"After Honduran trans activist Vicky Hernández was targeted and killed for her gender identity in 2009, the country experienced a wave of unprecedented violence against the LGBTQ+ community. More than 300 LGBTQ+ people have been killed in the country in the decade since and few, if any, of these cases have been properly investigated and brought to justice.
RFK Human Rights and Red Lésbica Cattrachas took up Vicky’s case and have been litigating on her family’s behalf for years, seeking justice for her individually but also hoping to curb the extreme violence and harm the LGBTQ+ community has suffered in the region by holding state governments to account.
In June 2021, exactly 12 years after Vicky’s death, we won our case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which declared Honduras responsible for her murder and set a legal precedent to protect LGBTQ+ rights throughout Latin America.
As senior staff attorney Kacey Mordecai told Thomson Reuters Foundation News, “to have the decision on the date of her death in Pride month, to me says that her life was not meaningless.”
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