AIGA Seminar "Genital Autonomy and the Rights of the Child - A Voice for the Voiceless"

20 November is the anniversary of the UN General Assembly adopting the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ratified by Australia in December 1990.

AIGA marks the occasion this year with a seminar dedicated to one overlooked and even avoided right of all children: the Right to Genital Autonomy.

CRC declares the right of EVERY child without sex, race, ethnic or religious discrimination to protection from all forms of physical and mental violence, maltreatment cruel treatment, and from traditional practices prejudicial to their health.

These rights are breached today in Australia for girls, boys and intersex babies and children, for cultural social and religious reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. AIGA calls all unnecessary genital surgery or cutting a “mutilation”. A world-wide movement of rights bodies is putting this Right of Autonomy on the international agenda.

AIGA is the only children's rights body in Australia championing the right of every girl, boy and intersex child to protection from medically unnecessary cutting or alteration of their genitals until they are old enough to give full consent.

Speaker Panel

• Dr Olayide Ogunsiji (Western Sydney University) is a midwife and consultant formerly of Nigeria who will explain how social factors still expose girls from African communities are exposed to cultural cutting (FGM/C) both in Australia and by being taken overseas for cutting.
• Prof Juliet Richters (Kirby Institute) is a well-known sexuality researcher who will address how some harms are deliberately ignored by researchers who promote male circumcision (MGM/C) as a supposed public health benefit.
• Travis Wisdom (Uni SA) is an Adelaide doctoral candidate who will explore how Australian courts avoid the human rights of children and pursue “normalisation” in decisions about intersex surgery and irreversible hormonal treatments (IGM/C).
• Paul Mason (former Children's Commissioner for Children in Tasmania) a Brisbane family law barrister who will examine those Articles of the CRC that require Governments, courts and parents to protect the right of babies and children to grow up without unnecessary cutting so they can make their own choices as adults.

The day-long seminar will be held in the Short Courses Venue at UTS in the heart of Sydney, 6 minutes walk from Central Railway.

As with all cultural change, understanding and education are the starting point. AIGA welcomes you to continue the changes needed to eliminate these rights abuses and give a voice to the most vulnerable.