The Trans Murder Monitoring is dependent in particular on the visibility of gender-diverse and trans people, reporting in newspapers and on websites and local and regional monitoring systems.
Therefore the TMM methodology is based on three different methods to collect the data.
1) Internet research
This research is carried out by the TvT research team in six different languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German) and focuses mainly on online newspaper reports, blog entries, NGO website reporting, social media, and mailing lists. Culturally specific as well as specific partly pejorative key words used in mainstream media assist finding reported murders of trans and gender-diverse people with the search-function of online newspapers and more generally with using search engines.
2) Cooperation with partner organisations
Transgender Europe has been and is cooperating with several partner organisations in different world regions. With some organisations there has been a regular exchange of data, some have been or are sub-contracted or sub-granted, some provide us with data on a regular basis.
In the following we list all organisations that provided a significant amount of data on murdered trans people to the TMM:
APTN, Asia and Pacific Transgender Network (Asia and the Pacific)
ASTRA Rio (Brazil)
Centro de Apoyo a las Identidades Trans A.C. (Mexico)
Gender DynamiX (South Africa)
Grupo Gay da Bahia (Brazil)
Wajood (Pakistan)
Observatório Ciudadano Trans (Colombia)
Pembe Hayat (Turkey)
Red Umbrella (Turkey)
Rede Trans Brasil (Brazil)
Refugee Law Project (Uganda)
S.H.E. (South Africa)
STRAP/The Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch (The Philippines)
Thai Transgender Alliance (Thailand)
Trans China (China)
Trans X (Austria)
3) Contributions from activists and researchers
In addition to the above mentioned methods we also included questions regarding the Trans Murder Monitoring in the TvT questionnaire which was completed by local experts and researchers in more than 120 countries so far and which builds the basis of the Legal and Social Mapping. Apart from this, activists and experts from all parts of the world report murdered trans and gender diverse people to the TvT research team.
Due to the above mentioned cooperation as well as the different qualities in online media reporting some countries stick out in relation to the absolute numbers; e.g. Brazil and Mexico in Central and South America, the U.S. in North America, the Philippines and Thailand in Asia, as well as Turkey in Europe. In the last years throughout all six world regions, the highest absolute numbers have been found in countries with strong trans movements and trans or LGBT organizations that do a professional monitoring. The close connection between the existence of strong trans movements and professional monitoring on the one hand, and highest absolute numbers of reports, on the other hand, point to a worrisome question: the question of unreported cases. Beside the need for mechanisms to protect trans and gender-diverse people, this connection also shows the need for strong trans communities and organizations, which are capable of professional monitoring and reporting of violence against trans and gender-diverse people. Furthermore, this connection results in the fact, that the figures show only the tip of the iceberg of homicides of trans and gender-diverse people on a worldwide scale.