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OII Europe

OII Europe

Organisation Intersex International Europe

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        • Our Toolkits
          • Legal ToolkitProtecting Intersex People in Europe: A toolkit for law and policy makers
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          • For your considerationYou are welcome to share the information and materials you find on our website. If not indicated otherwise all of our publications are based on the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you can share it while not changing any of its content and appearance and properly attributing OII Europe (and other collaborators of the specific item). If you would like to translate or utilize parts or whole items please make sure you contact us beforehand. Thank you :)
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Programs

Programs of OII Europe

Areas of work

Table Of Contents
  1. Policy & Advocacy Activities
  2. Awareness Raising
    • Translation of Resources
  3. Community & Capacity Building
    • Project RISE! Capacity Building of the European Intersex Movement
    • Community Event & Public Conference
  4. Refugees & Asylum Seekers
  5. Strategic Litigation

Our work includes several areas and activities we sorted under the following programs: policy and advocacy, awareness raising, community & capacity building, refugees and asylum seekers, and lastly, strategic litigation.

You can jump directly to each section via the table of contents menu on this page and find out more details.



Policy & Advocacy Activities

OII Europe’s policy work includes advocating on intersex issues and human rights with the European Commission, with the SOGI Unit of the CoE, or with the European Focal Point Network Meeting, among others.  We have authored several submissions, often in collaboration with allies and other NGOs, addressed to many institutions and bodies, including national governments, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the United Nations or the European Court of Human Rights. 

For an overview of intersex relevant areas and issues check our short list of issues here:

List of Issues
Protecting intersex people in Europe: A toolkit for law and policy makers


2021 IAW Campaign “10 Years International Intersex Forum”
Illustration from the 2020 campaign #IntersexLives
Translation of our Parents Toolkit

Awareness Raising

Raising awareness is one of OII Europe’s key measures to inform policy makers, stakeholders, professionals, media and the general public about the situation of intersex people living in Europe. Our goal is twofold: to foster human rights-based language and terminology that is depathologizing, destigmatising, empowering, appreciative, affirmative and developed by the intersex community and to make intersex people in Europe more aware of their human rights.

In our continuous work we transform existing, comprehensive OII Europe resources into shorter, topic-specific awareness raising material.

One example is our Interex Awareness Weeks-campaign of 2020: “Intersex Lives”. This campaign was based on a workshop during our OII Europe Community Event in Zagreb 2019, where the intersex community collected and shared short personal quotes of their dreams, hopes and fears: What makes us proud? What gives us joy? Many of the topics raised in those personal quotes will sound familiar, other quotes are more directly related to the life situation of intersex persons – a selection of issues that are highlighted in focus points on the campaign website are: health, trauma, discrimination, work & education and acceptance.

https://IntersexLives.oiieurope.org

Translation of Resources

Making our resources available in multiple languages

OII Europe is dedicated to making its policy work and empowering material available to intersex communities who can use it for their advocacy work across the Council of Europe region. In the light of limited funding for intersex organisations it is crucial to share materials among intersex activists and organisations. In order to make the content available in more languages we work with translators from the intersex community to ensure the quality of terminologies and a human rights based and depathologizing approach and sensitivity.

Examples for our translation work are our Toolkits and our multilingual community website intervisibility.eu



Community & Capacity Building

Our community building activities include creating safe spaces for intersex people and their families to connect and exchange information and strategies with peers from across Europe, e.g. through providing scholarships for the annual OII Europe Community Event & Conference and offering closed and lively online social media groups; supporting OII Europe members in their outreach to intersex people and their families; strengthening their skills in the area of community building through trainings, including on out-reach strategies, data protection and personal safety; having national intersex activists participate in OII Europe awareness raising campaigns and creation of information material as a means to give them and their families a voice, and, through that, create role models for intersex indiviuals and their families, and make societal discrimination and other human rights violations they suffer from visible across Europe.

Project RISE! Capacity Building of the European Intersex Movement

With this program we are building the capacity of the European intersex movement, providing low-threshold and easily accessible online information on intersex topics and increasing intersex visibility and awareness about intersex as a social issue rather than a medical issue.

Community Event & Public Conference

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 OII Europe Online Community Event and Conference for the first time was held completely online. Under the theme of “Staying Connected” we were delighted to once again be surrounded by our amazing community during the 3-day event consisting of a one-day public conference and a two-day closed community event. Over 94 participants registered for the event, for many this being their first ever Community event.

We hope to be able to return to our previous format of in-person meetings very soon again, as they are especially important to the intersex community to be able to meet, exchange and relax with peers, something that is still very rare among the every-day-lifes of intersex people and in local contexts.

Find more community related posts here
Project RISE!
participants of the OII Europe Community Event in Zagreb 2019
Community Event & Public Conference 2019 in Zagreb, Croatia


Flyer (click for download)

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Intersex people are particularly vulnerable in the asylum-seeking process. OII Europe sees an urgent need in increasing the professional capacities of organisations working with intersex asylum seekers and has therefore launched a new “OII Europe Intersex Refugees and Asylum Seekers Project” in 2020.

We started the “OII Europe Intersex Refugees and Asylum Seekers Project” with collecting positive desicions from intersex asylum seekers and performing an in-depth analysis of their positive decisions. Advancing in our project we conducted interviews with LGBTIQ organisations that are working with LGBTIQ asylum seekers as well as with legal experts. Doing so, we collected information on the needs of LGBTIQ organisations in working with intersex asylum seekers. What do they need in order to enhance their knowledge on intersex issues in the context of the asylum seeking process and therefore improve their capacities in working with intersex asylum seekers? The aim of this project is to create a toolkit for all professionals working with asylum seekers, which shall help them to identify and meet the needs of intersex asylum seekers.

A first overview about the project and an analysis of positive decisions of intersex asylum seekers was given at the COC Netherland Asylum Seeker Conference. OII Europe also participated at the Asylum Conference by EASO, an agency of the European Union which acts as a centre of expertise on asylum and provides evidence-based input for EU policymaking and legislation. At the EASO Asylum Conference OII Europe held a workshop on intersex asylum issues.

Check also our topic-page on refugees and asylum seekers here:

Topic Refugees & Asylum seekers


Strategic Litigation

In 2020, we held the first ever European Intersex Strategic Litigation Meeting. Nine intersex activists from eight Council of Europe countries and eight lawyers/ legal experts from seven Council of Europe countries attended the meeting. The participants shared knowledge, including about legal avenues and strategies before European Courts, the legal situation in Europe regarding intersex genital mutilation and legal gender recognition. During the meeting the participants discussed the need of a supportive network, a safe space for intersex people and related challenges.

With this initial meeting confirming our analyses about the need and the key impact of intersex strategic litigation – on one hand on the envisioned positive legal change, on the other the encouragement that it gives not only to individual intersex activists but also the entire intersex community – OII Europe has decided to intensify its work in the area of Strategic Litigation. This fruitful event also led to establishing a network in order to have a coordinated European intersex strategic litigation. We are excited to continue and increase our work in this new area.



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OII EUROPE
ORGANISATION INTERSEX INTERNATIONAL EUROPE e.V.
is a registered charitable non-for-profit-organisation
Court of Registration: Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany
Registry Number: VR 34983 B

Address: OII Europe, GSG Höfe, Helmholtzstraße 2-9, Gebäude 7, Aufgang A, 10587 Berlin GERMANY

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WE THANK OUR FUNDERS!

European Union

Funded by the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) of the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

And we are grateful for the support by our anonymous donors

PROJECT RISE!

European Union

The project „RISE! Fighting discrimination and increasing visibility of intersex people through capacity and knowledge building" was funded by the European Union's Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020).
The content of this project represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.


COOPERATION PARTNERS

Heinrich Boell Foundation

OII Europe © 2012–2023
Unless otherwise specified the content of this website may be used by the following Creative Commons licence:
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