The Peruvian government has officially classified transgender, nonbinary and intersex people as “mentally ill.”
The controversial decision was made to ensure the country’s public health services could “guarantee full coverage of medical attention for mental health” for the trans community, the Peruvian health ministry explained, according to The Telegraph.
The decree will supposedly alter the language in the Essentials Health Insurance Plan to reflect that trans and intersex people have a mental disorder, LGBTQ+ outlet Pink News reported.
Despite the change, trans and other LGBTQ+ people will not be forced to undergo conversion therapies, the health ministry insisted in a statement issued on Friday, the outlet reported.
LGBTQ+ activist groups across Peru, however, slammed the decision as a major step back in the fight for their rights and safety.
“100 years after the decriminalization of homosexuality, the @Minsa_Peru has nothing better to do than to include trans people in the category of mental illnesses,” Jheinser Pacaya, director of OutfestPeru, wrote on X.
“We demand and we will not rest until its repeal,” they added.
Percy Mayta-Tristán, a medical researcher at Lima’s Scientific University of the South, told the Telegraph that the decision showed a lack of awareness around the complexity of LGBTQ+ issues.
“You can’t ignore the context that this is happening in a super-conservative society, where the LGBT community has no rights and where labeling them as mentally ill opens the door to conversion therapy,” he explained.