Latin America: The Deadliest Frontline for Environmental Human Rights Defenders

According to the international investigative campaign group Global Witness, Latin America is the deadliest region for environmental human rights defenders. A common trend in the region is the under-reporting of attacks, the criminalization of defenders, and widespread impunity. Since Global Witness started collecting data on killings of environmental defenders in 2012, 70% of all deaths around the globe were recorded in Latin America. In 2022, there were 155 reported deaths of environmental defenders who lost their lives in 11 countries across Latin America, with Colombia and Brazil topping the list. Global Witness reported 60 murders in Colombia and 34 in Brazil. In Colombia, the attacks have targeted Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, small-scale farmers, and environmental activists. A recent analysis by the Colombian civil society network Programa Somos Defensores indicated that only 5.2% of the murders of human rights defenders, including environmental defenders, have been legally resolved. In Brazil, Pará is considered one of the most violent states for land and environmental defenders. The violence in Pará ranges from evictions, physical attacks, destruction of property and assets, and arbitrary detentions to killings.  Bringing the 30th UN climate conference, known as COP-30, to Pará in 2025 will also put a spotlight on the plight of environmental human rights defenders.

The worsening climate crisis intensifies the demand for natural resources and the attacks against those who risk their lives and well-being to protect the environment. The killings of environmental defenders are only the culmination of the wave of attacks they face, which includes acts of intimidation, surveillance, sexual violence, and criminalization, among others. In Mexico alone, Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (CEMDA) documented in 2022 at least 197 events of aggression against environmental human rights defenders, 24 of them resulting in death. Twenty-two of the 24 victims had applied for or received some type of protection. The most common type of aggression was intimidation, but other forms of aggression include stigmatization, property damage, disappearance, forced displacement, torture, and extrajudicial executions. 

The Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world, plays a critical role in the fight against climate change, acting as one of the world’s largest carbon sinks and recharging regional rainfall. It spans eight sovereign countries in South America and the overseas territory of French Guiana. The Amazon is home to more than 40 million people, including 500 Indigenous and ethnic groups. Global Witness has recorded since 2014 a total of 296 deaths in the Amazon, making it one of the most dangerous places to be an environmental human rights defender.  Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately targeted for defending their rights, ancestral lands, and water. Impunity is rife and justice is rare. An investigation by Mongabay Latam found that at least 50 out of the 58 crimes against Indigenous leaders registered in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru between 2016 and 2021 were still unresolved.  

A case in point of flagrant injustice for Indigenous environmental defenders in the Amazon is the Saweto Case in Peru. On September 1, 2014, the Asháninka leaders Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos, Leoncio Quintisima, and Francisco Pinedo were murdered for defending their territories and rainforest from illegal logging. The Peruvian government not only failed to protect the Indigenous leaders from the death threats they received, but also, after over nine years of struggle for justice, the Peruvian court recently overturned the 28-year jail sentence handed in February 2023 against two logging businessmen for brutally torturing and killing the four Indigenous leaders. Indigenous people living in isolation in the Amazon are especially vulnerable to the impact of climate change and the operations of extractive industries. Amid the ongoing political crisis in Peru, congress debated a new bill that would reevaluate the existence of every reserve for Indigenous Peoples living in isolation and could strip them of their lands and protections. Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI in Spanish) are highly vulnerable to rainforest loss, infectious diseases from the outside world, and extractive violence. The new bill, backed by extractive business interests, would have transferred the decision-making power over PIACI reserves from the Ministry of Culture to the regional governments and potentially open the lands to extractive industries and infrastructure projects. Indigenous rights organizations such as AIDESEP and ORPIO pushed back against the new bill, resulting in the bill not moving forward. 

Although there is hope for justice and accountability in the Latin American and the Caribbean region via the Escazú Regional Agreement, the lack of ratification by most of the Amazon countries hinders progress. The Escazú Agreement, which entered into force on 22 April 2021, is the first international treaty in the world to set out specific provisions for protecting human rights defenders in environmental matters. The main objective of the Escazú Agreement is to implement Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, which set out three fundamental “access rights”: access to information, access to public participation, and access to justice. Principle 10 states that “Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level.” As such, Article 7(14) of the Escazú Agreement is particularly noteworthy as it requires the State Parties to make efforts to identify and support vulnerable persons and groups and to eliminate barriers to their participation in environmental decision-making processes. Furthermore, Article 9 creates obligations for signatory States in the region to guarantee a safe and enabling environment for human rights defenders in environmental matters and to prevent, investigate, and punish attacks, threats, or intimidation against human rights defenders. It is imperative to include vulnerable groups and local communities in climate talks as they play a key role in the conservation of ecosystems, threatened by environmental conflicts and the rising influence of powerful corporate interests on climate action.

Image Credits: Andre Penner/AP Photo/picture alliance | Edited by GorStra Team