Harnessing law and policy for the protection of intersex individuals: facing up to lacunae in canadian legal frameworks against sex and gender discrimination

The mistreatment and basic human rights violations that the intersex community has faced, involving the right to bodily integrity, the right to autonomy, and the right to self - determination have long been ignored by legislative bodies and governments. Only in 2015, Malta became the first country to pass a comprehensive law banning medi-cally unnecessary genital surgeries on the grounds of the rights to gender identity, gen-der expression, and bodily autonomy. Legal protections around intersex individuals, while still in their infancy, are growing in a number of countries. However, few such laws have been written internationally, and no Canadian-specific explicit legal protec-tions exist. Moreover, medical guidelines for improving the social and legal status of intersex adolescents and adults glob-ally are sparse and are grounded neither in qualitative data nor in guidance produced by the affected community. We contend that protecting intersex persons from unjust practices and discrimination requires more stringent action from decision-makers. This article provides a comprehensive overview of existent legal and normative protections for intersex individuals across the world, re-vealing a problematic gap at the internation-al level, as well as in the Canadian-specific context.