After a controversial 2012 court case in Germany (for more information, see Chapter 5of the 2012 Annual report, on equality and non‑discrimination) the issue of male ircumcision has continued to be high on the European agenda. Despite the objections of those who see circumcision as an issue of religious freedom, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution on children’s right to physical integrity in October 2013.
This initiative aims to include medically unjustified violations of children’s physical integrity within the body of human rights standards. Governments are recommended to restrict certain practices, such as the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons and surgery to ‘normalise’ the genitalia of intersex children, until a child is old enough to consent or refuse consent. The resolution also calls on states to define the medical and sanitary conditions for these practices as well as adopt legal provisions to ensure that certain operations will not be undertaken before a child reaches the age of consent.
Children’s ombudspersons from five Nordic countries (the EU Member States Denmark, Finlandand Sweden, as well as Iceland and Norway) agreed in September to work with their respective governments to restrict male circumcision so that it is no longer performed on non‑consenting, underage boys for non‑medical reasons.
In addition, medical associations from European countries also voiced their opposition to routine male circumcision of infants and boys as a medically unnecessary procedure which goes against medical ethics. In a 2013 edition of the medical journal Pediatrics, paediatricians and medical associations agreed that “[code=c]ircumcision fails to meet the commonly accepted criteria for the justification of preventive medical procedures in children,” and that existing research does not justify “surgery before boys are old enough to decide for themselves”.