Peru Faces Protests Over Transphobia in New Health Decree

The Peruvian government is under fire from LGBTQ+ groups which have called a protest 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 the World Health Organization.

A demonstration has been called for Lima, 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," an activist of the Coordinacion Nacional LGTBIQ+ said.

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.

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."