Countries need to combat trans violence: Amnesty

Countries should take further steps to protect trans people from violence, Amnesty International has urged.

The human rights organisation used Trans Remembrance Day to highlight more than 1,083 reported killings of trans people worldwide from 2008-2012, with research showing the number of deaths has risen each year.

Amnesty said European countries in particular needed to lift their game, with data from Trans Murder Monitoring show that 64 trans people were killed in Europe from 2008 to date.

Only France, Sweden, Scotland (United Kingdom) and Croatia (as of January 1, 2013) include violent attacks based on gender identity in anti-hate crime legislation.

“Trans people are discriminated against and targeted for violence on the grounds of their gender identity and expression – in Europe and around the world,” said Amnesty International discrimination expert Marco Perolini.

“This lack of protection against gender identity-based violence flouts human rights standards, and fails to acknowledge that transphobic hate crime is a form of discrimination.

“If criminal law fails to acknowledge that hate crimes can happen based on real or perceived gender identity, the hate motive is not thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.”

Amnesty also highlighted the lack of legal recognition of trans people, unless they comply with a list of criteria that can include psychiatric diagnosis, sterilisation, genital surgery and divorce.

It said trans identities are also still classified as mental disorders at the international level and frequently at the national.

“Compulsory requirements such as sterilisation, divorce and gender reassignment treatments upon which gender legal recognition is made dependent, violate the rights of trans people to equality before the law, to private and family life, to freedom from degrading treatments and to the highest attainable standards of health,” Perolini said.