OII Europe submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy
Submission 30. September 2020
Intersex children experience severe breaches of their right to privacy
The right to privacy includes a wide range of overlapping and interrelated rights protecting the individual’s freedom as long as their actions do not interfere with the rights and freedoms of others. The ICCPR, Article 17, defines several components that apply to breaches of rights intersex children experience, such as ‘family’ and ‘home’ and ‘correspondence’. Provided that the definition of private life cannot be an exhaustive one, the Human Rights Committee has defined several components, including that the notion of privacy refers to “the sphere of a person’s life in which he or she can freely express his or her identity, be it by entering into relationships with others or alone“. Similarly the European Court of Human Rights has defined private life as “multiple aspects of the person’s physical and social identity”. According to the ECtHR, personal autonomy and self-determination fall under the rights protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, “Right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. It also found that physical and moral integrity of the person are covered and that States have the obligation to actively secure those rights.
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