‘Conversion therapy’ describes interventions that purport to achieve a change in a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and thus claim to aim at changing people from gay, lesbian or bisexual to heterosexual, and from trans or gender diverse to cisgender - meaning whose gender identity corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. The expert added that these practices are “inherently discriminatory, that they are cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and that depending on the severity or physical or mental pain and suffering inflicted to the victim, they may amount to torture.”
Speaking at the Human Rights Council where he presented his latest report, the UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, called on States to “work together to institute a global ban on practices of conversion therapy.”
