As the UN Committee against Torture has emphasized, they “have no medical justification and cannot be consented to fully.” Forced anal exams are invasive, intrusive, and profoundly humiliating. They violate the Convention against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the African Convention on Human and Peoples' Rights.
This argument is based on long-discredited 19 th century science: the overwhelming weight of medical and scientific opinion holds that it is impossible to use these exams to determine whether a person has regularly engaged in same-sex conduct.įorced anal examinations are a form of cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment that can rise to the level of torture. Law enforcement officials and some medical personnel claim that by doing so they can determine the tone of the anal sphincter or the shape of the anus and draw conclusions as to whether or not the accused person has engaged in homosexual conduct. These examinations often involve doctors or other medical personnel forcibly inserting their fingers, and sometimes other objects, into the anus of the accused.
In at least eight countries in which consensual same-sex conduct is criminalized, law enforcement officials working in tandem with medical personnel subject men and transgender women who are arrested on homosexuality-related charges to forced anal examinations, with the purported objective of finding “proof” of homosexual conduct.
