120 L Towards the Effective Protection of LGBTI Persons Deprived of Liberty Ensure that inappropriate, invasive, unnecessary or coercive medical or psychological testing or evidence is not utilised to assess a person’s self-declared sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or sex characteristics when seeking asylum.” Monitoring bodies may not be specifically mandated to assess how asylum claims are processed by the authorities87. However, they should be aware that individuals might be forcibly returned to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture, in violation of international law. Persecution on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is increasingly considered to be a valid ground for claiming asylum, and LGBTI persons are being recognised88 as constituting a “particular social group” under the Refugee Convention. Courts have also found that authorities assessing an application for refugee status cannot ask LGBT persons to be “discreet” or to conceal their sexual orientation in order to avoid the risk of persecution. In order to speed up asylum procedures, asylum authorities may rely on so-called “safe-countries of origin” lists, which not only shift the burden of proof from the authorities to the asylum seekers, but are often drawn up without taking into account specific risks related to sexual orientation and gender identity. This entails the risk that persons in need of protection are not properly identified, and in particular LGBT persons whose asylum situation tends to be complex because of experiences of trauma, shame and stigmatization. “Safe countries” lists may also include States that criminalise sexual orientation or gender identity, and therefore cannot be considered safe for LGBTI individuals. If detainees are eventually sent back to their countries of origin, personal information (regarding for example the asylum seeker’s identity, criminal records, health status, and UNHCR has a mandated monitoring role as per its supervisory responsibility deriving from Art. 35 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. See Policy on Detention Monitoring, 3 December 2015, UNHCR/ HCP/2015/7, para. 1-3. 88 See inter alia Court of Justice of the European Union, X and Y, nationals of Sierra Leone and Uganda respectively, Judgment Of The Court (Fourth Chamber), 7 November 2013 and EU Directive (2011/95/ EU), Art. 10. The Committee against Torture considers sexual orientation and gender identity as “indications of personal risk” that may affect the rights of a complainant under the Convention in case of his/her deportation, and of the outcome of a non-refoulement determination; see General Comment N°4 (2017) on the implementation of article 3 of the Convention in the context of article 22, 9 February 2018, para. 45 87