W.H.O. Will Not Craft Transgender Guidelines for Minors Due to ‘Limited’ Evidence

The United Nations’ healthcare agency — the World Health Organization (W.H.O) — will not craft transgender healthcare guidelines for minors, citing “limited” evidence for longer-term outcomes.

The agency announced on January 15:

The scope will cover adults only and not address the needs of children and adolescents, because on review, the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender affirming care for children and adolescents.

The move is significant, given that prominent health and transgender activist organizations are pushing for so-called “gender-affirming care” for sex-confused minors, which can include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating sex-change surgeries — some of which could cause infertility, among other side-effects.

The W.H.O. made the clarification while announcing that it is extending the public comment period for its planned “trans and gender diverse” health guidelines to February 2. The W.H.O. said its guideline development process could now take up to two more years.

The agency’s Departments of Gender, Rights and Equity (GRE); Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes (HHS); and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research (SRH) are the ones developing the guidelines. The guidelines will supposedly “aim to address specific health challenges that negatively impact the rights of trans and gender diverse people to access quality health services, undermining their quality of life and life expectancy,” according to the agency.

The agency said:

This new guideline will focus on 5 areas: provision of gender-affirming care, including hormones relating to adults; health worker education on and training for the provision of gender-inclusive care; provision of health care for trans and gender diverse people who have suffered interpersonal violence, based on their needs; health policies that support gender-inclusive care; and legal recognition of self-determined gender identity for adults.

The agency extended the public comment period because it needs “more time for feedback” on its Guidelines Development Group (GDG), whose members were announced on June 28 and December 18, 2023. The W.H.O. said it has, so far, “received a wide-ranging set of feedback from communities and stakeholders” — the selections have been widely criticized for being biased and having an overt pro-transgender agenda.

At least 11 members of the 21-member panel have no formal medical training. Seven are transgender, and just ten have a medical background, according to a report by Daily Mail. The rest of the panel members are a mixture of activists, social justice advocates, human rights lawyers, sexually transmitted disease researchers, and policy advisers.

While the W.H.O. has now confirmed the guidelines will not pertain to minors, some members have been “vocal about their support for letting children — some as young as 13 — undergo such medical procedures,” Breitbart News previously reported. 

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on violence against women, told the Daily Mail that the new W.H.O. panel is too “one-sided” and that she believes the committee contains “significant unmanaged conflicts of interest.”

“Stakeholders whose views differ from those held by transgender activist organizations do not appear to have been invited,” Alsalem said.

“Such stakeholders include experts from European public health authorities who have taken the lead on developing an evidence-based and consequently cautious approach to youth gender transitions (eg England, Sweden and Finland),” she added.

Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist and executive director of Genspect, told the Daily Mail that the panel is “made up mostly of social justice and human rights lawyers who believe the gender affirmative approach is the only option.”

“[They] will determine care guidelines for trans people, yet they do not have anyone to represent critical balance on their panel,” she added. “The gender affirmative approach is presumed by W.H.O. to be the only way forward and thereby dismisses conventional psychotherapy.”

“This is a narrow-minded and heavily biased approach,” O’Malley affirmed. “The W.H.O. [is] making a grave mistake; [it] should pause this process and consult with the many professionals who hold different approaches.”

According to the W.H.O., GDG members will likely be finalized after the public comment period. The W.H.O. claims the members will “act in their individual capacity (not representing any organization with which they are affiliated), and will not receive any financial compensation as per standard procedures.”

All comments should be sent to hiv-aids@who.int.