Violence Against LBQ Women: Community Knowledge at the Center of Global Advocacy

.
Violence against LBQ women is not new, yet it remains largely invisible. Across regions, LBQ women experience gender-based violence shaped by misogyny, heteronormativity, criminalization of identity, and social control. This invisibility is reinforced by systemic gaps in protection. When governments or nonprofit organizations provide services to gender-based violence survivors, such as emergency sheltering, medical care, and psychological counseling,  providers often presume survivors are heterosexual, while advocacy to address violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity may overlook the gendered harms that affect LBQ women and girls occurring within families and intimate partnerships. As a result, many LBQ women lack safe reporting channels, shelters, health care services, or access to justice.

The systemic gap is also reflected in global protection frameworks and national policies, where the specific experiences of LBQ women are still rarely captured. Without targeted data and documentation, these realities remain largely absent from decision-making spaces. 

Civil society engagement with UN mechanisms helps to address this gap by bringing forward evidence that reflects what is happening on the ground. At Outright International, one way that we foreground these realities is through submissions to UN special procedures. The most powerful added value of Outright submissions lies in its grounding in community knowledge, the lived realities, documentation, and expertise of LBQ women themselves, as evidenced by our UN submissions on violence against LBQ, trans, and intersex parents, LBQ and trans people’s vulnerability to forced marriage, and queer-centered approaches to dismantling gender stereotypes.

In response to a call for input to a thematic report on the violence and discrimination experienced by LBQ women, Outright gathered data for our submission through focus group discussions with LBQ activists, partner consultations, and community-led projects supported by Outright in different countries. We also issued a call for contributions to activists and partner organizations in our networks, and received documentation in response. These processes created space for survivors, activists, and grassroots leaders to speak to patterns of violence in their own words and to identify risks, protection gaps, and survival strategies often absent from formal reporting. 

Testimonies from focus group participants underscored how violence manifests beyond physical harm. LBQ women spoke about navigating daily life under surveillance, modifying dress, behavior, or movement to avoid harassment. Others described family confinement, threats of forced marriage, or economic coercion following disclosure of their sexual orientation. Safety, in many contexts, is achieved through invisibility rather than protection.

Addressing violence against LBQ people requires comprehensive, gender-based violence frameworks, disaggregated data collection, safe and responsive services, and sustained funding for community-based organizations.

Importantly, community evidence also exposed patterns often missed in formal reporting: suicides linked to sustained discrimination, the use of economic violence to enforce silence, the denial of recognition of same-sex partners after death, through exclusion from funeral decisions or access to a partner’s remains. These realities expand understandings of how violence is experienced, demonstrating that harm operates across social, economic, and psychological domains.

At the same time, the focus group discussions revealed community resilience. Grassroots organizations are developing response mechanisms where state systems fail: informal shelters, emergency assistance, legal literacy workshops, psychosocial support circles, and economic empowerment initiatives. These interventions are survivor-centered, culturally competent, and rooted in trust, yet they often operate with minimal funding and heavy reliance on volunteer labor.

Outright’s role in this process extended beyond compiling data. Supporting access to the UN submission process was itself a critical intervention. Many grassroots LBQ organizations lack the resources or institutional access to engage directly with UN mechanisms, due to language barriers, security risks, and unfamiliarity with reporting frameworks. As a result, the experiences and knowledge of those most affected are often excluded from global human rights discussions.

By creating pathways for these contributions, Outright helps ensure that LBQ personal experiences are not only documented but also inform international advocacy and policy processes. Global frameworks and recommendations are more relevant when they are shaped by the communities they are meant to protect. The submission, therefore, reflects not only documentation of violence but also a collaborative approach that recognizes local knowledge as essential to advancing more inclusive and effective human rights advocacy.

As a lesbian woman and activist, being part of this process felt deeply personal. I have experienced violence that was never named, never documented. As activists and as women, the violence we face is frequently invisible, dismissed as part of our work, normalized as backlash, or erased because it does not fit dominant narratives. Organizing and facilitating the focus group discussions reminded me how powerful recognition can be. These conversations were not just about collecting information for a submission; they were moments of validation. Hearing others share similar experiences, and knowing that our realities would be reflected in a global human rights report, felt like reclaiming visibility in spaces where we have long been unseen.

Violence against LBQ women has been hidden for far too long, buried in silence, misnamed, or simply ignored. This submission highlights these experiences; it carries lived truths shaped by fear, resistance, and survival. These are not abstract violations; they are real stories, told in our own words. For many of us, speaking them aloud is an act of courage. But listening must now become an act of responsibility. 

Recognition cannot end with acknowledgment. It must lead to protection, resource allocation, political will, and meaningful change.