The Ombudsman for Children in Sweden, a government agency which is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), argued on Saturday that circumcision is a practice that contravenes the basic rights of boys.

The Ombudsman for Children is a government agency which is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
"Circumcising a child without medical justification nor his consent contravenes this child's human rights," wrote Fredrik Malmberg in a text co-signed with representatives from the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Swedish Society of Health Professionals, the Swedish Pediatric Society, and the Swedish Association of Pediatric Surgeons, and published in the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
"The operation is painful, irreversible and can lead to dangerous complications," he said.
A law passed in 2001 by the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, authorised circumcision and allowed a religious authority to perform the operation if the child is under two months old. If the child is older than this, only a physician can carry it out.
The law also requires the consent of the parents and demands they are fully informed about the operation and its implications.
The law has widespread support in Sweden and a proposal from two MPs of the extreme-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party to overeturn the law and ban circumcision was rejected.
According to the Swedish authorities, some 3,000 boys are circumcised every year in Sweden.
Ombudsmen from across Scandinavia are scheduled to meet Monday in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the issue.
In 2012, a German court in Cologne said Jewish and Muslim circumcision amounted to grievous bodily harm in a ruling that caused international uproar.
At the initiative of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, the Bundestag, the country's federal parliament, later approved a new bill to protect and legalize the male circumcision by authorised practitioners.