Genital mutilation and excision of women and girls performed in certain countries as part of ritual ceremonies and also on intersexed children for “normative” purposes constitute a violation of one of the most fundamental rights of women, girls and children.

We encourage States to intervene rapidly to prevent such harmful and discriminatory practices and stress that their elimination is an indispensable element for achieving the "Millennium Development Goals": improving the health of mothers and equality of the sexes.

We approve the Human Right’s Commission of the City of San Francisco which on April 25, 2005 boldly denounced the genital mutilation practiced in Western countries on intersexed children as “quasi” rituals of “normalization”. The excision or reduction of an enlarged clitoris of intersexed children is indeed a type of ritual which has no other justification than social norms and therefore cannot be justified on any medical grounds such as preserving the health of the patient.

We with the NGO V-Day, an international organization which campaigns to end violence against women and children including genital mutilation, insist that all practices which are said to be “medical” which violate the integrity of intersexed children by means of surgery and hormone treatments be denounced as criminal.

We encourage international women’s and children’s organisations also to condemn the crimes of genital mutilation of intersexed children performed in a medical setting. An industry built on horrific violations of the individual which perpetuates barbarous, sexist crimes reminiscent of the plague which far exceed the traditional genital mutilations in countries such as Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Yemen and Oman.

We estimate that 430 million women, girls, and intersexed children in the world have been subjected to genital mutilation either termed ritualistic or “normative” of which 130 million are ritualistic genital mutilation and 300 million are “normative” mutilation of children who are born intersexed if one refers to the American estimates.

We encourage international human rights organisations and Western governments to be consistent. To condemn 130 million crimes committed by others is a positive step but to conceal the 300 million crimes committed on intersex infants is indicative of an intense cruelty similar to that of the Nazis who successfully operated their concentration camps in secret.

We call attention to the fact that the genital mutilations of our intersexed brothers and sisters from all over the world started after 1950. That is, just after the data from experimental sexual surgeries and hormonal treatments conducted by the Nazis in these same concentration camps could be exploited for other purposes.

We anvigorously affirm, in agreement with the genetic research now available, that intersexed individuals are a normal and natural expression of the biodiversity within the human species just like the colour of the skin, the hair or any other morphological aspect. To declare intersexed people to be abnormal based just on their genitalia is similar to racism. In ancient times, we were put to death at birth. During the Middle Ages our enlarged clitoris indicated that we were an emanation of the devil and we were burnt alive. Today we are normalised with scalpels or we are put to death before birth. Is this how we achieve human progress?

Therefore, all activists of organizations around the world who condemn persecution of intersexed persons encourage all countries which have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to formally prohibit all crimes of genital mutilation without distinction, whether they be ritualistic or said to be “normalizing.”

Signed and accepted in Geneva, world capital of human rights and rights for oppressed minorities, June 25, 2005.