Insights
Ending Violence Against Trans Women: Three Inter-American Court Decisions Tell States What To Do
Region(s)
TOPIC(s)
Type
Commentary
Author(s)
Publish Date
February 19, 2026
Share
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, trans women face persistent and extreme forms of violence rooted in structural discrimination, rigid gender norms, and systemic failures in state protection. The Trans Murder Monitoring 2025 Report reported 281 murders of trans and gender-diverse people globally between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025; of these reported cases, 68% occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 90% of the total were classed as feminicides, targeting trans women and transfeminine people. Besides murder, trans women in the Americas are subjected to harms such as sexual violence and arbitrary detention, with violence reproduced through institutional practices that deny dignity, undermine investigations, and normalize impunity.
This violence unfolds amid broader anti-gender backlash that polices “womanhood” and seeks to deny trans women’s recognition as women—dynamics that legitimize dehumanising rhetoric, weaken protections, and fuel both institutional and interpersonal violence.
Recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights shows that this reality is not inevitable. Through a sequence of landmark decisions, the Court has clarified how states must respond to violence against trans women: by recognizing its gendered nature, investigating with heightened diligence, and adopting structural measures to prevent repetition. Read together, three cases offer concrete guidance for state action.
Three Landmark Cases
The most recent of these rulings was published in recent days. This decision builds on two previous cases, together illustrating how the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has progressively clarified states’ obligations in cases of violence against trans women.
Leonela Zelaya and Another v. Honduras, 2025
Leonela Zelaya was a trans woman living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She was 34, a sex worker, and lived with HIV—conditions that, in 2004, placed her in the direct line of routine policing and abuse. The record reflects that she was detained repeatedly that year, and the Court accepted that she was assaulted by police officers in the context of those detentions. On the night of September 6, 2004, she went out to work; in the early hours of 7 September, a street vendor found her body in Comayagüela, just outside Tegucigalpa—bearing indications of a violent death.
In its judgment, issued in October 2025 and published in January 2026, the Court found that Honduras failed to investigate Leonela Zelaya’s death with the required diligence. It identified serious investigative shortcomings: she was initially treated as an “unknown” person despite information that should have enabled her identification, the crime scene was inadequately documented, evidence was lost, and basic investigative steps were omitted. The Court stressed that investigating potentially unlawful deaths is a duty of the State itself and must be pursued ex officio, particularly where there are indications of violence.
Beyond investigative failures, the Court also held Honduras internationally responsible for violations stemming from arbitrary detention and discriminatory treatment that Leonela had suffered in the months before her death. Importantly, it also linked its findings to Honduras’s obligations under the Inter-American Convention of Belém do Pará—a regional treaty requiring states to prevent, punish, and eradicate violence against women—and noted that those obligations extend to trans women as well, including through an intersectional understanding of vulnerability to gender-based violence.
Vicky Hernández and Others v. Honduras, 2021
Vicky Hernández was a trans woman, a sex worker, and an activist with the Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa, a group working on the human rights of trans people and on HIV prevention. In the early hours after the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, as a nationwide curfew took effect and military and police forces flooded the streets, Hernández went to a friend’s house; the next morning, she was found dead. From the outset, the authorities’ handling of the case reflected the prejudice the Court would later identify: in official records she was initially registered as an “unknown” male, despite information that should have allowed her to be identified.
The Court underscored that Hernández’s killing could not be viewed as an isolated incident, but rather as part of a broader pattern of violence and discrimination affecting trans women. It held Honduras internationally responsible not only for the violation of the right to life, but also for the failure to investigate with due diligence and without discrimination. In particular, the Court noted that investigators did not meaningfully pursue lines of inquiry that the case itself called for—such as whether the killing was linked to Hernández’s gender identity and expression, her work as a trans sex worker, her LGBTIQ human rights activism, indications of possible sexual violence, or the possible involvement of state agents. By ignoring that context, prejudice and stereotypes shaped investigative choices, narrowed hypotheses, and helped entrench impunity.
Azul Rojas Marín and Another v. Peru, 2020
In 2008, Peruvian police stopped Azul Rojas Marín on the street late at night and questioned her. Minutes earlier, the patrol car returned. Police forced her into the vehicle amid slurs, and she was taken to a police station, where she remained for about five hours. Rojas Marín later reported that police officers sexually assaulted and humiliated her while she was detained at the police station.
The Court expressly recognized Rojas Marín’s gender identity and found that the acts constituted severe sexual violence perpetrated by state agents, driven by prejudice related to gender identity and expression. It also identified serious investigative failures, including reliance on stereotypes, revictimizing practices, and a lack of diligence from the outset. As part of reparations, the Court ordered structural measures aimed at transforming institutional practices that perpetuate violence against trans people, including mandatory training for state officials, the production of official data on violence against trans women and other sexual and gender minorities, and the adoption of specialized investigation protocols, covering victim identification, evidence-gathering, and the investigation of bias-related motives. This was the Court’s first decision to pair its findings with structural, non-repetition measures aimed at changing the institutional practices that enable violence against trans people. The Court later built on that approach in Vicky Hernández through ordering similar institutional reforms, and in Leonela Zelaya it reinforced and expanded those earlier measures rather than starting from scratch.
Common Patterns and Converging Lessons
Taken together, these cases demonstrate that violence against trans women is not the result of isolated failures or exceptional circumstances. Instead, the Court identifies recurring structural patterns that explain both the persistence of violence and the frequency of impunity.
First, prejudice based on gender plays a central role. In all three cases, violence—whether sexual or lethal—is shaped by stereotypes that punish trans women for defying socially imposed gender norms. This gendered violence is frequently reinforced through institutional practices. Prejudices do not only motivate or exacerbate the violence itself; they also distort state responses, affecting how authorities assess credibility, prioritize investigations, and value victims’ lives.
Second, the cases reveal the direct or indirect involvement of state agents, or the state’s tolerance of violence. Whether a case involves direct abuse by police officers or omission, negligence, and institutional indifference, the Court makes clear that state responsibility extends beyond the violent act to the broader set of responses—or lack thereof—that allow violence to continue.
Third, the Court consistently highlights systemic investigative failures, particularly in the earliest stages. Early omissions—failure to properly document the scene, identify the victim, preserve evidence, or consider bias-related motives—can make accountability impossible. These failures have a disproportionate impact when the victim is a trans woman, because, as the Court put it, state inaction does not merely fail to reverse structural patterns of marginalization. Rather, it validates hostility and exclusion “through the abandonment of investigative and punitive powers,” thereby “sending the message that certain aggressions are ‘more tolerable’ than others,” or that they do not merit the same collective repudiation or criminal prosecution (Leonela Zelaya, para. 69).
Finally, the Court emphasizes the structural and intersectional dimension of violence. In Leonela Zelaya, it stressed that the discriminatory treatment to which she was subjected cannot be understood as the isolated result of any single factor, but rather as a specific form of intersectional discrimination: “The discrimination suffered by Leonela cannot be understood as the isolated result of only one of these factors, but as a specific form of intersectional discrimination, the nature of which would have been different if only one of these elements had not been present.” (para. 80).
What States Should Do
The Court’s jurisprudence sets out specific, actionable obligations for states to address violence against trans women and prevent its repetition.
1. Explicitly recognize violence against trans women as gender-based violence.
States must move away from neutral or decontextualized approaches and recognize that violence against trans women is rooted in gender-based discrimination. As the Court held in Vicky Hernández: “based on an evolutionary interpretation, the Court considers that the scope of application of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women also refers to situations of gender-based violence against transgender women” (para. 133). The Court reiterated this approach in Leonela Zelaya, confirming that this recognition sets the applicable standard and requiring that all state responses—policing, prosecution, adjudication, and administration—integrate a gender perspective that includes gender identity.
2. Investigate with heightened due diligence from the outset.
Investigations must be initiated ex officio and must prioritize the first hours and days, in line with the reinforced standards long applied to femicides and other forms of gender-based violence. As the Court stressed in Leonela Zelaya, “in the investigation of homicides, the first phases of the investigation are crucial” (para. 110). The Court also emphasized that authorities must “initiate ex officio and without delay a serious, impartial and effective investigation” (para. 111). At a minimum, this requires: proper identification of the victim, respecting gender identity and chosen name; thorough and professional documentation of the crime scene; preservation of evidence and chain of custody; proactive identification and interviewing of witnesses; and investigative hypotheses that consider bias-related motives and the broader context of violence against trans women.
3. Eliminate stereotypes and revictimizing practices within the justice system.
States must eradicate practices that reproduce harm, including invasive questioning about victims’ private lives, gender identity, or expression; stigmatizing language in police, forensic, and judicial records; and biased assessments of credibility. This requires mandatory, continuous training for all justice-chain actors who first receive, document, investigate, and litigate these cases—including police officers, forensic and medical personnel, prosecutors, judges, and public defenders—focused on (i) respecting gender identity and chosen name, (ii) avoiding discriminatory stereotypes and the use of questioning that revictimizes survivors, and (iii) applying bias-aware investigative approaches, including how to identify and document prejudice-related motives.
4. Adopt structural measures to prevent repetition.
Case-by-case responses are insufficient: states must implement systemic reforms—especially in policing and the justice system—to address patterns of violence and impunity. The Court has pointed to non-repetition measures such as binding protocols for the investigation and administration of justice in cases involving violence against LGBTIQ persons, which should include guidance on victim identification (respecting name and gender identity), crime-scene documentation, evidence preservation and chain of custody, and the investigation of bias-related motives such as transphobia. The Court has also underscored the need for this training to be institutionalized, meaning that it is embedded in the State’s systems—integrated into academy curricula and professional certification, repeated at regular intervals, budgeted, monitored, and linked to disciplinary and oversight mechanisms—instead of a reactive one-off session. Finally, states should review and repeal policies, regulations, operational guidelines, or practices that legitimize the targeting or exclusion of trans people.
5. Ensure access to justice and comprehensive reparations.
States must guarantee effective access to justice and comprehensive reparations for victims and their families—including rehabilitation, measures of satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition—because the harm in these cases is not limited to the underlying violence, but is compounded by discrimination and institutional failure. Medical and psychological care is a form of rehabilitation that addresses the physical and emotional consequences of violence and the additional trauma caused by impunity and revictimization. A public acknowledgment of responsibility is not merely symbolic: it publicly recognizes the harm, counters stigma, and affirms that trans women are recognized as women and entitled to equal protection and full respect for their rights. Finally, the Court consistently treats non-repetition measures—such as binding protocols, institutionalized training, and official data systems—as part of reparations because they are necessary to change the institutional conditions that enabled the violations in the first place.
Together, these decisions leave no ambiguity. Trans women, like all women, merit the protections accorded under international law. The Inter-American Court has articulated a clear roadmap. The remaining challenge is not legal but political and institutional: to translate these standards into concrete policies, daily practices, and sustained accountability that ensure trans women can live free from violence.
Take Action
When you support our research, you support a growing global movement and celebrate LGBTIQ lives everywhere.
Donate Now