About OII Europe
OII Europe Steering Board meeting in Berlin, Germany, May 2018
OII Europe (Organisation Intersex International Europe) is the umbrella organisation of European human rights based and intersex-led organisations. OII Europe works for the protection of intersex persons’ human rights in Europe, Central Asia and the Maghreb region.
The organisation’s activities include policy and awareness-raising work, community and capacity building and training and education of professionals, allies and the general public on the situation of intersex persons. OII Europe is a framework partner to the European Commission and holds expert status with the SOGI Unit of the Council of Europe. OII Europe also supports national governments in their efforts to better the situation of intersex persons on a national level.
OII Europe was founded as a network on Human Rights Day, 10 December, during the Second Intersex Forum at Stockholm in 2012. In 2015 the organisation OII Europe was founded as a non-profit, registered NGO based in Germany.
What does intersex mean?
Intersex individuals are persons who do not match medical and societal norms of so-called female and male bodies with regard to their chromosomal, gonadal, endocrine or anatomical sex. The latter becomes evident, for example, in secondary sex characteristics such as muscle mass, hair distribution and stature, or primary sex characteristics such as the inner and outer genitalia and/or the chromosomal and hormonal structure.
Simplifying working definition: We are intersex because our innate sex characteristics are either female and male at the same time or not quite female or male or neither female or male.
Although intersex characteristics are congenital, intersex bodies can present themselves as intersex at birth, during childhood, in puberty or in adulthood. A person may realize being intersex at a very early age or later on in life. People with intersex bodies may have an intersex gender identity or they may have any other gender identity.
Learn more about intersex and our work in several languages
OII Europe Strategic Plans
What is the Strategic Plan 2019 – 2022?
The Strategic Plan 2019 – 2022 is OII Europe’s first strategic plan. The document brings together the collective ideas of our members, the Steering Board and of our staff. It articulates OII Europe’s strategic objectives, together with means to achieve them. It helps us ensure that our work is aligned with the clearly defined strategies and is an impact measurement tool for our actions. It will guide us from the extra-ordinary General Assembly in 2019 and up to the General Assembly in 2022.
To find out more what we aim to do, here you can download our Strategic Plan 2019-2022 as a PDF:
What is the Strategic Plan 2023-2027?
The Strategic Plan 2023-2027 is OII Europe’s second strategic plan. The document brings together the collective ideas of our membership, the Steering Board and of our staff. It formulates OII Europe’s strategic objectives, together with means to achieve them. It helps us ensure that our work is focused, our strategies are clear and that our actions have an impact. It will guide us from the extra-ordinary General Assembly in 2023 to the General Assembly in 2027.
OII Europe Membership
Please check the following page about OII Europe Membership, how to become a member, and for a selected list of our current members.
Maghreb Region and Central Asia
OII Europe welcomes Central Asia and the Maghreb Region to its scope of work!
During the OII Europe General Assembly held on May 17th, 2024 OII Europe’s membership approved a statutes change that will add Central Asia and the Maghreb Region to the scope of OII Europe’s work. This decision is a new step in the work that OII Europe has started with both regions a few years ago and we are more than thrilled that intersex activists and organisations from those regions have agreed to become part of the regional scope of OII Europe.
In the association’s statutes as registered in 2016, the scope of OII Europe’s work was limited to Europe, to mirror the fact that at that time no intersex person from Central Asia had reached out to the back then very small European Intersex Community. In the past years, this has changed. Expanding the scope of OII Europe’s activities to include Central Asia, will allow to cater for this changed reality. In addition, the inclusion of Central Asia will bring OII Europe in line with the other umbrella organisations working on European level like ILGA-Europe, IGLYO and TGEU who also include Central Asia in their scope of work for historical reasons upon request of the Central Asian Community (Ex-Soviet Russian speaking countries).
Since 2020 OII Europe has been in touch and has been supporting the intersex-led organisation Intersex Tunisia in its work. Intersex Tunisia is advocating not only in Tunisia but, through its output, in the whole Maghreb region, to make up for the complete lack of visibility of intersex people and intersex advocacy in the other Maghreb countries until very recently. Due to the mutual Arabic language base, resources and outreach can work cross-country. The geographical position of the Maghreb region in the Mediterranean, its languages (Arabic & French) and as well as centuries of history (including, but not limited to French colonialisation) have created strong links to Europe and, at the same time, classically leaves the region behind in regards to collaborations within international human rights activism. Including the Maghreb region into the scope of OII Europe, will allow OII Europe to strengthen intersex advocacy in the Maghreb region as well as in the Mediterranean region as a geographical area with its own cultural and historical dependencies.
