Combating Discrimination, Violence and Harmful Practices Against Intersex Persons

This paper investigates the structural and systemic injustices faced by intersex persons in Pakistan, exposing a deep disconnect between the constitutional, statutory, and international human rights frameworks and the lived realities of intersex individuals. By tracing the genealogy of the Khawaja Sira community and unpacking the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018, the paper critiques the legislative conflation of transgender and intersex identities. It highlights how the collapse of legal categories not only erases intersex subjectivity but facilitates institutional exclusion, rendering intersex persons invisible in state documentation, family law, health care, and inheritance structures. The authors argue that the 2023 decision of the Federal Shariat Court has reversed previous gains, reintroducing statelessness and disenfranchisement by revoking legal recognition rights. Through the lens of international instruments such as the ICCPR, CRC, and UDHR, the paper situates Pakistan’s legal obligations within a broader human rights framework and critiques the paradoxical co-existence of formal legal equality and actual legal discrimination. It explores how systemic denial of marriage, education, healthcare, and safe economic participation traps intersex individuals in cycles of poverty, violence, and marginalisation. The paper also engages with cultural practices and harmful medical interventions, cautioning against the normalisation of non-consensual surgeries under the guise of social conformity. This critical analysis urges a re-imagination of legal and social systems that move beyond tokenistic inclusion, and toward radical structural reform rooted in dignity, self-identification, and recognition of intersex lives as equal and autonomous.