Africa-Press – Botswana. Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Ms Annah Mokgethi has highlighted the need to have some birth rights universally accepted and certified.
Contributing to a debate on Monday, Ms Mokgethi said it was important to enshrine protection of intersex persons in the Constitution arguing that “this is very important and has a big meaning to these people.”
The minister was responding to a request by Member of Parliament for Palapye, Mr Onneetse Ramogapi to have the word ‘intersex’ be deleted from the clause in the Constitution Amendment Bill of 2024 that is currently at committee stage before Parliament for interrogation by legislators.
She implored legislators to differentiate between ‘intersex’ and ‘same sex’, saying the two had different meanings and therefore should not be treated the same.
Supporting the minister’s arguments was Lentsweletau-Mmopane MP, Ms Nnaniki Makwinja who opined that protection of intersex persons was meant to allow such people to have some identity.
Ms Makwinja also said protecting their rights via the Constitution would allow individuals with such features to make informed decisions at a stage when their bodies, gender and personalities had further developed.
Earlier, motivating his request to delete the word ‘intersex’ from the clause in the Bill, Mr Ramogapi argued that intersex was some form of disability, hence should not be singled out.
He was also of the view that the word ‘intersex’ was embedded with some ambiguity and therefore the clause prone to abuse because some people may choose to be in between the two genders (male or female).
“Some churches believe that intersex persons should not be discriminated because they had some form of disability.
They have some reservations that the clause referring to the intersex persons allowed room for abuse of the law because some people may choose to be in between the two genders,” he said.
On the contrary, Minister for State President, Mr Kabo Morwaeng appealed to legislators to differentiate between intersex and same sex. Mr Morwaeng said it was important to realise that singling out ‘intersex’ was deliberate in order to address problems that were already in the public domain. He thus appealed to other legislators to disagree with the proposed amendment and that culminated in Parliament rejecting Mr Ramogapi’s request.
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