At least 5,000 trans people have been murdered since 2008

At least 5,000 trans people have been killed since 2008 with one group wondering: ‘When will the violence end?’

Between October 2023 and September 2024 alone, 350 trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people were murdered worldwide, according to Trans Europe and Central Asia (TGEU).

Most of the killings happened in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil leading the country rankings with 30% of total cases.

TGEU said 94% of the victims were trans women or transfeminine people, those assigned male at birth but whose gender is more aligned with femininity than masculinity.

Almost all the victims (93%) were Black and Brown trans people, an increase of 14% from last year. Nearly half were sex workers.

Of the hundreds killed, TGEU said at least 15 were under the age of 18.

This is the third-highest yearly death toll since the campaign group’s Trans Murder Monitoring project began in 2008, behind 375 killings in 2021 and 369 in 2017.

TGEU executive director Ymania Brown said in a statement shared today on Transgender Day of Remembrance: ‘This year, as we confront the sobering milestone of 5,000 documented murders since the start of the Trans Murder Monitoring project that we know of, we, the trans people and communities around the world, are exhausted from repeatedly asking: When will this violence end? We can no longer afford to wait!.

But these figures fail to grasp the full extent of the violence trans people face, campaigners have long warned.

Data from police can be spotty at best, countless crimes go unreported and news outlets and even the victims’ family may misgender or deadname them.

This often leaves groups like TGEU to comb news reports, speak with local LGBTQ+ groups and verify a victim’s gender identity by chatting with those who knew them.

This year’s toll, up from 321 the previous year, ‘is no doubt a consequence of the concerted efforts of anti-gender and anti-rights movements that instrumentalise and vilify trans people to push wider anti-democratic political agendas’, TGEU said.

It added: ‘We have seen a consistent rise in the levels of online and offline hate speech and hate crimes, especially from political actors and religious and faith leaders, public figures.

‘This rise is enabled by the lack of strong hate crime legislation that protects gender identity and expression, and the manipulative disinformation resulting from the lack of accountability for social media companies on ensuring information integrity.’

As much as the full death toll is impossible to determine, trans advocates say some parts of the world are becoming increasingly unsafe. In the US, for example, trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.

Such danger extends well beyond hate crimes. Transphobia can make getting a home, keeping down a job or accessing healthcare that much harder, especially if laws restrict their rights or fail to protect them.

Advocates warn this pushes trans people into homelessness and sex work, putting them even more at risk.

Of the killings documented by TGEU in the past year, almost half (46%) were shootings. More than a quarter (34%) happened out on the street and almost a quarter (22%) in the victim’s own home.

‘States must commit to immediate action to counter the surge in anti-trans hate speech and attacks and break this cycle of violence!’ Brown added.

‘Our lives depend on it.’

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