Violence & Hate Speech

Trans people in many parts of the world have for a long time been victims of serious and repetitive gender-based violence, including beatings, mutilation, rape and murder and other forms of disrespect and maltreatment. Although several activists in national and international contexts have reacted to reports of murdered trans people, for instance, launching the TDoR in 1999, until 2009 there had been no systematic monitoring of hate violence or reports of murdered trans people on an international level.

In order to fill the gap in documenting violence against trans people, in April 2009 TGEU launched its Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project, a systematic collection, monitoring and analysis of reported killings of gender-variant/trans people worldwide. Between 2008 and 2014, 1,612 reported killings of gender-variant/trans people in 62 countries have been documented, including 90 in 13 European countries.

TGEU’s research also focused on violence and crimes against trans people in Europe. Its Transgender EuroStudy (2008) found that 79 percent of respondents had experienced some form of harassment in public, ranging from transphobic comments to physical or sexual abuse. The high level of hate-motivated incidents was also confirmed by the Fundamental Rights Agency’s EU LGBT survey: although one in two trans persons is attacked or targeted through violence, threats or insults, only less than a quarter of hate-motivated incidents are reported to the police or other organisations, e.g. LGBT groups, general victim support services.

In order to address underreporting, TGEU continues to work with its partners in its Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project to monitor and raise awareness of the shocking extent of human rights violations committed against trans people on a global scale. In Europe, TGEU works with partner organisations to record discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes and offer community-based support for victims/survivors of violence in the framework of its ProTrans project.