Intersex Asia proudly launches “Intersex Justice in Asia: A Regional Comparative Perspective,” a synthesis report drawing together our twelve country research publications into a single, region-wide picture of the fight for intersex human rights.
Closing the Intersex Knowledge Gap
Since 2021, Intersex Asia has worked toward a clear and defined objective: closing the knowledge gap surrounding the rights and lived experiences of the intersex community across Asia. That work took shape as twelve country research reports- first the South Asian reports on India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and later, the Southeast Asian reports on the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, and Singapore. Each report stood on its own as a critical snapshot of the legal, medical, and social realities faced by intersex people in that country.
Today, we bring that body of work together. Intersex Justice in Asia is a contextual macro-level analysis that reads the twelve country reports side by side, using the Asian Intersex Statement 2023 as its analytical framework. It is worth noting that while the report references the region broadly, Intersex Asia’s own scope of work currently remains primarily concentrated in South and Southeast Asia – and it is this footprint that the report reflects.
Regionally unified intersex picture
What emerges is a region united less by shared progress than by shared failure. Across common law, civil law, and religious legal systems alike, the report finds that the bodily integrity of intersex people is almost universally violated, with non-consensual “normalising” surgeries continuing on infants who cannot consent. It documents a “data void” in countries like Laos and Cambodia, where intersex people remain statistically invisible to the state, and traces how the conflation of intersex traits with transgender identities – Hijra in Bangladesh, Waria in Indonesia, among others – often subsumes distinct intersex needs under broader SOGIESC advocacy.
Alongside this legal and medical picture, the report turns its attention to the intersex activists and organisations doing the work of change on the ground. It documents the community-building, awareness-raising, and grassroots advocacy that intersex-led organisations across the region are sustaining, often with little institutional support. This includes Intersex Philippines, which continues to push for the Cagandahan bill; Campaign for Change in Nepal, whose awareness-raising and advocacy work continues to push for reforms at all levels; and Intersex Thailand, pushing for comprehensive legislation for protection of intersex rights in the country- to name just a few of the organisations whose everyday work this report is grounded in.
This is, we believe, a region at a genuine crossroads. The legislative openings in countries like Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Philippines and Thailand show that rights-based reform in Asia is not a distant aspiration but an achievable reality. Realising that potential elsewhere in the region will depend on the choices made now by those with the power to act. Donors, UN-based institutions, and national governments across South and Southeast Asia have all, in various ways, pledged to the promise at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals: to leave no one behind. We ask that this pledge be extended, in practice and in funding, to intersex people – through dedicated, intersex-led funding streams, through the depathologisation of national laws and medical protocols, and through the meaningful inclusion of intersex voices in policy spaces from which they are so often absent.
We invite you to read the [full report] and stand with us as we take this evidence into the region’s advocacy, policy, and funding conversations.
Previous country reports for South Asia and Southeast Asia are available here.
We at Intersex Asia want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the researchers, community members, and partner organisations across all twelve countries who made this report possible. Your knowledge, trust, and lived experience are the foundation of everything in these pages. Thank you for standing with us.
