Anger in Peru over decree describing transsexuality as 'mental disorder'

The Peruvian government is under fire from LGBTQ+ groups which have called a protest Friday against a new decree listing transsexualism as a "mental disorder."

The government on May 10 updated its list of insurable health conditions -- which since 2021 has offered benefits for mental health treatment -- to include services for transgender people.

In the decree, the health ministry describes the condition as a "mental disorder" -- an obsolete term long officially abandoned by he World Health Organization.

A demonstration has been called for Lima on Friday, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.

The ministry has insisted it does not consider gender diversity as an illness, and in a statement expressed "our respect for gender identities and our rejection of the stigmatization of sexual diversity."

It said the decree was meant merely to extend mental health coverage "for the full exercise of the right to health and well-being" of those who want or need it.

Transgender people are those who reject the sex they were assigned at birth. Some opt for surgical or medical intervention.

"We demand the repeal of this transphobic and violent decree, which goes against our trans identities in Peru," activist Gianna Camacho of the Coordinacion Nacional LGTBIQ+ told AFP.

"We are not mentally ill and we do not suffer from any mental disorder," she added.

An article on the website of Human Rights Watch describes the decree as "profoundly regressive" in a country that does not allow same-sex marriage nor for transgender people to change their identity documents.

"It is a decree that takes us back three decades," added Jorge Apolaya, spokesman of the Collective Pride March, a Lima-based rights group.

"We cannot live in a country where we are considered sick," he said.

For Percy Mayta, a medical doctor and activist, "pathologizing" transgender people "opens the door to... conversion therapy" -- which UN bodies have equated to torture and is not illegal in Peru.

In its press statement, Peru's health ministry underlined that "the sexual orientation and gender identity of a person does not in itself constitute a physical or mental health disorder and therefore should not be subjected to medical treatment or care or so-called reconversion therapies."