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- Jan 30, 2008
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Kenyas parliament told to make laws recognising children born with both sex organs
High Court Judge Isaac Lenaola
NAIROBI, KENYA: When a mother delivers, the baby is expected to be either a boy or a girl.
However, there are some born with both genitals. Apparently, their fate is left in the hands of doctors, who, at the time of delivery, declare them male or female depending on the visibly dominant sexual organ.
What becomes of their identity? Do they have a right to be registered as a third gender?
The High Court was left to settle this stalemate and it declared that a child born with both genitals has a right to be registered after a mother of a baby, allegedly born at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), moved to the court, seeking to compel Attorney General, Githu Muigai, the Registrar of Births and KNH to issue him or her with a birth certificate.
In a ruling by High Court Judge Isaac Lenaola, the issue of inter-sex has been shunned out of legislation. Justice Lenaola recommended that Parliament should enact laws to protect this gender, adding that children born with both genitals are not different from those with either.
Sometime in May 2009, a woman bore a child bearing male and female genitalia. This prompted the hospital to issue her with various documents used in the process of carrying out genitogram tests, x-rays and scans on the child, and a question mark (?) inserted in the column indicating the childs sex.
LEGAL PROTECTION
To date, the child has not been issued with a birth certificate, causing the woman to move to court. She argued the entry of a question mark on the childs medical and treatment notes as a description of its gender offended the childs rights to legal recognition, eroded its dignity and violated its right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.
In the suit dated May 24 2013, the petitioners; the mother of the child and The Cradle- a childrens rights body, asked the court to order that children born with both genitals ( inter-sex infants) should be legally recognised and protected.
Further, the petitioners, through their lawyer John Chigiti, sought to have a declaration that all surgery on intersex infants that is not therapeutic, be approved by a court by way of a judicial review order under Article 23 of the Constitution and under the principles of the best interest of the inter-sexual child.
In the case, Chigiti submitted that under Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law, including intersex, and that in Kenya, legal recognition is achieved through the issuance of statutory documents known as an acknowledgment of birth slip and a birth certificate, which is issued by the Registrar of Births and Deaths.
Chigiti told the court it had become problematic for inter-sex children to be registered because the form only provides for male and female sex markers.
He submitted that the said provision denies an intersex child the right to legal recognition and violates Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that the child has a right to be registered immediately after birth and have the right to a name.
Standard Digital News : : Health - Kenya?s parliament told to make laws recognising children born with both sex organs
High Court Judge Isaac Lenaola
NAIROBI, KENYA: When a mother delivers, the baby is expected to be either a boy or a girl.
However, there are some born with both genitals. Apparently, their fate is left in the hands of doctors, who, at the time of delivery, declare them male or female depending on the visibly dominant sexual organ.
What becomes of their identity? Do they have a right to be registered as a third gender?
The High Court was left to settle this stalemate and it declared that a child born with both genitals has a right to be registered after a mother of a baby, allegedly born at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), moved to the court, seeking to compel Attorney General, Githu Muigai, the Registrar of Births and KNH to issue him or her with a birth certificate.
In a ruling by High Court Judge Isaac Lenaola, the issue of inter-sex has been shunned out of legislation. Justice Lenaola recommended that Parliament should enact laws to protect this gender, adding that children born with both genitals are not different from those with either.
Sometime in May 2009, a woman bore a child bearing male and female genitalia. This prompted the hospital to issue her with various documents used in the process of carrying out genitogram tests, x-rays and scans on the child, and a question mark (?) inserted in the column indicating the childs sex.
LEGAL PROTECTION
To date, the child has not been issued with a birth certificate, causing the woman to move to court. She argued the entry of a question mark on the childs medical and treatment notes as a description of its gender offended the childs rights to legal recognition, eroded its dignity and violated its right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.
In the suit dated May 24 2013, the petitioners; the mother of the child and The Cradle- a childrens rights body, asked the court to order that children born with both genitals ( inter-sex infants) should be legally recognised and protected.
Further, the petitioners, through their lawyer John Chigiti, sought to have a declaration that all surgery on intersex infants that is not therapeutic, be approved by a court by way of a judicial review order under Article 23 of the Constitution and under the principles of the best interest of the inter-sexual child.
In the case, Chigiti submitted that under Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law, including intersex, and that in Kenya, legal recognition is achieved through the issuance of statutory documents known as an acknowledgment of birth slip and a birth certificate, which is issued by the Registrar of Births and Deaths.
Chigiti told the court it had become problematic for inter-sex children to be registered because the form only provides for male and female sex markers.
He submitted that the said provision denies an intersex child the right to legal recognition and violates Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that the child has a right to be registered immediately after birth and have the right to a name.
Standard Digital News : : Health - Kenya?s parliament told to make laws recognising children born with both sex organs