Intersex refugees and asylum seekers can often experience a range of additional problems due to being intersex. OII Europe is working towards increasing intersex sensitivity and knowledge among professionals working with intersex refugees and asylum seekers.
With our new flyer we highlight specific needs of intersex refugees and asylum seekers and provide a list of recommendations what current migration policies should do.
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Further content of the flyer:
Intersex Refugees and Asylum Seekers are at risk of encountering:
- Intersexphobic and LGBTQ-phobic behaviour and violence at borders and refugee facilities
- In countries experiencing ongoing conflict/ war: Problems with leaving the country of origin with a male gender marker in official documents even when person’s gender identity is different
- Lack of access to necessary hormones and medications
- People coming from occupied territories being victims of intersex-phobic violence or of being drafted into army when having a male gender marker despite having a different gender identity
Specific Needs of Intersex Refugees and Asylum Seekers can include, among others:
- Hormonal treatment, HRT, hormone blockers
- Antidepressants and other mental health medication
- Intersex-friendly professional help for mental health
- Bone density medication and medical care
- Salt-wasting medication
- Adrenal supplements, Corticosteroids, Glucocorticoids
- Thyroid medication
- Safe housing in refugee shelters and camps
Specific Needs of Families and Parents with Intersex Children can include, among others:
- Safe housing
- Human rights-based intersex-friendly doctors
- Translators familiar with human rights-based intersex terminology
- Contact with intersex organisations
- Intersex peer counseling
- Intersex-friendly counsellors (ensuring that decisions concerning the child’s health are made free from any pressure and according to the child’s wishes and best interest)
The Current Migration Policies should:
- Guarantee the option to leave the country based on gender identity, not gender marker in documents
- Guarantee sensitivity at the borders and in refugee facilities and shelters, including training staff on intersex people’s needs and realities
- Provide simple access to needed hormones, hormone blockers and/or medication in a new country, as well as in humanitarian aid
- Guarantee privacy in refugee shelters and forbid harassment, hate speech and hate crime aimed at intersex people, due to their real or perceived diverse SOGIESC
- Provide safe housing for intersex people, with a focus on attending to their specific needs.
- Require mandatory privacy options and non-discrimination rules installed in refugee facilities
- Guarantee financial support for all refugees and local peer-support groups, including intersex organisations
- Require humanitarian aid efforts to cooperate with local intersex organisations in order to access more people from the communities
- Make sure that local intersex and LGBTQ organisations in countries that accept refugees are supported by the government (financially and logistically) in their safe housing network creation and other efforts
- When providing medical support, forbid doctors from pressuring intersex persons to undergo non-vital medical interventions that do not correspond to their real medical needs and which are motivated by psycho-social factors, or their parents to authorise such interventions.
- Provide intersex people with support to be able to relocate to safer countries
- Simplify access to medical insurance and required medicine and hormones in the destination country or transit country (including in the case of detention)
- Guarantee that translators and interpreters are familiar with human rights-based intersex terminology for times when communication in legal institutions or during interviews is required
- Provide intersex-friendly mental health support
- Allow refugees to safely seek asylum and to transit to the country of their choice, not just the first country they entered
Are you an intersex refugee or asylum seeker?
Would you be willing to share your experience?
Your input would be very valuable for our work on improvement of services for intersex refugees and asylum seekers in the future!
Please contact us!
