Laura Weinstein was a leading LGBTI activist in Colombia and a major advocate for the right to gender identity recognition in Colombia. As an employee of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá at the Diversity Center, she promoted the issuance of Decree 1227, which allows the change of sex in the identity card.
If we were to summarize all the work Laura has done for the whole community, it would take too many pages. All her work was done mainly from the GAAT Foundation (Grupo de Acción y Apoyo Trans), an organization that was under her direction from 2010 until her death last January.
Her commitment to improving the lives of the community led her to lead various social, legislative and institutional initiatives in favor of the rights of LGBTIQ people. Among them the right to vote, support for trans children and the recognition of transfemicide, among many others.
At a commemorative event for the International Trans Day of Remembrance, she said:
“The invitation is to love diversity, to recognize the capacity that trans people have to transform the world, because we are the sign that this can be otherwise. If we are able to transform something that many believe should not be so (…), also any form of violence, discrimination and injustice can be transformed. I really invite you to think about what the lives of trans people mean”.
