BOGOTA, Oct 8, 2008 (AFP) - Colombia's constitutional court said Wednesday that a five-year-old child born with both female and male sexual organs can choose its own gender or maintain both, overruling the parents who wanted to make the child a boy.

'The child has reached an age beyond which gender identification is determined,' the court said, stating that it was now up to the child to decide its reproductive future with support from specialists and the parents.

The child's choice would have precedence over the opinions of the experts and family, it said.

The father had petitioned the court for the right to organize surgery on the child to have an ovary removed and to close the vagina, so as to allow the normal development of the penis and testicles.

He had stressed that he had been raising the child as a boy since birth.