The Human Rights Council President has proposed that States select Bolaños Vargas as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders by the end of the body’s ongoing 61st session.
The Office of the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council has made public a letter in which it presents 15 candidates to fill mandates within the UN human rights system. This includes the key position of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, for which the President has proposed Andrea Bolaños Vargas.
In selecting a new mandate holder, we urge States to commit to fully cooperating with the Special Rapporteur to promote and enable the work of human rights defenders everywhere. The work under this mandate is central at this time where we urgently need the voices of individual activists and civil society to reinvent multilateralism.
A Colombian national, Andrea Bolaños Vargas is a human rights expert with experience as a researcher and advisor for UN agencies, regional bodies, international, regional civil society and grassroots organisations across Latin America, particularly on migration, gender, and human rights protection issues.
Should the Council approve this nomination in the closing days of its 61st session, Bolaños Vargas will succeed Mary Lawlor, who has held the position of Special Rapporteur since 2020.
In 2025 the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) welcomed 14 new organisations, on the occasion of its 42nd Congress, which took place in Bogotá at the end of October. The federation now has 194 members in 120 countries. Of varied origins, cultures, organisations, issues and sizes, yet united by a common struggle: the universal defence of human rights. These 14 memberships demonstrate the vitality of the human rights movement across the world, the relevance of the growth of an international federation dedicated to this universalist cause, and the need to bring together the strengths of civil society worldwide in the face of the challenges it is faced with. Local struggles, global problems, the organisations of FIDH find within the federation a space of solidarity where they can exchange ideas and collectively develop solutions to the shrinking civic space observed throughout the world.
“With these new arrivals, our federation is growing and becoming stronger, particularly on the Asian continent“, says Alexis Deswaef, President of FIDH, elected at the same congress in Bogotá.
Cândida Schaedler on 12 February 2025 asks whether anything can be done to protect them.
In 2023, 196 land and environmental defenders were murdered around the world – the vast majority of them in Latin America. In fact, just four countries – Brazil, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico – accounted for over 70 percent of those killings. Colombia was by far the deadliest country, with 79 murders, followed by Brazil, with 25.
We spoke with some of these brave activists to learn more about the threats they face, how they stay safe and how Colombia and Brazil are working to keep them alive.
Quilombolas in the Jequitinhonha Valley in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Photo: Mídia NINJA, Flickr
“When we recognized ourselves and declared ourselves a quilombo, our peace was over”, recalls Elza,* a Brazilian Quilombola leader in her late 50s.
In December 2008, she was shot and injured in an attack that killed her brother and sister. Since then, she hasn’t left her home alone – not even for a walk in her own territory, one of the 11 urban quilombos in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil.
Quilombos are Afro-Brazilian communities that were originally founded by escaped slaves in colonial times.
Today, they are officially defined as “ethno-racial groups that, by self-definition, have their own historical trajectory, maintain specific territorial relations and are presumed to have Black ancestry related to resistance against historical oppression.” Brazil has recognized quilombos in its constitution since 1988, but the process of gaining legal recognition is time-consuming and often fraught with obstacles. Elza’s community was officially designated a quilombo in 2005, but only after its residents agreed to give up half their territory. Ever since, they’ve been battling gangs and real estate speculators who want control of the same 58 hectares of land they call home.
In 2022, they once again came under attack. Armed men showed up at their door in an attempt to take over a housing project under construction in the quilombo, which had been put on hold due to a dispute with the bank financing it….
Elza and her daughter, Carolina,* live under the protection of the Brazilian government, which has a program to safeguard human rights defenders, environmentalists and communicators.
Jesus Pinilla leads a workshop for the Network of Young Guardians of the Atrato. Photo courtesy of Jesus Pinilla
Jesus Pinilla is a 26-year-old Afro-Colombian activist from a small community in the Chocó Department in western Colombia. He is a member of the Network of Young Guardians of the Atrato, a group composed of 36 young people defending the Atrato River – considered the mightiest river in Colombia.
Back in 2016, the Atrato was the first Colombian river to be given legal rights. Enforcing those rights are a group of 10 guardians, along with the Young Guardians, who are embroiled in a constant battle against mining companies exploiting the river’s waters.
Pinilla works as an environmental educator. He first became an environmental activist at the age of 14, but he fears that the risks often drive young people away from climate and environmental movements in Colombia.
“My community is located by the river, so we are constantly dealing with it on a daily basis,” he says. “We depend on it for our basic needs.”
Policing is not enough to tackle the threats facing land and environmental defenders in Latin America. Photo: Agência Brasília, Flickr
“When combined with the interests of communities, the internal armed conflict becomes even more dangerous,” says Leonardo González Perafán, director of the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) in the capital, Bogotá.
“That’s when actions against environmental defenders and communities come into play,” he explains, adding that environmental conflicts often occur in countries with abundant mineral resources.
In most cases, communities are forced to self-organize to ensure their own safety due to the absence of the state.
“They provide self-protection through Indigenous or campesino [farmer] guards,” he explains.
The communities have also developed communication strategies to share information with each other, as well as with the authorities and other organizations.
But as long as the armed conflict persists, it will be very difficult for the government to tackle systemic threats against environmental defenders, especially in areas where it has little authority, says Franklin Castañeda, director of human rights at Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior.
Castañeda explains that more than 15,000 people are currently protected under the National Protection Unit (UNP), which aims to ensure the safety of members of Congress, mayors, journalists, human rights defenders, community leaders and other individuals facing threats due to their work.
The majority – around 9,000 – of these people are social leaders, including environmental defenders. The UNP provides them with security measures such as bulletproof vests, private escorts, armored vehicles or other measures as deemed necessary on a case-by-case basis.
Still, Castañeda emphasizes that individual measures are a last resort. The government has also invested in prevention, such as ensuring that the military and police are not involved in illegal activities.
Despite these efforts, Castañeda concedes that there is still plenty of work to be done to address the structural drivers of conflict, such as high levels of socioeconomic inequality.
“Most of the territories where social conflicts arise are the least developed ones that the government still cannot reach.”
He says these areas will need internet access, highways and other infrastructure to improve the government’s ability to ensure safety and the rule of law.
A quilombo in southern Brazil. Photo: Cândida Schaedler
In Brazil, the main drivers of conflict are deforestation, illegal mining, real estate speculation and the expansion of agriculture.
The program’s coordinator, Igo Martini, emphasizes the importance of listening to the communities to respond quickly to their protection needs. Last year, it carried out 54 public consultations to devise a National Plan to address threats to these communities. But Martini also points out the need to address the root causes rather than merely deploying the police.
“If we don’t solve the underlying causes, the program will continue for another 20 or 40 years just responding to emergencies,” he warns. “A movement from the states is also necessary, not just from the federal government.”
“We need to strengthen agencies, monitoring systems and prevention systems, like the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), for example.”
The PPDDH operates in three areas: state protection, justice protection and collective protection.
While state and justice protection are offered by the police and courts respectively, collective protection involves strengthening communities and providing them with the tools to communicate with each other and report threats to the authorities to safeguard their territory.
Members of the 2024 cohort of our Global South Defenders program.
This opportunity allows human rights defenders from countries in the Global South who are in emergency or high-risk situations to develop their projects and participate in an academic and cultural exchange in a safe space.
The fellowship will begin in the second semester of 2025.
Who is eligible to be part of the program?
We seek human rights defenders from the Global South who meet the following criteria:
They come from an emergency or high-risk context. This includes regions affected by armed conflict, civil unrest, or authoritarian regimes, where there is an imminent threat to the security of the grantee. This may involve situations where the grantee and/or their organization have been subjected to threats, intimidation, or populist propaganda, or where they have been excluded from funding due to government or private sector influence.
The grantee may be at risk of burnout and is seeking a quiet place to continue working on human rights issues, but in a different context.
They belong to human rights organizations in the Global South that are interested in engaging in exchanges and joint research or advocacy work with Dejusticia.
They aim to build lasting relationships with other fellows and with Dejusticia. This ensures that our fellowships function as acceleration hubs for connections that will make the human rights movement more cohesive and impactful.
What will fellows receive from Dejusticia?
Dejusticia will cover travel expenses (visa, tickets) and provide a monthly stipend based on the fellow’s profile and experience. Although Dejusticia will offer support at the beginning of the process, including a two-week training period on applied research and on the fellow’s specific work, it is important to note that fellows will be responsible for managing their stipend to cover housing, transportation, and food expenses.
What are the commitments of the Global South Fellow?
The fellow will allocate their time at Dejusticia as follows:
According to a new report by Global Witness released on 10 September, more than 2,100 land and environmental defenders were killed globally between 2012 and 2023.
An estimated 196 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2023 around the world, according to a new Global Witness report published today
The new figures take the total number of defenders killed between 2012 to 2023 to 2,106
For the second year running, Colombia had the highest number of killings worldwide – with a record 79 defenders killed last year, followed by Brazil (25), Mexico (18) and Honduras (18)
Once again, Latin America had the highest number of recorded killings worldwide, with 166 killings overall – 54 killings across Mexico and Central America and 112 in South America
Environmental defenders are also being increasingly subject to range of tactics for silencing those who speak out for the planet across Asia, the UK, EU and US
The new figures bring the total number of defender killings to 2,106 between 2012 and 2023.
Overall, Colombia was found to be the deadliest country in the world, with 79 deaths in total last year – compared to 60 in 2022, and 33 in 2021. This is the most defenders killed in one country in a single year Global Witness has ever recorded. With 461 killings from 2012 to 2023, Colombia has the highest number of reported environmental defender killings globally on record.
Other deadly countries in Latin America include Brazil, with 25 killings last year, and Mexico and Honduras, which both had 18 killings.
Central America has emerged as one of the most dangerous places in the world for defenders. With 18 defenders killed in Honduras, the country had the highest number of killings per capita in 2023. A total of 10 defenders were also killed in Nicaragua last year, while four were killed in Guatemala, and four in Panama.
Worldwide, Indigenous Peoples and Afrodescendents continue to be disproportionately targeted, accounting for 49% of total murders.
Laura Furones, Lead Author and Senior Advisor to the Land and Environmental Defenders Campaign at Global Witness, said:
“As the climate crisis accelerates, those who use their voice to courageously defend our planet are met with violence, intimidation, and murder. Our data shows that the number of killings remains alarmingly high, a situation that is simply unacceptable.
While establishing a direct relationship between the murder of a defender and specific corporate interests remains difficult, Global Witness identified mining as the biggest industry driverby far, with 25 defenders killed after opposing mining operations in 2023. Other industries include fishing (5), logging (5), agribusiness (4), roads and infrastructure (4) and hydropower (2).
In total, 23 of the 25 mining-related killings globally last year happened in Latin America. But more than 40% of all mining-related killings between 2012 and 2023 occurred in Asia – home to significant natural reserves of key critical minerals vital for clean energy technologies.
As well as highlighting the number of killings worldwide, the report unearths wider trends in non-lethal attacks and their harmful impacts on communities globally. It highlights cases of enforced disappearances and abductions, pointed tactics used in both the Philippines and Mexico in particular, as well as the wider use of criminalisation as a tactic to silence activists across the world.
The report also explores the crackdown on environmental activists across the UK, Europe and the US, where laws are increasingly being weaponised against defenders, and harsh sentences are more frequently imposed on those who have played a role in climate protests. The findings form part of a concerning trend of criminalisation cases emerging worldwide.
Despite the escalating climate crisis – and governments pledging to achieve the Paris Agreement target of 1.5C – land and environmental defenders are being increasingly subject to a wide range of attacks to stop their efforts to protect the planet. At least 1,500 defenders have been killed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on 12 December 2015.
Nonhle Mbuthuma, author of the report’s foreword and Goldman Environmental Prize Winner 2024, said:
“Across every corner of the globe, those who dare to expose the devastating impact of extractive industries — deforestation, pollution, and land grabbing — are met with violence and intimidation. This is especially true for Indigenous Peoples, who are essential in the fight against climate change, yet are disproportionately targeted year after year.
Dejusticia’s work as part of the human rights movement has always been carried out alongside individuals and partner organizations with whom we have collaborated to advance various agendas. The value of these encounters drives us to constantly seek ways to better articulate our work with leaders, activists, and professionals from different areas of the human rights movement in Colombia and different countries of the Global South. As part of this effort, the Fellowship Program for activists and human rights defenders from the Global South was born. With this program, we seek to generate South-South collaboration ties that are sustained over time and contribute both to building a more coordinated and organized civil society, as well as supporting the individual efforts of those who work for global justice on a daily basis.
What does the program entail? Dejusticia provides fellowships for cohorts of 5 to 8 human rights defenders who come to Bogota, Colombia, to live and work here for periods of 3 to 6 months. They are integrated into one of Dejusticia’s teams to work with its researchers on collaborative projects. The program offers fellows a collaborative and creative space to reflect on various relevant issues, strengthen their work in the struggle for social and environmental justice, and get inspired by new strategies, approaches and possibilities of transformative actions.
For those who in their places of origin often face risks derived from the work they do, Dejusticia offers a quiet and safe space for research, advocacy, and fellowship with those who share their struggles. The program is a useful opportunity for exchange, in which those who come to Dejusticia can explore our tools and action-research strategies to enrich the work they do in their home countries, while Dejusticia learns from their experience and that of their organizations.
A new kind of profile for fellows
The program we designed at Dejusticia takes a slightly different approach. We look for human rights defenders and activists with three key characteristics: (1) people who are at risk due to threats, armed conflict, an authoritarian government, or obstruction of their work; (2) people who may be at risk of burnout from their job; and (3) people linked to a human rights organization in the global south that is interested in working with Dejusticia.
This approach has allowed us to receive people from Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, Venezuela, among other countries. Our fellows are professionals and activists in political science, law, sociology, communications, and more, many with extensive experience, as well as people who are just beginning their careers. Welcoming each of the people who have participated in the program has been an opportunity to add hospitality to the strategies with which we seek to strengthen the human rights movement in the Global South. And in the same vein, programs like this one are a fundamental part of our efforts to strengthen the voice and presence of actors from the Global South in debates, academic production, and the setting of human rights agendas.
Cohort 2023
In the second semester of 2023 we had a cohort of fellows whose time with Dejusticia was enormously enriching.
Jorge Lule, for example, is a political scientist and public administrator from Mexico, specializing in public security issues and conflict analysis. He has worked on issues of militarization, drug policy, serious human rights violations and international crimes. During his fellowship at Dejusticia, he collaboratively wrote an article, with a researcher of the Transitional Justice line, regarding the serious crisis of disappearances and the search for missing persons faced by both countries. This text was published in Dejusticia’s Global Blog and in the Mexican news portal Animal Político.
Another fellow, Danielly Rodriguez, comes from Venezuela and is an activist and social documentarian. She has a long history of telling the stories of Venezuelans, their struggle against authoritarianism and in favor of human rights. She has been working in the field of human rights for more than 11 years, especially through documentary photography. According to her, the fellowship at Dejusticia helped her understand other contexts of human rights situations, both in the countries of the other fellows and in Colombia. It also confirmed her belief that although we are separated by borders, there are situations that affect us in very similar ways.
Miracle Joseph comes from Nigeria and joined the tax justice team. With a background in geography, he specializes in economic, social and behavioral geography, focusing on the connections between government policies and social patterns. His main project at Dejusticia was an investigation that aimed to understand how corruption affects the advancement of human rights and sustainable development in Nigeria, focusing on health, education and climate change.
Finally, Fabian Hernandez is a young activist from the Colombian Caribbean region with campesino roots, linked to the peasant resistance movement in the department of Cesar. He is active in social movements, especially in the struggle for the recovery of land, water and ecosystems. Fabián strengthened his research skills and exchanged tools with Dejusticia’s Land and Peasant Rights team, which he joined during his stay. During this time he wrote a text on autonomy and peasant resistance in the Sumapaz region and organized a discussion with peasant leaders from different parts of Colombia to discuss the challenges and stakes in agroalimentary farming territories.
Having these four talented and committed people be part of our team in 2023 was a great privilege and an opportunity to learn and build valuable partnerships. By the middle of 2024 we will have a new cohort, which will continue to enable us to strengthen the knowledge, experiences, and collaborative networks essential to the work of those of us who fight for global justice.
Associated Press on 23 January 2023 informs us that Colombia’s human rights watchdog is reporting that 215 human rights advocates were killed last year, the highest death toll since a peace accord was signed with leftist rebels in 2016.
José Ricaurte Quintero, who founded the Maná Survivors Association, was one of the last victims of 2022. He was assassinated in the street in Armenia in December. His group supported families of people who disappeared during more than five decades of armed conflict in Colombia.
The ombudsman’s office says the murders coincide with places that are strategically important to organized crime groups involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining and contraband.
The government of Gustavo Petro — Colombia’s first-ever leftist president — has proposed in his “total peace” policy to initiate peace talks with armed groups such as the ELN guerrillas and to reach out to FARC dissidents who refused to sign the peace accord, as well as the Gulf Clan cartel, with whom the government announced a truce.
Ombudsman Carlos Camargo expressed hope that such talks would lead to a reduction in actions against leaders of human rights groups.
In a landmark ruling for fundamental freedoms in Colombia, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that for over two decades the state government harassed, surveilled, and persecuted members of a lawyer’s group that defends human rights defenders, activists, and indigenous people, putting the attorneys’ lives at risk.
The ruling is a major victory for civil rights in Colombia, which has a long history of abuse and violence against human rights defenders, including murders and death threats. The case involved the unlawful and arbitrary surveillance of members of the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective (CAJAR), a Colombian human rights organization defending victims of political persecution and community activists for over 40 years.
The court found that since at least 1999, Colombian authorities carried out a constant campaign of pervasive secret surveillance of CAJAR members and their families. That state violated their rights to life, personal integrity, private life, freedom of expression and association, and more, the Court said. It noted the particular impact experienced by women defenders and those who had to leave the country amid threat, attacks, and harassment for representing victims.
The decision is the first by the Inter-American Court to find a State responsible for violating the right to defend human rights. The court is a human rights tribunal that interprets and applies the American Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty ratified by over 20 states in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 2022, EFF, Article 19, Fundación Karisma, and Privacy International, represented by Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic, filed an amicus brief in the case. EFF and partners urged the court to rule that Colombia’s legal framework regulating intelligence activity and the surveillance of CAJAR and their families violated a constellation of human rights and forced them to limit their activities, change homes, and go into exile to avoid violence, threats, and harassment.
Colombia’s intelligence network was behind abusive surveillance practices in violation of the American Convention and did not prevent authorities from unlawfully surveilling, harassing, and attacking CAJAR members, EFF told the court. Even after Colombia enacted a new intelligence law, authorities continued to carry out unlawful communications surveillance against CAJAR members, using an expansive and invasive spying system to target and disrupt the work of not just CAJAR but other human rights defenders and journalists.
In examining Colombia’s intelligence law and surveillance actions, the court elaborated on key Inter-American and other international human rights standards, and advanced significant conclusions for the protection of privacy, freedom of expression, and the right to defend human rights.
The court delved into criteria for intelligence gathering powers, limitations, and controls. It highlighted the need for independent oversight of intelligence activities and effective remedies against arbitrary actions. It also elaborated on standards for the collection, management, and access to personal data held by intelligence agencies, and recognized the protection of informational self-determination by the American Convention.
Haroon Siddique in the Guardian of 15 February 2024 relates the story of lawyer Adil Meléndez Márquez who received a call from his bodyguards 20 minutes after receiving the Sir Henry Brooke award from the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk. Meléndez is no stranger to death threats, but things have just got a lot scarier. With bitter irony, 20 minutes after receiving the Sir Henry Brooke award from the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk, his bodyguards called him to say that they had been stood down from, leaving him without protection.
In an interview with the Guardian in London, Meléndez said he is a human rights lawyer who hails from among those he represents. He is Afro Colombian and works predominately on cases for Afro Colombians and Indigenous communities, often in areas under the control of paramilitaries rather than the government. He was kidnapped when he was 12 so has first-hand experience of the violence which blights the country and has received threats since becoming involved with Movice (movement of victims of state crimes) in 2006. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2014/02/12/death-threats-in-colombia-on-the-rise-again/
After receiving threats Meléndez took a case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – an organ of the Organization of American States – which, in 2009, ordered Colombia to provide him with protection. For the first eight years this amounted to three personal bodyguards and a bulletproof car, then the bulletproof car was removed and later one of the bodyguards, leaving him with two until last week, he says.
Meléndez describes his work as taking on “politicians, business interests, cattle ranchers, the armed forces and paramilitary groups”.
He expands: “Rampant corruption and violence is taken advantage of by [foreign] companies. They operate in such a way that it denies the rights of communities because all they’re interested in is the exploitation of natural resources. It means that they don’t have to provide compensation or justice for the communities because the rule of law, the writ of law doesn’t apply.”
One of the projects Meléndez has been helping to resist is the upgrading of the 115km Canal del Dique in Colombia’s Caribbean region, which he helped to get temporarily suspended. He believes that proper consultation was not carried out prior to the project, as is required by law and it involves “the privatisation of rivers which are the source of life of the Afro-descendent communities”. He said that as a result of the suspension he was called an “enemy of development” by a Colombian minister, words he claims were echoed by the the paramilitary group and notorious drug cartel, Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), also known as the Gulf Clan.
While he counts Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist head of state, as a friend and acknowledges his lack of control over swathes of the country, at the same time he says disapprovingly: “President Petro speaks in international fora about the protection of the environment but in his own country his government is awarding contracts to a project that is damaging to the environment.”
Meléndez does not blame Petro for the removal of his bodyguards, believing it was the work of someone lower down the food chain, but he believes it is for the president to ensure they are reinstated. Not doing so would put the government in breach of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, he says. “I have had to stop all my activities at the moment and it’s possible even that I will have to make the decision not to return to Colombia,” says Meléndez.
However, he hopes that the prize he was presented with in London, which he calls a reward for “the rebellious and those in resistance”, might offer a degree of protection. “This prize raises my profile,” he said. “It provides evidence that I’ve got support from the international community. The organised criminal actors or others who are against me, they calculate the consequences of their actions and so the calculation now includes a much higher level of risk for them if they make a decision to act against me.”
The study from Global Witness, a non-profit human rights environmental watchdog, shows that the killings of Indigenous peoples defending their territories and resources represented nearly 34 percent of all lethal attacks despite making up about 5 percent of the world’s population.
“Governments where these violations are happening are not acting properly to create a safe environment for defenders and a civic space proper for them to thrive,” said Gabriella Bianchini, senior advisor for the land and environmental defenders team at Global Witness. “They are not reporting or investigating and seeking accountability for reprisals against defenders. And most importantly, they are not promoting legal accountability in the proper manner.”
Latin America has consistently ranked as the deadliest region for land defenders overall and saw almost 9 in every 10 recorded killings in 2022. More than a third of those fatal attacks took place in Colombia. In 2021, Brazil was named the deadliest country for land defenders by Global Witness and now sits at second; In July, activist Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips were murdered in the Brazilian Amazon.
Growing tensions from agribusiness, mining, and logging have led to consistent lethal attacks in the region. Between 2011 and 2021, for instance, more than 10,000 conflicts related to land rights and territories were recorded in Latin America alone.
“The worsening climate crisis and the ever-increasing demand for agricultural commodities, fuel, and minerals will only intensify the pressure on the environment — and those who risk their lives to defend it,” wrote the authors.
Earlier this year, Frontline Defenders, an international human rights organization, released a similar report to Global Witness’ with corresponding findings — including that Colombia was the most dangerous country for land defenders. [see:https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/04/04/front-line-defenders-just-published-its-global-analysis-2022-new-record-of-over-400-killings-in-one-year/ . While Frontline Defenders reported that there were 186 land defender deaths in Colombia and Global Witness reported 60, Bianchini said differences in statistics are the result of different methodologies, which vary by organization. However, both organizations’ reports were united in findings: Indigenous people make up a disproportionate amount of the deaths among land and environment defenders, Latin America sees the highest rates of violence, and the number of killings is likely underreported.
“I am incredibly grateful and impressed to see the fight of all of these communities who are there living in these areas and who have been acting for thousands of years to protect the array of life,” said Bianchini. “I cannot believe that humanity right now is living in a moment where we are killing those who are protecting their own lands and civil rights.”
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 