Fight for your right to integrity: Caster Semenya
Image: Reuters
The World Athletics Federation prescribes female athletes how high their testosterone levels should be. Anyone who is above the maximum value has to endure hormonal treatment. A report shows how discriminatory the rule is.
Annet Negesa is working on a sporty comeback. The runner is training in Berlin, as shown in a video that the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) uses to accompany its 127-page report, which was published on Friday. The title: “They drive us out of sport”. The content: the effects of the rules with which the World Athletics Federation (formerly IAAF, now World Athletics, WA) imposes a testosterone maximum value on women who compete on distances from 400 meters to a mile.
Women with certain gender characteristics, called 46 XY DSD in the regulations. Women like Caster Semenya from South Africa, Olympic champion over 800 meters, Annet Negesa from Uganda, Africa champion 2011, before she had to undergo an operation that she never agreed to. Women like Francine Niyonsaba from Burundi, second behind Caster Semenya in Rio de Janeiro 2016, who was put into a press conference by HRW on Friday, said: “We are told we have to change our bodies, but it makes no sense to us.” The organization demands that the rules must be withdrawn, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must ensure that international sports associations adopt a human rights strategy.
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