UN Reports: Murder by Proxy: Killing of LGBTQ+ persons across seven nation states: Kenya, Iraq, Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (2024)
Brazil and Mexico
ReportOUT was proud to submit its largest ever submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions’ call for input in relation to unlawful killings of LGBTQ+ citizens. Our submissions covered seven nation states in several reports and included our first submission in Spanish to a UN mechanism.
Please read and download this report (opens in PDF) by clicking here
Report summary:
This report is on unlawful killings of LGBTQ+ persons in Brazil and Mexico - one of a group of country reports on homicides against members of the LGBTQ+ communities.
The papers were authored by ReportOUT researchers Arnold Ochieng Oginga, Joshua Hurn and Jessica Peck with contributions from other researchers who requested to remain anonymous.
The seven countries under review have very different societal attitudes towards LGBTQ+ identities which inform this paper. Deeply held institutional prejudices and a lack of any legal protection towards LGBTQ+ citizens in Iraq actively enables an environment of impunity where extrajudicial killings of SOGI/LGBTQI+ individuals is commonplace.
By contrast, Brazil and Mexico both have detailed legal frameworks nominally protecting LGBTQ+ citizens but our research demonstrates gaping deficiencies in both countries’ application and enforcement of these policies. This results in extrajudicial killings of LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly trans individuals, being sadly all too common and rarely resulting in convictions of the perpetrators.
We also submitted reports on:
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Kenya and Iraq
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El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (a partnership with local organisations Lamda, Comcavis Trans and Cattrachas). Submitted in both English and Spanish.
These will be available as PDF reports on this site in the near future. In El Salvador and Honduras, LGBTQ+ citizens are disproportionately impacted by violent crime and killings due to broader institutional practices which serve to stigmatise these communities.
Our reports also note that LGBTQ+ people face repeated barriers to access to justice across all seven states. This includes discrimination by police investigators and the judicial system, brought about by a combination of lack of knowledge and institutional prejudice. In turn, this leads to distrust of the justice system, resulting in fewer crimes being accurately recorded.
As nation states signed up to the core UN Charter and the Sustainable Development Goals, each of one is obliged to take proactive measures to protect the core rights of all their citizens, including the right to life. Our report demonstrates that, to varying extents, all seven states are falling short of this commitment to their LGBTQ+ citizens.
Published April 2025
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We will update on developments as they arise.