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Human Rights Watch
Intersex Rights Advance Based on Evidence, Principle
Intersex Awareness Week is marked annually to recall a small group of protesters who picketed the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1996 for ignoring the rights of children born with sex variations. While the academy has not budged, medical institutions and governments around the world are increasingly recognizing that people born with intersex variations deserve bodily autonomy.
Intersex children are born with chromosomes, gonads, hormone function or internal or external sex organs that don’t match typical social expectations. For over half a century, doctors around the world have routinely performed surgery on newborns to standardize bodies so that they align with social gender norms. These nonconsensual surgeries are medically unnecessary to perform at such a young age. They also carry significant risk of trauma and other forms of lifelong harm, including a loss of sexual pleasure and/or function, incontinence, chronic pain, scarring, and early-onset osteoporosis.
Over 50 evaluations by United Nations human rights treaty bodies on the conduct of various countries have concluded that nonconsensual surgeries to alter the sex characteristics of children born with intersex traits are human rights violations. Countries including Malta, Greece, and Spain, as well as parts of Australia and India, have banned nonconsensual surgeries, while the UN Human Rights Council passed its first resolution on the issue last year and issued a comprehensive report this year.
In January, the US Department of Health and Human Services published a landmark report on intersex health equity that called for ending nonconsensual surgeries. In August, delegates of the Australian Medical Association unanimously supported a resolution to recognize the harm that medical professionals had inflicted on intersex people. “Recognising this harm is the first step,” a physician said in support of the resolution. “Next we must call for legislated protections, guidelines founded in lived experience and evidence.”
The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers in October urged that “Member States should enact legislation that explicitly and specifically prohibits any medical intervention on a person’s sex characteristics…without their prior, free, informed, express and documented consent.”
Intersex Awareness Week is a good reminder of how far things have come and how much further they need to go. The evidence of harm inflicted on intersex people is plentiful. Undoing it requires respecting the principle of bodily autonomy and integrity, a core human rights obligation.
EU to Sign Uzbekistan Partnership Deal Despite Rights Abuses
(Brussels, October 22, 2025) – Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will pay a high-level visit to Brussels on October 24, 2025, to sign a partnership deal with the EU setting out a new stage of closer relations and cooperation.
While the new EU-Uzbekistan Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement specifies respect for democratic principles and human rights and fundamental freedoms as an “essential element” of the agreement, Uzbekistan’s rights record has worsened in many areas since negotiations started six years ago, Human Rights Watch said today.
“In signing this agreement without requiring specific improvements to ensure the ability of independent civic groups or media professionals to carry out their work or address the country’s history of impunity for abuses, the EU has missed an important opportunity to bring about positive change,” said Iskra Kirova, Europe and Central Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The EU and its member states should now insist that Uzbekistan fulfil its essential obligations under the new deal and be prepared to raise tough issues in bilateral relations.”
In the last several years, Uzbek authorities have ramped up restrictions on independent human rights activism and freedom of expression, targeting activists, bloggers, and others, including with unfounded criminal charges such as “insulting the president online.” At least two bloggers have been put into forced psychiatric detention in violation of their rights to liberty and security and health.
Nongovernmental organizations are subject to excessive and burdensome registration requirements and independent groups are prevented from registering. No progress has been made on a stalled code for nongovernmental groups. In June 2024, parliament passed a law allowing the authorities to designate as “undesirable” and ban from the country any foreigner on overly broad and vague grounds of contradicting state sovereignty or discrediting Uzbekistan. Consensual same sex relations between men remains criminalized.
In July 2022, security forces in Uzbekistan used unjustified, including lethal, force to disperse mainly peaceful protesters in Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan’s autonomous republic. Since then, the authorities have largely denied accountability for the deaths and grave injuries that occurred. However, a peaceful Karakalpak blogger and lawyer, Dauletmurat Tajimuratov, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his alleged role in the protests. His allegations of ill-treatment and torture have been ignored.
Although Uzbekistan has eliminated state-imposed forced labor in its cotton sector, risks of forced labor and restrictions on freedom of association for agricultural workers in Uzbekistan persist.
The EU’s signing of the agreement with Uzbekistan takes place amid intensifying engagement between the EU and Central Asian countries with the first EU-Central Asia summit held in April 2025 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The summit declaration put freedom of expression and association, an enabling environment for civil society and independent media, and the protection of human rights defenders at the core of EU-Central Asia relations.
But these commitments have not resulted in substantial human rights improvements, and neither has the preferential EU market access granted to Uzbekistan in exchange for implementation of international labor and human rights conventions. Energy, transport, access to raw materials and security cooperation have instead dominated bilateral relations at the expense of advancements on rights.
Rights protections and the rule of law are essential to secure the EU’s interests in this partnership, including for sustainable trade and security cooperation, Human Rights Watch said. The European Parliament and EU member states that need to ratify the agreement in the coming months should assert that the continued stifling of civic activism, curbs on free expression and assembly, or the risks of forced labour, imperil bilateral relations.
“Signing this agreement is an important milestone,” Kirova said. “The EU should make clear that Uzbekistan’s human rights obligations are non-negotiable and that it will monitor closely and insist on the implementation of all aspects of the deal.”
Russian Forces Deliberately Attack UN Aid Convoy
On October 14, news broke that Russian forces, using drones, had attacked a United Nations interagency convoy delivering humanitarian aid to Bilozerka in the region of Kherson, southern Ukraine. The next day, a Russian-military affiliated Telegram channel posted video evidence of the attack for the world to see.
Click to expand Image Russian forces used quadcopter drones to attack a United Nations inter-agency convoy delivering humanitarian aid to Bilozerka in Khersonska region, in southern Ukraine, October 14, 2025. © 2025 Oleksandr Prokudin, head of Kherson Regional Military AdministrationHaving spent the better part of a year investigating similar Russian drone attacks in Kherson, talking to survivors, and analyzing hundreds of videos like this one from Bilozerka, I was still shocked but not surprised.
Russia’s military is using these, quadcopter drones with cameras that enable the operator to see in real time what they are striking, to conduct a brutal, devastating campaign in the Kherson region. Killing and injuring civilians in their hundreds each month, they are attacking people in their homes, farmers harvesting crops, ambulance teams responding to emergencies, and humanitarian workers trying to aid those most in need.
In its latest monthly report, the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that short-range drones, similar to those used in the attack on the convoy, continue to be the leading cause of civilian casualties in areas near the front line, with 54 killed and 272 injured during September.
Less than 24 hours after the aid convoy was attacked, a 4-minute video taken by one of the drones was uploaded to Russian military-affiliated Telegram channels, showing in great detail how Russian operators flew at least three drones with explosives, striking two clearly marked UN aid trucks.
Based on a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, no worker was injured, but both trucks were damaged and set ablaze.
Click to expand Image Two screengrabs of the live video feed showing Russian quadcopter drone's moments before impacting clearly marked UN vehicles, October 15, 2025.The Russian drone operators knew they were targeting a UN convoy. That they shared the video for all to see indicates they do not believe they will face any consequences.
They should not count on it. The International Criminal Court (ICC), Ukrainian and domestic authorities from other countries are investigating war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. The ICC has issued arrest warrants against six senior Russian officials – including President Vladmir Putin.
As Russia, the United States, and others who fear the court’s reach try to undermine the ICC, this brazen, unlawful attack should remind governments of their responsibility to stand up for justice and the institutions that pursue it.