A/HRC/38/43 80. Same-sex marriage was legalized in Malta, in September 2017, in Germany in October, and in Australia in December. 81. The Independent Expert regrets to recall that 72 States still criminalize sexual orientation, and the numerous laws that are used to criminalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender non-conforming persons. 3. Access to justice 82. The leading work of justice agencies continued in rulings ranging from those issued by the Supreme Court in Nepal in September 2017 to the Lobatse High Court in Botswana in December 2017, both allowing updates of gender markers in official identity documents; judgment T-498 of the Constitutional Court of Colombia allowing a young trans person to register under his self-identified gender; in Germany, in November 2017, the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court ordering legislators to consider either allowing the introduction of a third gender category or eliminating gender altogether in public documents, by the end of 2018; in China, in February 2018, the judgment handed down by the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court finding that workers must not experience differential treatment because of gender identity; and in Brazil, the ruling of 1 March 2018 by the Supreme Court establishing that persons may have the name with which they selfidentify on their civil documents without surgery or hormonal therapy, and on the same day by the Superior Electoral Court, that ruled that trans candidates were eligible to run for election with their self-identifying name. 83. The Independent Expert is encouraged by findings of the highest courts that signal a path to decriminalization. In January 2018, in India, a bench of three judges of the Supreme Court referred a judgment of 2013 upholding Section 377 of the Penal Code to a larger bench for a constitutional review; and on 12 April, in Trinidad and Tobago, the High Court declared unconstitutional the sections of the Sexual Offences Act that criminalized consensual same-sex activity between adults. Furthermore, on 22 March, in Kenya the Mombasa Court of Appeal ruled that forced anal examinations were unconstitutional. 84. Eliminating barriers to the work of human rights defenders is another key outcome of the work of the judiciary. For example, in November 2017, in Mozambique, the Constitutional Council repealed a law that barred LGBT organizations from being officially registered. 85. The Independent Expert also notes positive trends towards the prohibition of “conversion therapy” by administrative, parliamentary and judicial initiatives. For example, in the United States of America, 10 States, the District of Columbia and 32 localities have banned this practice; and on 1 March 2018, the European Parliament welcomed initiatives prohibiting “conversion therapy” in the report on the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union for 2016.80 In this regard, in July 2017, a court in Zhumadian, in Henan province in China, ordered a city psychiatric hospital to publish an apology and to pay compensation to a gay man who had been forcibly admitted to the institution for “conversion treatment” in 2015. VIII. Conclusions 86. Violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender diversity exists throughout the world. The Independent Expert commends States that acknowledge the existence of this scourge, its dimension and the challenges connected to it, and exhorts others to stop negating it. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender non-conforming persons who are victims of the heinous crimes described in the present report exist in all regions of the world, in families and communities everywhere, and together we thread the fabric of our societies every day. Negation violates the dignity of victims and is offensive to the global conscience. 87. Acts of violence range from daily exclusion and discrimination to the most heinous acts, including torture and arbitrary killings. There are no comprehensive and systematic data on the number of victims, but it is a safe presumption that there 80 18 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Right Report 2016.