20 November marked the International Trans Day of Remembrance. This is the 18th consecutive year that trans activists and allies all across the world remember all gender-diverse and trans people who have been victims of hate crimes, and have as a consequence, lost their lives.
Official reports from all across the world reveal that only in the last 12 months, 295 trans and gender diverse persons have been murdered. Meanwhile the TDoR update reveals that since 2008, a total of 2,264 trans and gender diverse people have been murdered. According to European umbrella organization Transgender Europe, “these figures only show the tip of the iceberg of homicides of trans and gender-diverse people on a worldwide scale.”
The challenge is that many countries do not have in place any system of reporting or collecting hate crimes based on gender identity thus making it imaginable that the numbers are dramatically much higher than those reported. However, current numbers reveal the scale and urgency of the issue.

In Europe only, where collection of data has progressed significantly year by year, in the last eight and a half years, 113 reports of murdered trans and gender diverse people have been collected.
In its analysis TGEU assesses that intersections between racism, transphobia and resentment against sex workers are to be considered. These as well as difficulty of migrants to enter the labor market and criminalization of sex work make the situation very complex. It is reported that every third trans victim in Europe has a migrant background, and that 86% of those murdered are sex workers.
This also shows that addressing transphobia itself does not help and that a complex approach where issues such as racism, xenophobia etc. are taken into account by authorities and all other stakeholders. 
Just last week a trans woman attempted suicide in front of the Albanian Parliament in Tirana in protest of the indifference of central and local government’ officials of her plea for shelter, employment and economic support.
In another statement on TDoR it is reminded that:
Every day, all over the world, millions of trans people are excluded, persecuted, hated, mistreated, aggressed and regularly assassinated or pushed to suicide just because of their so-called “difference” from the so-called sex/gender “norm”;
Rather than decreasing, number of transphobic crimes, visible or invisible, is increasing;
Hatred which leads to transphobic crimes is not result of chance or a few individuals but part of a political system which supports and leads a culture of discrimination, sexism, heteropatriachy, homophobia and transphobia;
ERA joins the call of all trans and LBTIQ activists from the Western Balkans, Turkey and the world and demands international organizations, governments and decision makers to terminate pathologisation of trans identities, to legally recognize trans individuals and to protect them from discrimination in employment, education, health and all other spheres of life, to educate the new generations with up to date information on gender identity and not to stigmatize trans people.
It is important that the LGBTI movement also, does not simply remember trans rights on anniversaries or remembrance days but that we all work for inclusion of trans identities, for empowerment of trans movements, organizations and support groups in our communities and countries.
For more information on TDoR and trans rights visit the following links:
– TGEU Press Release on TDoR 2016 http://tgeu.org/2016_tdor_pr/
– On situation of trans rights in Europe visit: http://tgeu.org and http://tgeu.org/tdor/
– http://tdor.info/
– http://transrespect.org/en/tmm-trans-day-remembrance-2016/
– Picture Credits: Transgender Europe