Yesterday, the Swedish Parliament took the historic decision that trans people who were forcibly sterilised (between 1972 and 2013) should be paid compensation. This is a worldwide first, and it is the result of a long fight from trans activists.

Their initial fight was against the requirement that trans people must be sterilised in order to get their gender legally recognised. 

This major human rights violation stopped in Sweden in 2013 – but the work of activists did not end there. 160 individuals who had been forcibly sterilised submitted a claim for compensation and in April 2016, the Swedish Government announced such a measure would be put forward.

It is estimated that 600-700 people will be eligible for this compensation of 22,500 euros. 

As Emelie Mire Åsell, the trans and intersex spokesperson of RFSL says, “money can’t undo the harm of unwillingly losing your reproductive abilities, but the monetary compensation is an important step for the state to make amends to all those subjected to this treatment”. Now, RFSL hopes that the government will also officially apologise to the whole trans community for the harm done.

ILGA-Europe calls on the 27 European governments that have not yet outlawed the forced sterilisation of trans people to urgently put an end to this extremely harmful practice.   

• RFSL’s statement on the Swedish Parliament’s decision can be found here.
• Sweden currently sits at 12th in the Rainbow Europe ranking on law and policy.

ILGA-Europe aim to achieve equality for intersex people and ensure they are protected against human rights violations, discrimination and violence based on sex characteristics.

ILGA-Europe aim to include the needs of intersex people in all our work. One of ILGA-Europe’s key role is to contribute to raising awareness about the ongoing discrimination faced by intersex people in our societies, and to enable LGBT organisations to be supportive and inclusive of intersex human rights concerns and intersex people.

Specifically, we want to contribute to ensuring the full respect of the right to bodily integrity of intersex people.

We also call for quick, transparent and accessible legal gender recognition procedures, available to intersex persons, and based on self-determination. Information about those procedures needs to be easily available and understandable.

We advocate for non-discrimination legislation and policies that protect intersex people, as well as specific measures tackling hate crime and incitement based on sex characteristics.

This toolkit will explain the major challenges intersex people face in different areas of life, set out intersex people’s demands, provide information about current political developments, as well as give advice on how to become a great intersex ally.

The cornerstone of successful advocacy is knowledge. If you want to know how you can work for change, this toolkit will help. It will explain the major challenges intersex people face in different areas of life, set out intersex people’s demands, provide information about current political developments, as well as give advice on how to become a great intersex ally.

ILGA-Europe and Transgender Europe jointly submitted input for a public consultation on measures for improving the recognition of prescriptions issued in another European Union Member State.

Key concerns highlighted in our submission:

• We are worried by the fact that in some cases, trans persons were denied products on the basis that dispensers disapprove of their gender reassignment.
• It seems that some medicines, on which trans persons very much depend, are available only in some member states and not in other.
• We consider that the identification of the patient based solely on the first name or on the gender can be problematic in the case of patients whose appearance does not match the first name and the gender mentioned on the prescription.
• It seems that there is an extensive lack of knowledge within the trans community about the possibility of getting medicines prescribed in another member state.