But the government said it would not revoke the decree.
Lime:
The Peruvian government is under attack from LGBTQ+ groups who have called for a protest for Friday against a new decree that classifies transsexualism as a “mental disorder”.
On May 10, the government updated its list of insurable health conditions – which since 2021 has provided benefits for mental health treatment – to include services for trans people.
In the decree, the Ministry of Health describes the condition as a “mental disorder” – an obsolete term long ago officially abandoned by the World Health Organization.
A demonstration was called in Lima on Friday, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.
But the government said it would not revoke the decree.
Health Ministry official Carlos Alvadrado told AFP that this would “take away the right to care.”
The ministry has previously insisted that it does not consider gender diversity as a disease and in a statement expressed “our respect for gender identities and our rejection of the stigmatization of sexual diversity”.
He stated that the decree only intended to expand mental health coverage “for the full exercise of the right to health and well-being” for those who want or need it.
Transsexual people are those who reject the sex assigned to them 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, from Coordinacion Nacional LGTBIQ+, told AFP.
“We are not mentally ill and we do not suffer from any mental disorder,” he added.
An article on the Human Rights Watch website describes the decree as “deeply regressive” in a country that does not allow same-sex marriage or transgender people to change their identity documents.
“It’s a decree that takes us back three decades,” added Jorge Apolaya, spokesman for the Marcha do Orgulho Coletivo, a human rights group based in Lima.
“We cannot live in a country where we are considered sick,” he said.
For Percy Mayta, a doctor and activist, “pathologizing” transgender people “opens the door to… conversion therapy” – which UN bodies equate to torture and is not illegal in Peru.
In its press release, the Peruvian Ministry of Health stressed that “a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity do not constitute, in themselves, a physical or mental health disorder and, therefore, should not be subjected to treatment or medical care or so-called reconversion therapies.”
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