5 key takeaways on violence against LGBTI people and data collection

We understand gender-based violence as violence that people, States, and institutions inflict on those perceived as defying or questioning any form of gender and/or sexual norm and narrative. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people fit right alongside women and girls among those who face higher risk of being affected.

For our LGBTI communities, this violence can take many specific forms. Research literature and our lived experiences have documented them all. The gruesome list, by no means exhaustive, includes sexual assault like so-called ‘corrective rape’, emotional and psychological abuses like intentional misgendering or outing, murders, unnecessary surgeries performed on intersex children without their consent, and economic forms of violence like withholding of social protection benefits.

And yet, there are no accurate estimates on the world population affected by these forms of violence.

Methodological, ethical, and sociopolitical challenges all contribute to this data gap. Research tools and standardised frameworks fail to capture the unique experience of LGBTI individuals. Datasets, when available, are often difficult to compare.

Especially in criminalising countries or in discriminatory contexts, data collection can put subjects, researchers, and organisations at risk of significant harm. LGBTI persons can be reluctant to report experiences with violence to authorities, which results in underreporting to services and, consequently, biased data to build assumptions and policies on.

High-quality data, when safely collected and managed, can change awareness and visibility about an issue, allow people to safely disclose their experiences, inform advocacy and policies, and unlock crucial resources.

When this doesn’t happen, however, violence remains unchecked, unaccounted for, and unaddressed.

As the UN Women report points out, “While a lack of data is not the cause, it is an enabler of this violence– and of the impunity and inaction that so often follows it.”

In itself, data is incapable of harm. But what isn’t counted doesn’t exist in the eyes of those who could do something about it. The absence of data allows violence to prosper. States and institutions may use it as a pretext for inaction and to silently justify impunity.

As our Executive Director Julia Ehrt pointed out during her closing remark at the UN Women event presenting this paper: “Data is never neutral. Choosing to count violence against our LGBTI populations is a political act.”

Just like anybody else, LGBTI people are not a uniform group. Identities are complex: its various layers overlap and contribute to diverse life experiences — including violence.

Racialisation, ethnicity, caste, age, religion, disability, migratory status, having multiple intimate partners, or engaging in sex work are among the many parts of who a person is or does, and they can interact with sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics as risk factors for violence.

In other words: a racialised bisexual man, an asexual person, or a trans woman living with a disability may undergo similar traumatic experiences, but how their identities intersect to trigger perpetrators of violence may be very different.

These overlapping layers may also contribute to how much evidence is available about entire populations. Violence against intersex people remains severely under-documented. Rural LGBTI communities are invisible in most surveys. Lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in situations of forced heterosexual marriages demand urgent attention.

A map of States where it is an offence to incite hatred, violence, or discrimination against others based on SOGIESC (source: ILGA World Database)

Research also shows that, whenever States fail to protect LGBTI individuals from violence, they create an environment of impunity that puts them at further risk — all the more exacerbated by the rise of authoritarianism and its rollback of rights.

Intersectionality is the only way to get the full picture and create effective policies.

“Do no harm” is a principle that should guide every data collection effort. Discriminatory legal and social contexts can shape the degree to which LGBTI individuals can safely express and disclose their SOGIESC but also participate in research.

When looking at how violence affects LGBTI people, researchers must give particular considerations to the size of the studied group and to the legal and sociopolitical situation around SOGIESC issues.

This means understanding the context and the role that researchers play when entering it, acknowledging one’s own biases, and being committed to limit or prevent unintended negative effects.

Data collection is a matter of responsibility. It must be undertaken with caution and care, prioritising ethics and the safety of affected individuals and communities, rather than with an a priori assumption that any data will make things better irrespective of how it is generates.

The UN Women report has a rich section on methodological, ethical, and sociopolitical challenges and opportunities to data collection, and example of good practices already exist.

For our research work, ILGA World relies on the input of its member organisations and activists across the world to analyse laws and attitudes in ways that are both reliable and safe to people on the ground. Human Rights Watch leveraged its connections with a local organisation to identify potential participants in a study, ensuring their anonymity while collecting evidence on violence based on SOGIESC in Iraq. While addressing trans women’s experiences of gender-based violence in Central America and the Caribbean, researchers leveraged co-design and peer data collection methods to safely address participant fears and underreporting.

Research has always been at the core of what our communities have done. Historically, it has been our way to resist invisibility.

ILGA World has first started producing evidence on laws affecting LGBTI people worldwide in the 1980s, and we continue to date. For years, TGEU has released data on murders of trans people across the world.

Many examples exist also at the local and regional level. In France, the volunteer-run SOS Homophobie publishes annual quantitative and qualitative data on violence and discrimination against LGBTI people; and Colombia Diversa does the same in Colombia. From South Africa, Iranti provided insights into how local organisations navigate quantitative and qualitative data collection of movements in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, and their own country.

Civil society has historically played a vital role in filling the data gaps. But we cannot do it alone. Combining data from NGOs, citizens, and institutions can really broaden the perspectives and the relevance of the information collected.

At the core of it all, however, lies a meaningful engagement with local LGBTI civil society and activists — and adequate, non-extractive compensation for their work. They are the experts, and it’s only through their expertise that research design and data collection can lead to accurate insights.