InterAction

2024 was a huge and transformative year for us! A year of building, together.

Nationally, we’ve delivered the InterLink psychosocial support program with support from Queensland Council for LGBTI Rights. Our deputy executive director Bonnie Hart designed and leads this work, alongside Nat Hamam, our professional mental health practitioner. Their work has included new online group programs for parents and for children, as well as individual and group sessions for individuals and families. At the end of the year, the Australian Health Minister announced that we’ve been awarded $500,000 to continue the program, and we’re immensely grateful for this acknowledgement of the importance of this work. The program is initially funded to mid-2025 to develop new resources combatting sexual violence – we aim to publish these on the InterLink website, together with other resources for individuals and families, in the first half of the year.

We’ve also continued to auspice the YOUth&I project, led by Steph Lum, which has now published its phenomenal fourth anthology of writing and art by intersex youth.

On Intersex Awareness Day we soft-launched a first new Yellow Tick online training module, to help inform people about innate variations of sex characteristics. A Gender Agenda was also awarded the 2024 Darling intersex ally award.

Intersex Peer Support Australia held Kunarr Kiyakiya Matung, its successful 2024 retreat on beautiful Wonnarua country in the Hunter Valley of NSW, as well as a series of smaller community events in State capital cities.

Dr Morgan Carpenter, our executive director, has participated in work towards publication of a National Action Plan on LGBTIQA+ health and wellbeing. This included a large community consultation. While the Plan needs to be followed by proposals for implementation, it expresses an important commitment to “Supporting LGBTIQA+ people to make their own decisions about their bodies”.

We have collaborated in Interconnect Health, a major new Medical Research Future Fund project led (as in the project bidding process) by Morgan Carpenter. Morgan has taken up a part-time position as Associate Professor in the University of Sydney School of Public Health to lead this work, and reduced his hours at InterAction accordingly. Canberra Health Services and a range of other institutional and community partners are participating in this major 5-year work.

We have continually sought to address misinformation about intersex by government, media and civil society throughout the period. We’ve worked with the ABS on a range of issues including first population estimates and discussions about the next census. Unfortunately, misinformation and pervasive media conflations of intersex and LGBT populations mean that there will not be a question on innate variations of sex characteristics in the 2026 census.

We’ve continued to work across multiple other jurisdictions:

• The ACT government has continued to implement the first Australian protections from harmful practices in medical settings for people with many innate variations of sex characteristics, and staff and directors have been appointed to a new Restricted Medical Treatment Assessment Board. In the ACT, we have collaborated with A Gender Agenda, Relationships Australia, and Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT on a contract we’ve led to develop training packages for healthcare practitioners. We were able to expand Gabriel Filpi’s hours to 4 days/week from March 2024, to deliver this project. The contents have been warmly received.
• NSW Health has generously agreed to fund our new training and communications coordinator position for 2 years. Margie McCumstie took up this role in July and she’s been working with a range of institutions, including in NSW Health, to promote better understandings of our population and health needs.
• In Victoria, directors and staff including Tony Briffa, Morgan Carpenter and Bonnie Hart have worked with the State government to develop proposals for legislative protections from harmful practices in medical settings, following a commitment made by the government in 2021.
• In Queensland, our work has been hampered by pervasive State government conflations of innate variations of sex characteristics with gender identity issues, and what is likely an associated failure to recognise the harmful effect of new legal provisions on medical sex selection that facilitate the elimination of embryos with innate variations of sex characteristics. A new LGBTI strategy fails to commit to legislative protections from harmful practices. Despite these challenges, we are seeing ongoing State funding for the InterLink psychosocial support program via the new Gayawur Rainbow consortium and we’ve been delighted to welcome Gwen Smith to a new part-time Peer Navigator role.
• In Western Australia we’ve collaborated to address a range of health and legal issues in collaboration with Michelle McGrath, the president of Intersex Peer Support Australia and colleagues.
• We’ve also supported Simone-lisa Anderson (IPSA/Working It Out) and colleagues in relation to a range of health and human rights issues in Tasmania.

Internationally, we’ve worked closely with the Australian government and international community partners leading to the adoption of a first ever United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on the human rights of people with innate variations of sex characteristics. This was passed with no opposing votes in April 2024. Australia, Chile, Finland and South Africa collaborated to lead this work.

We secured additional new funding from Wellspring, our major philanthropic donor, to deliver a new depathologisation project. Led by Mauro Cabral Grinspan in Brussels, Belgium, this builds on a decade of work led by Mauro and Morgan; both are acknowledged in a crucial new systematic review by World Health Organisation staff on clinical rationales for unnecessary early medical interventions.

We’ve had to respond to hate and disinformation around the 2024 Olympics, and published a statement on International Day of Non-violence. Staff and directors have participated in a global bioethics statement calling for an end to unnecessary medical interventions. We’ve also welcomed the opportunity for staff to participate in a global summit of intersex community controlled organisations in Bangkok.

Internally, we’ve also welcomed Mira Bouchmouny to a new operations coordination role; her vitally important work is improving our operational and financial management systems and also supporting telehealth accreditation and fundraising processes. Mira, Bonnie and Morgan now comprise our senior management team.

We’ve published our first Theory of Change, following a period of public consultation, and Morgan has also published a peer-reviewed article on the context and goals of the Australian intersex movement.

Finally, Intersex Human Rights Australia and Intersex Peer Support Australia have now publicly united as InterAction for Health and Human Rights. Our two organisations have collaborated closely for more than a decade, and we’ve taken this step to strengthen and amplify our work. Intersex Peer Support Australia will now become a program of work by InterAction, alongside InterLink and our advocacy and training work. Our new name reflects the breadth and purpose of our work, to improve health and human rights outcomes for all people with innate variations of sex characteristics.

Thank you to our outgoing co-chair Dr Aileen Kennedy, and our incoming and continuing co-chairs Michelle McGrath and Tony Briffa. Thanks to all members, directors and staff, donors, and all our partners around the country and internationally. We look forward to continuing to collaborate in 2025.