Intersex youth deserve an education where they can develop their full potential, safe & free from harassment & discrimination, and that represents them in an affirmative, positive & non-stigmatizing manner.
Meanwhile, school or university can be a difficult place for intersex youth: They experience bullying, discrimination and stigmatisation in educational settings. Textbooks and educational programs usually lack positive intersex representation, and, as the recent FRA LGBTI Survey 2019 shows, 54% of intersex respondents felt discriminated against by school or university personnel.
Every child’s right to quality education on the basis of equal opportunity is firmly enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. A child’s enjoyment of this right, however, depends on different factors, one of them being the school’s capacity to protect children from discrimination and harassment. Establishing school policies that oblige schools to create an inclusive and empowering environment is also key for protecting the rights of intersex children and adolescents to education.
The 2018 IGLYO LGBTQI Inclusive Education Report has shown that the main areas for improvement in regards to discrimination of LGBTQI students are compulsory education curricula, mandatory teacher training and data collection on bullying and harassment on grounds of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and expression or variation in sex characteristics. As of 2018, only two countries across Europe (Malta and Sweden) provide most of these measures with respect to sex characteristics specifically. Some regions in Spain have also developed inclusive laws and policies, but these have not been implemented nationally. By contrast, eleven countries have failed to implement any measures.
Key measures to protect intersex students from structural and verbal discrimination and harassment should therefore include: