Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions There are no accurate data on the number of transgender people in this region. One 2012 estimate is that transgender people make up 0.3 percent of the adult population in the Asia Pacific.156 Using 2010 United Nations population data, this equates to at least nine million transgender people. This proportion broadly matches some community-based estimates of the number of hijras or transgender women in some parts of Asia. However, the number and proportion of young people describing themselves as transgender or gender questioning is growing at a fast rate in many parts of the region, suggesting that this estimate is increasingly conservative. For example, a 2012 nationally representative survey of 8,166 high school students in New Zealand found that 1.2 percent reported being transgender and 2.5 percent reported not being sure about their gender.157 3.2. VIOLENCE All people, including transgender people, have the right to security of the person and to protection by the State against violence. Internationally, including across this region, transgender people face high levels of violence. Gender-based violence provides a useful lens to understand violence directed against transgender people, whether they identify as female or male or as a third gender. Like other forms of gender-based violence, transphobic violence stems from gender norms and stereotypes, enforced by unequal power dynamics. In a climate of criminalisation, where law enforcement agencies themselves perpetrate violence with impunity, it is not surprising that violence against transgender people goes unreported or is inadequately investigated. In this region and globally, transgender organisations have attempted to monitor the most extreme forms of violence, when transgender people have been killed because of their gender identity. The vast majority of those murdered are transgender women. The global Trans Murder Monitoring project has identified 174 transgender people killed because of their gender identity, across 16 countries in Asia, in the seven years between January 2008 and September 2015.158 Lack of monitoring means these publically reported cases represent a fraction of such hate crimes. The highest numbers of identified deaths were in India (53), the Philippines (37), Pakistan (34) and Thailand (14). The per capita rate of reported killings is particularly high in the Philippines, where civil society groups actively monitor these murders, including the high-profile killing of transgender woman Jennifer Laude on 11 October 2014. In 2013, the Philippines Commission on Human Rights signed a Memorandum of Understanding with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community organisations that included a commitment to address these killings.159 Most studies in this region have focused on violence against transgender women, including hijras, metis and kathoey. They have documented high rates of sexual and physical violence, including in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Mongolia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.160 Researchers have noted atrocious levels of brutality, including mutilation of transgender women’s bodies.161 46 156 S. Winter, Lost in Transition: Transgender People, Rights and Vulnerability in the Asia-Pacific Region, 2012, UNDP. 157 T.C. Clark, M.F.G. Lucassen, P. Bullen, S.J. Denny, T.M. Fleming, E.M. Robinson, and F.V. Rossen, ‘The Health and Well-Being of Transgender High School Students: Results from the New Zealand Adolescent Health Survey (Youth’12)’ in Journal of Adolescent Health, 55 (1) 2014, pp. 93-95 at www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(13)00753-2/fulltext. 158 TvT research project , ‘Trans Murder Monitoring results: TMM TDOR 2015 Update’ 2015; at http://transrespect.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/11/TvT-TMM-Tables_2008-2015_EN.pdf. There were a further two transgender people killed in both the Pacific and Australia and one in New Zealand. 159 UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: the Philippines Country Report, 2014. 160 Health Policy Project, Asia Pacific Transgender Network, UNDP, Blueprint for the Provision of Comprehensive Care for Trans People and Trans Communities, p. 2. 161 C. Balzer and J. Hutta, ‘Transrespect versus transphobia worldwide: A comparative review of the human rights situation of gender-variant/trans people’, TvT Publication Series, Vol. 6, 2012; UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: Mongolia Country Report, 2014.