Following a decree from the Peruvian government’s health ministry; transgender, non-binary, and intersex people in the country are now officially classified as “mentally ill”.

The decree was signed by Peru’s president Dina Boluarte and says that “transsexualism” and “gender identity disorder in children” are mental illnesses.

Despite this decree, the health ministry emphasized that LGBTQ+ people should not undergo conversion therapy.

Peru, which decriminalized homosexuality exactly 100 years before in 1924, enacted a law in 2021 that protects the LGBTQ+ community from being forced to take conversion therapy.