A trans-led agenda for statistical justice#
Our work on statistical justice grows from Liga de Salud Trans, a trans-led organization working at the intersection of health, human rights, research, public policy, and community advocacy in Colombia.
This agenda begins with our own experiences and with the knowledge that trans and non-binary communities have built through years of organizing, care, research, and political action. We connect that knowledge with scientific evidence, technical analysis, public communication, education, and sustained engagement with government institutions.
Our purpose is to transform the systems through which the State recognizes people, produces official data, allocates resources, and makes decisions. We work so that trans and non-binary people are recognized as who we are, that recognition translates into rights and public protection, and being counted does not expose us to new forms of harm.
How change happens#
Statistical justice cannot be achieved through a single publication, meeting, or policy reform. It requires a connected process. Community knowledge helps us identify forms of exclusion that official systems often fail to see. Research allows us to document those problems and understand how they are produced. Policy briefs, courses, advocacy tools, and public communication translate evidence into resources for different audiences. Institutional dialogue brings that knowledge into the spaces where regulations, information systems, budgets, and public policies are shaped.
Each part of this process informs the others. Research strengthens advocacy. Institutional conversations generate new research questions. Public communication changes how problems are understood. Community knowledge guides the direction of the entire agenda.
We produce knowledge from our realities#
We develop scientific, legal, technical, participatory, and community-led research on how official systems recognize, misclassify, or erase trans and non-binary people. Our work examines civil registration, vital statistics, identity documents, health information systems, death certificates, administrative records, and other infrastructures through which the State produces knowledge about society. We publish scientific articles, qualitative studies, legal reviews, technical reports, and policy briefs that connect academic rigor with the realities and political questions emerging from trans communities.
Trans people are not simply participants or sources of data in this work. Our experiences, leadership, questions, and forms of knowledge shape what is studied, how findings are interpreted, and what institutional changes are proposed.
We translate knowledge into tools for action#
Evidence must be accessible and usable beyond academic spaces. We translate research into policy briefs, technical documents, courses, advocacy kits, glossaries, infographics, presentations, videos, and other practical resources.
These materials help trans-led organizations, public officials, researchers, journalists, students, and civil society actors understand how statistical exclusion operates and what can be done to transform it. They are designed not only to explain the problem, but also to support meetings, campaigns, institutional dialogue, collective organizing, and public accountability.
Through open learning resources and practical tools, we seek to ensure that knowledge about statistical justice does not remain confined to universities or technical institutions.
We shape public narratives#
Statistical systems are often presented as neutral or purely technical. Our public communication work shows that they are also connected to dignity, health, memory, violence, public resources, and the recognition of rights.
We use op-eds, podcasts, public events, short videos, social media, book projects, and audiovisual storytelling to bring these questions into public debate. These formats allow us to communicate in our own voices, connect institutional processes with everyday experiences, and reach audiences that may never read an academic paper or technical report.
Changing public narratives is part of changing institutions. When statistical invisibility becomes recognizable as a matter of rights and good governance, new forms of public action become possible.
We bring evidence into decision-making#
We take evidence into the spaces where public decisions are made. Our advocacy includes strategic breakfasts, meetings with members of Congress, technical roundtables, conversations with ministries and public agencies, public forums, working sessions, and sustained engagement with the institutions responsible for registration, statistics, health, justice, forensic procedures, identification, data protection, and human rights.
We also bring this agenda to academic and international conferences, where evidence, standards, public policies, and emerging approaches to data and human rights are debated.
These spaces allow us to present evidence, identify institutional responsibilities, understand implementation challenges, build shared recommendations, and follow up on public commitments. We work to move conversations from general recognition toward concrete changes in regulations, procedures, information systems, and public policy.
We build spaces for collective action#
Statistical justice cannot be achieved by one organization or one public institution acting alone. Official information moves across multiple systems, agencies, professions, and levels of government.
We create spaces where trans-led organizations, activists, researchers, public institutions, and allies can identify shared problems, coordinate responsibilities, and develop collective pathways for reform. Community consultations, advisory groups, technical roundtables, public forums, and collaborative workshops help turn isolated efforts into sustained agendas.
These spaces create relationships, shared commitments, and mechanisms for coordination and follow-up, allowing the work to continue beyond a single meeting, event, or project.
We develop technical pathways for institutional reform#
Institutional change also requires technical pathways. We work with specialists, public institutions, trans-led organizations, and community experts to understand how information moves through government systems, where it is lost or distorted, and what changes are needed to improve its quality.
This work includes mapping data flows, reviewing forms and administrative procedures, developing data dictionaries, identifying quality checks, analyzing interoperability, and producing prioritized technical recommendations. Our objective is to make reform both politically meaningful and institutionally implementable.
Technical accuracy and community participation must advance together. A system can only produce statistical justice when it recognizes people with dignity, protects sensitive information, and creates data that can support rights and public action.
From Colombia to a regional and global agenda#
Our work is rooted in Colombia, but statistical invisibility extends across borders. We are building connections with trans-led organizations, researchers, and advocates across Latin America and beyond to exchange knowledge, produce comparative evidence, and develop shared strategies for statistical justice.
We seek to strengthen locally led agendas that respond to each country’s political, legal, cultural, and institutional context rather than replicate a single model. Through regional and global collaboration, we aim to amplify trans-led knowledge, support collective advocacy, and contribute to information systems that recognize and protect people while reflecting the diversity of our societies.
What statistical justice means to us#
Statistical justice is how we connect community knowledge, scientific evidence, public narratives, technical work, and institutional advocacy.
From Liga de Salud Trans, we are building an agenda that moves from identifying statistical exclusion to transforming the systems that produce it. Our goal is not simply to appear in official data. It is to be recognized with dignity, to influence the decisions that affect our lives, and to ensure that information becomes a tool for rights, care, memory, and protection.
