Brazil TSE Launches Safeguards as Gender-Based Political Violence Rises

Brazil’s electoral authority has launched a series of urgent measures to protect female candidates as the country faces a historic surge in gender-based political violence ahead of the 2026 election cycle. On September 22, 2026, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and the Federal Prosecutor's Office signed a joint action protocol in Brasília designed to coordinate immediate legal and physical protections for female political figures.

The initiative comes in response to alarming new data. According to the TSE, the number of formal cases involving political gender violence reaching Brazil’s Electoral Justice system has risen more than elevenfold in just four years, jumping from 15 cases in 2022 to 177 by September 2026. Candidates have reported severe digital and physical threats, including death threats, the leaking of private family addresses, racist and anti-LGBTQ+ harassment, and AI-generated deepfakes designed to humiliate them.

To bring transparency to the crisis, the TSE launched a new public data dashboard to track statistics and ongoing legal proceedings. The court also initiated a national awareness campaign titled "Politics is a Feminine Noun". These efforts build directly upon Law No. 14.192/2021, a landmark statute that criminalizes actions aimed at excluding, humiliating, or hindering women from exercising their political rights.

During the launch event, TSE President Minister Kassio Nunes Marques emphasized that structural gender inequality continues to normalize the exclusion of women from decision-making roles, calling political violence against women "an aggression to democracy". The new measures also align with a recent landmark ruling by Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), which expanded the scope of the country's domestic violence protections to cover women facing threats in public, professional, and political spaces.

The rising hostility threatens to undermine efforts to increase female representation in a country where women make up the majority of the electorate but remain heavily underrepresented in Congress and local governments. Civil society groups, including the Marielle Franco Institute, have noted that the violence disproportionately targets Black and LGBTQ+ female candidates, who face intersecting layers of discrimination. Electoral authorities hope that the combined power of real-time data tracking, fast-tracked prosecutions, and expanded protective orders will deter aggressors before the 2026 campaigns reach their peak.