CAT/C/54/2 61. The Subcommittee will consider this aspect of its work in its ongoing activities; this year, particular attention will be paid to torture of and ill-treatment against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons. (c) Women deprived of their liberty and torture prevention 62. The Subcommittee has accumulated eight years of experience by carrying out visits to places of detention in States parties in different regions of the world. It is, certainly, an added value that a human rights treaty body can collect and analyse first-hand information about the situation of persons deprived of their liberty by direct means such as observation, individual and collective interviews with persons in detention and with authorities and NGOs, and from those sources draft a report including practical and contextualized recommendations in order to prevent torture and ill-treatment. 63. Some concerning situations that the Subcommittee has found regarding women deprived of liberty include: use of sexual violence as torture, including against transgender persons; lack of adequate attention to their right to health care, including sexual and reproductive health rights; the precarious situation of pregnant women and their children living with them; non-compliance with the rule of separation of women and men; shortage of women custody staff; the practice of invasive revisions, including in intimate parts of the body, and the use of public nudity; discrimination in access to work, education and recreational activities; limitations on contact with relatives, including visits by intimates and contact with their children, as a form of punishment; and discrimination against lesbians by including their sexual orientation as an infraction, the prohibition of physical contact with their partners, the denial of their right to intimate visits, and segregation from religious and educational activities. 64. Although torture in detention has been an area of great concern, gender-specific perspectives have not been adequately discussed, and the particular risks of ill-treatment and torture faced by women in detention have received limited attention. 65. In that context, the Subcommittee is analysing the way in which it has addressed in its visiting programme the specificity of the risks of torture and ill-treatment faced by women deprived of their liberty, and how it can implement a gender approach to visits to places of detention in States parties, thus improving its capacity to prevent torture and illtreatment of women in detention. (d) Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons and torture prevention 66. The Special Rapporteur on the question of torture has noted that “members of sexual minorities are disproportionately subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment because they fail to conform to socially constructed gender expectations. Indeed, discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity may often contribute to the process of the dehumanization of the victim, which is often a necessary condition for torture and ill- treatment to take place.” (A/HRC/22/53, para. 79). 67. Like the Special Rapporteur, the Subcommittee has noted that, in detention facilities, there is usually a strict hierarchy, and that those at the bottom of the hierarchy, such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons, typically suffer double or triple discrimination (A/HRC/19/41, para. 34). It has received reports of, among other things, beatings, sexual assault, confinement and targeted forms of violence, including the socalled corrective rape of lesbian women, and the intentional beatings of the breasts and cheekbones of transgender women to burst implants and release toxins. Ill-treatment extends to discrimination based on perceptions or preconceptions. This is the case in the practice of subjecting men suspected of homosexual conduct to non-consensual anal 13