November 8, 2016
LGBTQI
The place for stories of intersex people across Europe.
OII Europe launches European website with information on intersex in 23 languages on the 8th of November 2016.
Today partner organisation, OII Europe, is proud to announce the launch of its intervisibility.eu website. That milestone project will for the first time make information about intersex available in 23 European languages with hopes to increase that base in the future. Over time intervisibility.eu will gather audio-visual testimonials from all over Europe, as well as articles about the situation of intersex people in different European countries. It will be a platform for intersex people to share and a resourceful website for allies and NGOs to learn directly from such expertise.
Dan Christian Ghattas, Co-Chair of OII Europe, explains: “For about 20 years now, intersex people and activists worked on making their voices and their lives visible. But stigma and silence are hard to overcome. On the top of this European activism deals with a vast diversity of languages. This is wonderful as the different cultures enrich our activism. But it also makes reaching out on a regional level so much more challenging for everyone. We hope that intervisibility.eu will empower intersex people in all European Countries to come out in their language and their region, get in touch with each other and with us and stand up for their human rights.”
“Most of the current human rights based information is only available in English, but our lives happen to be real, in every language ”, points out Mael Le Braz, French Steering Board Member of OII Europe, and Kitty Anderson, Secretary of OII Europe from Iceland adds: “The intervisibility.eu project aims at making us visible in our native tongues all across Europe.”
Miriam van der Have, Co-Chair of OII Europe agrees: “We need to strengthen national and local organisations everywhere in Europe. Providing information about intersex in a person’s native language can enable this person to understand for the first time that they are in fact intersex, that there is a human rights based word for their bodies and their experience of shame and trauma.” Kris Günther, Steering Board Member from Belgium adds: “Intersex people often need to learn that they are not a pathology but a human being with human rights.”
Euan Platt, Executive Co-ordinator of IGLYO warmly welcomes this initiative, adding “IGLYO’s close partnership wit OII Europe over the last two years has helped ensure the visibility of intersex young people is on the increase, through joint projects such as the ‘I’ Have Rights study session held in April 2016 and the hugely successful ‘We Are Here- A Message to Intersex Youth’ film launched earlier this month. IGLYO looks forward to future work with OII Europe to ensure more intersex youth feel confident and supported to share their experiences and show that age is not a barrier to intervisibility”.
