Fact Check: Yes, Algeria Prohibits Gender Transitions and Trans Identity

By Grazia BritishAugust 5, 2024

Claim:

Algeria prohibits being transgender or undergoing gender-affirming treatment such as a medical or surgical transition.

Rating:

As people sought to debunk the false rumor in August 2024 that Olympic boxer Imane Khalif, from Algeria, was a trans woman, some claimed she couldn't be trans because her country bans medical and surgical care designed to affirm someone's gender identity. Some social media users said transgender people were "prohibited" in the nation (archived):

Post on X

View Post on X on X ↗

This post, which had been viewed 8.3 million times as of this writing, had also received more than 42,000 likes and 6,000 reposts. The same claim appeared elsewhere on X, in the comments on a Reddit post and on Instagram.

The claim is true. In Algeria, LGBTQ+ people do not receive protections, homosexuality is treated as a crime and widely debunked "conversion therapies" to supposedly change people's orientations are legal. The law does not allow people to change their gender on their official identity documents, let alone medically or surgically.

We confirmed this information using the database of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), an LGBTQ+ rights organization that has consultative status at the United Nations. Non-governmental organizations with this status can attend and speak at U.N. meetings and meetings of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

ILGA keeps a database on the rights of LGBTQ+ people in all 193 U.N. member countries and 47 other jurisdictions. According to the group, Algeria passed an amendment in 1966 prohibiting homosexuality. The law includes no allowance for same-sex marriage, no prohibitions against interventions on intersex minors and no prohibition against conversion therapy. It does not permit self-identification, the process by which a trans person can officially change gender before the authorities. By extension, it does not allow gender-affirming surgery, either.

It goes even further, by prohibiting any speech that might acknowledge or promote the existence of people with different gender identities or sexual orientations. It mandates that the media adhere to the principles of Islam, the country's official religion — to which it considers sexual and gender diversity contrary. Algerian authorities still enforced these laws in 2024. For example, a 2023 ILGA report listed several arrests and prosecutions of people involved in activities linked to these prohibitions. In 2020, 44 people were arrested for attending a "gay wedding."

It is true that if Khelif were trans, she would not have been able to have her chosen identity recognized and affirmed in her country of origin. But as we've reported, Khelif is indeed biologically female and a cis woman.