This core program of InterAction has been led by our Executive Director, Dr Morgan Carpenter, since September 2013. Cumulatively, our staff and board team have many decades of experience in human rights advocacy, and peer and psychosocial support. We bring together qualifications and expertise in bioethics, psychology and allied health, law, history and public administration.

Both our policy and operations functions have been funded through foreign philanthropy, since staff were first appointed in December 2016. Global and institutional changes mean that this resourcing is under threat and may cease at the end of 2026.

Our impact

We have made significant contributions to health and human rights policy and practice in Australia and internationally. Our contributions to public life include:

Combatting harmful practices in medical settings

• Our work has been a key contributor to legislative protections from harmful practices in medical settings, and investment in hospital psychosocial support, in the Australian Capital Territory (2023). Under the name Intersex Human Rights Australia, our advocates were commended for our "diligent, passionate and highly intellectual work" and Executive Director Morgan Carpenter was specifically commended for his "tireless work" by Andrew Barr, ACT Chief Minister.
• Morgan Carpenter, Tony Briffa and Bonnie Hart played a key role in an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry into the health and human rights of people born with variations of sex characteristics, reporting in 2021.
• We also engage in debate with bioethicists and surgeons, including in this highly commended event for University of Melbourne medical students in June 2020.
• We engage in ongoing work to document human rights violations, contribute to human rights analysis on Australia and internationally, and reform medical protocols.
• Our work to promote improvements to clinical practices includes engagement with a Senate Committee which made recommendations in 2013 for major changes to clinical and legal practice, including through the development of national policy guidelines within in a human rights framework - see our article about the report Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia (October 2013) and cross-party Senate speeches on the issue (March 2014).

Our work is also international in scope:

• We have made a strong contribution to the first ever resolution on intersex health and human rights by the United Nations Human Rights Council in April 2024. Work on the resolution was led by UN member states Australia, Chile, Finland and South Africa.
• In 2017, Morgan Carpenter, was a signatory and member of the drafting committee for the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 on the application of international human rights law in relation to sex characteristics, gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• Engagement with international institutions including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organisation. Morgan Carpenter participated in the first UN expert meeting on ending human rights violations against intersex people. In 2024, Mauro Cabral Grinspan joined us to lead international work on intersex depathologisation.

Combatting stigma and discrimination

• We promote inclusion of protections from discrimination on grounds of sex characteristics in jurisdictions across Australia. This has typically replaced language that predated intersex organising and that has not understood our population, such as protections of people with 'indeterminate sex' on grounds of gender identity.
• We engage with governments, clinicians, human rights and other institutions and media to promote better understandings of our population and address the root causes of shame and stigma.

Promoting health and wellbeing

• We promote the resourcing and integration of peer support and intersex community-controlled psychosocial support into the delivery of healthcare services.
• Bonnie Hart has led design work to construct healthcare pathways consistent with the Darlington Statement community platform.
• We have contributed to the introduction in 2017 by the National Health and Medical Research Council of a quality of life test, when IVF businesses consider genetic selection to eliminate embryos with "serious genetic conditions". Some intersex variations are inappropriately described as serious genetic conditions, with evidence that family members of intersex people may be pressured to use IVF to avoid passing on relevant genes.

Community and infrastructure development

• While most of our community development work focuses on peer support, we also engage in policy-focused community development work. This includes development of a national community consensus statement, the 2017 Darlington Statement, agreed by organisations and individuals involved in advocacy and peer support across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Our Policy Program has also raised the funding and resources needed to recruit staff, deliver services, develop educational resources and training programs, and ensure the sound and effective functioning of our organisation.

Research and data collection

• We have contributed to improvements to research and data collection, including through the development and implementation of national statistical standards, in the 2020 Australian Bureau of Statistics standard on sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation. Unlike previous standards, which failed to respect the observed/assigned sex of people with intersex variations, this new standard respects our population.
• We engage in academic research, participate in intersex studies conferences, and groundbreaking Australian health research through the Medical Research Future Fund funded Interconnect Health Research program.

Our principles and platform

Our work and values are grounded in fundamental and universal human rights norms. We apply these to the needs and circumstances of people with innate variations of sex characteristics.

In doing so, our work is guided by a common community platform for Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, known as the Darlington Statement.

It is also informed by the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10, on the application of international human rights law in relation to sex characteristics and other attributes.

These underpin our organisational Theory of Change. The Theory of Change is available in graphic and text-only formats. It is complemented by a peer-reviewed journal article on the context and goals of the intersex movement in Australia, also by Dr Morgan Carpenter, published in March 2024.

History and context

This program began with a volunteer-only teams in our founding organisations, when known as OII Australia and the AIS Support Group Australia. It has been led by Morgan Carpenter since he became president of OII Australia in September 2013.

In December 2016, Morgan Carpenter and Tony Briffa were appointed as paid part-time Co-executive Directors of Intersex Human Rights Australia to lead this work. From May 2021, this program has been run by Dr Morgan Carpenter, Executive Director of InterAction. In 2024, Mauro Cabral Grinspan joined us to work on international depathologisation projects.

Read more about our policy work

Our resources collection contains extensive policy briefings and information about third-party resources, along with calls to action and personal stories.

The context for our work is challenging, with different silos and professions understanding our population in often radically different ways - and these predate establishment of our community controlled organisations. These are articulated in a Ambivalent attention and indeterminate outcomes: constructing intersex and DSD in Australian data, a 2022 publication written to inform the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare by Dr Morgan Carpenter.

Dr Morgan Carpenter has also written a peer-reviewed paper, published open access in 2024, on the context and goals of the intersex movement in Australia. The paper is part of a special issue of Social Sciences journal, Centring intersex: global and local dimensions.

Read a timeline of the history of our movement in Australia, and the legislative and policy context.