutually exclusive categories: male or female. But in fact, human beings – like most living beings – are more diverse and complex than that. Our diversity – the differences between our experiences and perspectives, as well as the shapes of our bodies – is something that we should celebrate and protect, in all its forms.241 Intersex people’s experiences of bodily diversity are commonly shrouded in secrecy and shame, due to societal norms and medical practice that treat physical diversity as an abnormality to be fixed. This silence has enabled human rights violations to continue unchecked and has left intersex adults with little or no support for ongoing physical and mental suffering.242 66 239 Opening remarks by High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Expert meeting on ending human rights violations against intersex persons, 16 September 2015, Geneva; at www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16431&LangID=E. 240 Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2015, CRC/C/CHL/CO/4-5, para. 25. 241 Opening remarks by High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Expert meeting on ending human rights violations against intersex persons, 16 September 2015, Geneva. 242 OHCHR, Fact Sheet: Intersex, 2015.