Conversion Therapy is a global problem that causes the victims to have great physical and psychological suffering and is a procedure designed to transform, ‘heal’ or ‘fix’ the sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual. The new IRCT and Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) expert statement indicates that the conversion therapy practices are unscience-free and breach the global prohibition on torture and maltreatment in more than 69 nations. The IRCT asks for a global prohibition on conversion, based on the significant and often inconceivable suffering caused by conversion therapy.
This would constitute a big advance to safeguard LGBTI persons against torture, particularly young people. The IFEG published today an expert declaration, supported by a global IRCT report on conversion therapy, to explain how torture takes place on a global scale. The expert’s testimony indicates that conversion treatment breaches patients’ basic human rights and standards and ethics, with no health or scientific basis in the medical and mental health field. The conversion therapist conduct in all countries is cruel, inhumane, degrading, and in many cases torturing. For many years the documentation and practice of conversion therapy have been under-explored and often unspecific. In many countries, homosexuality, transgender identity, and other non-heterosexual tendencies or a variety of sex continue. Conversion therapy is a method that seeks to modify the sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual, to ‘curate’ or to ‘reparate.’ Electroconvulsive treatment, unpleasant electricity or vomiting therapeutic treatment, exorcism, or ceremonial cleansing, typically violence, forced nudity, and forced nutrition.
The expert declaration shows clearly that conversion treatment does not comply with the core ethical principles and professional duties of health professionals. On the basis of the study, the IFEG has found that the practice violates humanity, rights, and dignity and is free of abuse and torture. The health professionals involved in conversion therapy treat individuals, not just unscientific and unfoundedly but on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, they contribute to a societal, cultural, or governmental system of repression against their patients. Health professionals must refuse conversion therapy and report it to authorities to their fellow Members who market or execute it. The appropriate efforts to collaborate with the state authorities and governments to pass legislation to prevent converting should be taken by the national medical or mental health associations. In addition, States have a responsibility to control and remove the harmful practice that some encourage, health services, and education services.