It's the time of year when we start to take stock of the past 12 months, and the news isn't always good. Take for instance the TransRespect Versus Transphobia Project, which released its 2012 statistics on Wednesday to display an unfortunate rise in transphobic murders. 

According to the Project's latest report, 265 from the transgender community were murdered around the world in 2012. Strikingly, this number only represents the reported or documented cases. The actual number could be much higher. 

Gay Star News has the breakdown of the report:

Most of the reported murders happened in Brazil (126) but Transgender Europe pointed out that the number of killings in Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras and Guatemala ‘is equally or even more worrying in view of the much smaller population sizes of these countries’.

Nineteen Central and South American countries account for 80% of the reported homicides of trans people globally. But the USA reported the third highest number of trans murders (15) after Brazil and Mexico (48).

In Asia most reported trans murders over the last 12 months were in India (6), Pakistan (5) and the Philippines (4).

In Europe, Turkey reported the most trans murders (5).

This year's statistics mark a 20 percent increase over 2011's reported murders. 

"We are witnessing a significant increase [of murders], which points to the extreme level of violence many trans people continue to be exposed to," a spokesperson from Transgender Europe said in a statement. "However, this increase may also reflect the TvT project’s intensified cooperation and data exchange with trans and LGBT organizations."

The report's timing is not a coincidence as the world prepares to commemorate the International Transgender Day of Remembrance on Tuesday, November 20.

Comments (1)

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written by Denise Holliday, November 15, 2012

This is not even a small percentage. It covers murder but ignores death by suicide brought on by pressure from violence and social abuse. We suffer 6 times the death rate of any other known group here in Canada and the rest of the World is up for grabs. Even suicides are not reported correctly. I knew of 3 such deaths 4 years ago that were written of as hetero sexual male suicides. How many so called heterosexual suicides are trans related and we never find out.
As long as they kill themselves I guess we do not need to count them.
But I remember them on the 20th Nov. every year, please think of them.

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