Since its adoption, the U.N. established in 2000 a Special Rapporteur to report on the situation of HRDs, and more than 60 countries now have laws, policies, or protection mechanisms to protect HRDs.
Some countries, including the United States, sometimes sanction those who target HRDs with financial penalties and visa bans. Mechanisms like these are important, but they can be slow and used selectively, says Michael Breen of Human Rights First in Just Security of 9 December 2023.
Perpetrators often feel so protected from legal accountability that they openly threaten and attack HRDs. In 2022, more than 400 defenders were killed for their human rights work. This year the number killed is likely to be higher…In our work with HRDs, they often recommend public exposure of those who target them as one step that can be taken for their protection.
Breen states that It is on a reputational level that perpetrators can be most vulnerable and provides several examples.
“We are working with HRDs to create a more international approach of social accountability. We will share research on the social circles in which their attackers move, or that they want to join. We will be compiling lists of who has received awards from where, engaging with institutions about publicly rescinding awards, and otherwise publicly causing embarrassment to perpetrators.This is largely new territory for human rights NGOs, and we will work closely with HRDs in assessing any additional risks produced by socially targeting their attackers.“
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On 11 December 2023 Global Witness published a blog post: “Land and environmental defenders protect our planet – but they cannot halt climate change without access to justice“
“For more than a decade, we’ve been documenting and celebrating the hard-fought wins of land and environmental defenders worldwide. Together, their efforts not only help to prevent environmental destruction and human rights harms by companies, but also help to protect the environment from the worst effects of climate change.”
“Defenders globally continue to face reprisals after speaking out to protect the environment. At least 1,910 land and environmental defenders around the world have been killed since 2012, with 177 cases in 2022 alone. Of these killings last year, 88% occurred in Latin America – a region consistently found to be the most dangerous place in the world for activists.”
“Impunity is consistently named as a key driver behind attacks on defenders by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, whose office has repeatedly noted how failures to properly prosecute perpetrators have fueled further attacks. This is no coincidence. Every perpetrator who walks free sends a fatal message to defenders and activists worldwide.”
“The future of our planet depends on the continued stewardship of Indigenous people over their ancestral land, with Indigenous practices cited as protecting 80% of the world’s biodiversity. We simply cannot meet the 1.5°C limit and prevent devastating consequences on human life without the efforts of environmental defenders.”
On 10 November 2023 the Caucasian Knot reported that the ECtHR had found a violation of the rights of Krasnodar activist Nikitin. Alexander Konstantinovich Nikitin is a Russian former submarine officer and nuclear safety inspector turned environmentalist. In 1996 he was accused of espionage for revealing the perils of decaying nuclear submarines, and in 2000 he became the first Russian to be completely acquitted of a charge of treason in the Soviet or post-Soviet era. Nikitin is still engaged in environmental and human rights issues in Russia. He is the head of Bellona Foundation’s Saint Petersburg branch, and is engaged in environmental and nuclear safety projects, as well as in human rights cases. He is a widely recognised HRD, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/D519B52C-D0C3-4B3B-B8F6-798A34B1BF04
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has awarded compensation of EUR 5000 to Alexei Nikitin, a Krasnodar activist. Nikitin was detained at an action against increasing prices for public transport in 2018 and at a rally in support of Alexei Navalny* in 2021.
Navalny’s offices are recognized as extremist organizations and banned in Russia. Alexei Navalny is a founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (known as FBK), an NCO that is included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of NCOs performing functions of a foreign agent. The NCO is also recognized by a court as extremist and banned in the territory of Russia.
Human Rights Watch’ submission discusses the risks climate activists have faced in Australia, India, and Uganda. It focuses on examples of activists under age 32, as requested by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders.
Australia
Following increased climate protest activity in New South Wales (NSW), the government in March 2022 established a new police unit known as the Strike Force Guard. The unit is designed to “prevent, investigate and disrupt unauthorized protests across the state.” On April 1, the state parliament introduced new laws and penalties specifically targeting protests that blocked roads and ports. Protesters can now be fined up to AU$22,000 (US$15,250) and be jailed for up to two years for protesting without permission on public roads, rail lines, tunnels, bridges, and industrial estates.
In 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed three climate protesters who had been arrested and charged under the new laws. These cases indicate that climate protesters are being targeted for disproportionate punishment.
Violet (Deanna) Coco, a 31-year-old activist, took part in a climate protest on April 13, 2022, that stopped traffic in one lane on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Coco climbed on the roof of a parked truck and stood holding a lit emergency flare. After approximately 25 minutes, NSW police forcibly removed her and the other protesters from the road. Coco was charged with disrupting vehicles, interfering with the safe operation of a bridge, possessing a bright light distress signal in a public place, failing to comply with police direction, and resisting or hindering a police officer. She was also charged under explosives regulations for holding the emergency flare; with an incitement offense for “encouraging the commission of a crime” by livestreaming the protest on Facebook; and for uploading a video of a climate protest she took the previous week, and with disrupting traffic during three previous protests.
Coco pleaded guilty to two charges – blocking traffic and failing to comply with police direction – and not guilty to the other charges. She was released on AU$10,000 (US$6,940) bail, but the magistrate ordered her not to leave her apartment for any purpose except for emergency medical assistance or to attend court. She was also ordered not to associate with any other Fireproof Australia member. Coco spent 21 days under what amounted to house arrest. On May 5, 2022, a magistrate amended her bail and, while she was allowed to leave her property, the authorities imposed a curfew banning her from leaving her address before 10 a.m. and after 3 p.m.
In March 2023, Coco was issued with a 12-month conditional release order after a district court judge heard she had been initially imprisoned on false information provided by the New South Wales police.
In August 2022, the state of Victoria followed New South Wales with harsh new measures targeting environmental protesters at logging sites with up to 12 months in jail or $21,000 in fines. In Tasmania, environmental activists now face fines of $13,000 or two years in prison, while nongovernmental organizations that have been found to “support members of the community to protest” face fines of over $45,000.
On May 18, 2023, the South Australia government introduced harsh new anti-protest measures in the South Australian lower house in the morning and then rushed them through after lunch with bipartisan support after just 20 minutes of debate and no public consultation. The bill would increase the punishment for “public obstruction” 60-fold, from $750 to $50,000 or three months in jail, with activists also potentially facing orders to pay for police and other emergency services responding to a protest or action. On May 30, the laws were passed after a 14-hour debate in the South Australian upper house.
India
In February 2021, Indian authorities arrested Ravi who was sent to police custody for five days. Indian authorities also issued arrest warrants against Nikita Jacob, a lawyer, and Shantanu Muluk, an activist, who were granted pre-arrest bail. The authorities alleged Ravi was the “key conspirator” in editing and sharing an online toolkit shared by the Swedish Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg on social media, including Twitter, aimed at providing information to those seeking to peacefully support ongoing farmers protests. In granting bail to Ravi, the Delhi court said the evidence on record was “scanty and sketchy,” and that citizens cannot be jailed simply because they disagreed with government policies. It added: “The offense of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of governments.”
The Indian government has enforced Information Technology Rules that allow for greater governmental control over online content, threaten to weaken encryption, and seriously undermine media freedoms, rights to privacy, and freedom of expression online. These rules put youth and other human rights defenders and journalists at further risk of being targeted by the authorities for their online content.
Uganda
Young people from across Uganda have faced reprisals for fighting for climate justice. On September 25, 2020, Ugandan police arrested and detained for eight hours eight youth climate activists while participating in the global climate strike in Kampala. The police told them election campaigns were not allowed, although the activists repeatedly explained that they were an environmental—not a political—movement. The activists, only two of whom were above the age of 18, were detained in a room for eight hours, questioned, and then allowed to leave.
Human Rights Watch published a report that documented a range of restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and assembly related to oil development, including the planned East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) by the government. Civil society organizations and environmental defenders regularly report being harassed and intimidated, unlawfully detained, or arbitrarily arrested. Human Rights Watch interviewed 31 people in Uganda between March and October 2023, including 21 environmental defenders, and several of whom were under 32 years old.
Many student climate activists protesting EACOP have been arrested and charged with various offences in Kampala since 2021. These protests have been largely peaceful and usually small in scale. Since 2021, there have been at least 22 arrests, largely of students, at anti-EACOP protests in Kampala. Nine students were arrested in October 2022 after demonstrating support for the European Parliament resolution on EACOP and charged with “common nuisance.” Their case was finally dismissed on November 6, 2023, after more than 15 court appearances. Another four protesters were arrested on December 9, 2022, as they marched to the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) to demand a re-evaluation of the environmental damage caused by EACOP. One of the detainees was kept at an unknown location until the morning of December 12 when all four were released.
Another protesting student was arrested in Kampala on June 27, 2023, after trying to deliver a petition to the Speaker of the House of Uganda’s parliament. He told Human Rights Watch he was taken to an unlawful place of detention known as a “safe house” with his hands tied behind his back, questioned by plain-clothed security officials about who was providing the funding for the protests, before he was knocked to the floor. He said he awoke two days later in the hospital with serious injuries. On July 11, 2023, five individuals were arrested after protesting EACOP in downtown Kampala.
On September 15, 2023, four student protesters were arrested after a “Fridays for Future” and “StopEACOP” joint protest at the Ugandan parliament as part of the “Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels,” a global mobilization and day of action. They were released on bond five days later and have been charged with “common nuisance.” Their next hearing is scheduled for November 27, 2023. One of the students described to Human Rights Watch being held in a room inside parliament and beaten by uniformed parliamentary security officials and others in civilian clothes with “batons, gun butts, and using their boots to step on our heads” before being taken to Kampala’s Central Police Station (CPS). At the CPS he described plainclothes intelligence officers asking: “Who are your leaders? Among us, who is your leader? How many are you? Who are your leaders in different universities? Who is managing your social media accounts?” They then described being beaten further in CPS cells by other prisoners, one of whom said, “We have order from above to discipline you. You need to stop working on EACOP.”
Human Rights Watch encourages the Special Rapporteur to call on governments to:
Promote and protect universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect, and protect the work of climate activists, in line with their human rights obligations.
Publicly condemn assault, threats, harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary arrests of activists, and direct security and other government officials to stop arresting, harassing, or threatening activists for protesting or on false accusations.
End arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of human rights defenders, anti-EACOP activists, and peaceful protesters.
Respect and protect the rights of all human rights defenders and civil society organizations to exercise freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, in accordance with international human rights norms.
Where applicable, ratify and implement regional human rights agreements to ensure public participation in environmental decision-making and to protect environmental defenders.
The Environmental Rights Agreement Coalition called on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to develop an environmental rights agreement to increase public participation and protect environmental rights defenders. The Environmental Rights Agreement (ERA) Coalition organised, on 21 October 2023, a side event on the margins of the 77th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission).
Participants shared information on the movement for an environmental rights legal framework for Africa, lessons learned and generated wider support for the ERA movement. Joseph Burke, Head of Universal Rights Group Africa noted some progress in the protection of the environment globally such as the African Leaders Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action, Paris Agreement and the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (ESCAZU Agreement). However, environmental rights defenders continue to face significant barriers to the conduct of their activities. According to Global Witness, one environmental defender was killed every two days in 2022 while the rest were subjected to violence, harassment and criminalisation. In its statement before the African Commission, ISHR reiterated this worrisome trend on the African continent.
Rights of Indigenous communities not recognised
Two panellists reviewed national trends in Kenya and Tanzania on the protection of environmental rights and public participation. In Kenya, Emily Kinama, Research and Litigation Associate at Katiba Institute stated that there do not exist laws which cater for environmental rights in Kenya. Civil society organisations have used public interest litigation to challenge laws that criminalise environmental and land rights defenders but the impact of these actions has, at times, been marginal because of strategic lawsuits against public participation. ‘Indigenous peoples’ rights are not recognised despite the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights’ judgment in the Ogiek case reiterating the obligations of Kenya to promote and protect their rights. This judgement has not been implemented by Kenya, six years after it was handed down’, said Kinama. She concluded by stating that ‘Kenya should continue to recognise their rights and pass laws and processes following the historical injustice stage and ensure the participation of Indigenous population in the protection of the environment given that Indigenous peoples have been protecting it since time immemorial’.
The relevance of inclusive participation
In her presentation, Miriam Tikoine, from the Maasai Women Development Organization, highlighted the necessity to involve the Maasai, and other pastoral communities in environmental and climate change debates, and to raise their awareness on environmental matters for them to understand the importance of protecting the environment.
Farmers should be trained on how to face climate change issues and adapt their farming practices; youth, traditional leaders and women should understand carbon credit-related concerns so that they can take action. If everyone is not involved, climate change and environmental concerns will remain a matter of just a few.
Litigating environmental rights
The African Commision’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals, Commissioner Remy Lumbu, called on States to strengthen human and environmental rights education, transparency and accountability in extractive industries to prevent leonine contracts which only benefit powerful businesses and sacrifice the interests and rights of present and future generations. Environmental rights defenders raise their voices against such contracts and stand against State and business’ practices which endanger the planet. Commissioner Lumbu said that this role played by environmental defenders has been recognised by the African Commission which has established this mechanism to remind States of their obligations, send urgent appeal letters or publish press releases when environmental defenders are in danger. These efforts must be honed by increased litigation activism, before national and African human rights bodies, on the part of NGOs.
We have not had enough communications on environmental rights concerns. NGOs must start challenging behaviours of States before the African Commission or the Court. If 40 NGOs decide to work on one case each, we will have 40 environmental rights-related cases before the African Commission in one year.
The need for an environmental rights instrument
The Coalition called the Special Rapporteur, and the African Commission as a whole, to champion a process geared towards the development and the adoption of an environmental rights instrument.
The impact of businesses has crossed on people leading them into poverty. As civil society organisations, we have realised we need to protect our resources and planet and those who put their lives at risk. Environmental rights defenders are at the forefront but have been victims of several human rights violations including arbitrary killings. With the massive onslaught of business in Africa, our resources and individuals protecting them must be protected by a tailor-made legal instrument as other regions have done.
The Christian Science Monitor of 30 October 2023, tells the story of attorney Dennis Muñoz who seeks to uphold human rights in El Salvador, despite increasingly difficult and dangerous odds.
Víctor Peña/Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Mr. Muñoz found a way to channel his deep-seated desire for justice by becoming a lawyer in 2005. But he doesn’t work with just anyone – he goes for the tough cases of human rights abuses. He has defended multiple women who suffered miscarriages but were accused of murder in a nation where abortion is banned without exception. He has fought arbitrary arrests of environmentalists, activists, and average citizens. He could be called a defender of lost causes.
There’s no shortage of demand for Mr. Muñoz’s work in El Salvador, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world. And these days the risks of his work are almost as high as the demand for it.
In March 2022, a monthlong “state of exception” was enacted in response to extreme gang violence. The order suspended basic constitutional rights for those arrested under it. Securing a court warrant before searching private communications was no longer required, for example, and arrestees were barred from their right to a defense attorney and their right to see a judge within 72 hours.
But what started as an emergency measure has become ordinary practice. The state of exception has been extended every month for more than a year and a half now, with no end in sight. Violence has declined dramatically, but critics say the order’s extreme powers are seeping far beyond the gang-related arrests they were meant to address. Even those detained outside of the state-of- exception category are having their rights suspended.
That’s the group Mr. Muñoz focuses on. While he has taken a few state-of-exception cases, he primarily works on human rights violations, with the added burden now of his clients getting caught in the emergency order’s crosshairs. Despite death threats and intimidation, he’s not slowing down. Instead, fellow lawyers doing similarly risky work ask him to be on call if – or, perhaps more likely, when – they themselves are arrested.
… Despite quashing constitutional rights, the move has been overwhelmingly popular for providing a long-elusive sense of calm.
“A tired society, fed up with a lack of answers to the chronic problem of violence, is willing to accept short-term answers,” says Verónica Reyna, director of human rights for the Passionist Social Service, a nongovernmental organization focused on local violence prevention and support of human rights.
Gustavo Villatoro, minister of justice and public security, acknowledges that the state of exception is affecting more than gang members. Over 7,000 innocent people have been arrested, Mr. Villatoro said in August, noting that some degree of error is inevitable. But the consequences of those errors can be grave. Even if a case has nothing to do with gang activity, lawyers can be blocked from visiting their clients in detention, and court hearings can be suspended. Over 71,000 Salvadorans have been arrested under state-of-exception rules. With 6 million people in El Salvador, close to 2% of the adult population is currently behind bars. And many of them, even those not under the emergency order, lack access to a lawyer and may be tried en masse.
Margaret Satterthwaite, the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, tweeted in May that in El Salvador, “public defenders reportedly have 3-4 minutes to present the cases of 400 to 500 detainees.” She warned that “fair trial rights must not be trampled in the name of public safety.”
In the last week of July, Salvadoran lawmakers eliminated a previous two-year limit on pretrial detentions and passed reforms to allow mass trials that could bring together 1,000 individuals in a single appearance before a judge.
“Maybe they won’t let us be lawyers anymore,” says Mr. Muñoz, “at least not private attorneys with independent criteria.”
“The reforms have disrupted the whole system and have turned innocence into an exception,” says Ursula Indacochea, program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation, based in Washington. “Presumption of innocence is disappearing because the roles have shifted. The state no longer has to prove I’m guilty, but now I’m guilty and have to prove I’m innocent,” Ms. Indacochea said in a Sept. 7 radio interview in El Salvador.
Of the 35,000 authorized lawyers registered in El Salvador, Mr. Muñoz stands out for almost exclusively taking cases of human rights violations.
“Things aren’t easy right now,” he says, describing the justice system as “made to convict.” The government is “criminalizing the job of lawyers,” he adds.
Yet Mr. Muñoz looked anything but cautious at a press conference in early July, where he was the only person wearing a suit at the San Salvador offices of the Christian Committee for Displaced People in El Salvador, a wartime human rights organization. He headed to the podium in the ample room, sparsely decorated with pictures of St. Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador murdered by right-wing death squads in 1980.
Mr. Muñoz discussed openly a forbidden topic. Five environmentalists were arrested in January over the alleged 1989 murder of a Salvadoran woman during the war. The case was under a court-issued gag order.
“It’s very serious that environmentalists are being unjustly accused, bending [what are considered] the rules of due process anywhere in the world,” Mr. Muñoz said, staring into the cameras.
His clients in this case are former guerrilla members, and two of the accused are part of the Association of Economic and Social Development Santa Marta, known as ADES. One of the country’s oldest environmental organizations, ADES was key in achieving the total ban on mining here in 2017. In a country where almost the entirety of war crimes remain unresolved and defendants in active cases are rarely imprisoned, the arrest of these men was an outlier, apparently due to their vocal criticism of the government. The U.N. called for the activists’ immediate release.
“Dare I say there are crimes being committed against these environmentalists,” Mr. Muñoz said before the media. “It’s nefarious that things like this happen in a country that calls itself democratic but really has a criminal injustice system in place.”
Víctor Peña/Special to The Christian Science Monitor
By late August, Mr. Muñoz had successfully convinced a judge to grant an order for his clients’ release. “It’s a crumb of justice, but we shouldn’t celebrate until there’s a dismissal of proceedings,” he said at a later press conference.
It’s hard to reconcile this image of seeming fearlessness with Mr. Muñoz’s request when the Monitor approached him for an interview: Could the piece leave out his last name? The question reflects a sense of fear that has built up over many years of doing this work.
Mr. Muñoz downplays receiving death threats, normalizing the culture of violence he’s lived under for most of his professional life. “They say they wish that I was extorted or killed because of the people I’ve defended,” he says about the social media threats. He thinks he’s been able to stay off the political radar by censoring his opinions. “I issue legal and technical opinions,” he explains. “Other colleagues have entered the political arena and expose themselves more to attacks.”
On 20 October 2023 Front Line Defenders wrote that between 2 October 2023 and 16 October 2023, human rights defender Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa received several death threats via phone calls and voice messages towards both him and his family. The unidentified perpetrators claimed that they were keeping the human rights defender under surveillance, and maintained that they had access to his data and aware of all his moves within the community.l
Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa is the president of the Estero Piedras community, located in the coastal area of the Molleturo on Azuay province. This community is also part of the San Felipe de Molleturo Commune, an ancestral territory that has been of great importance to the region, given that it has fought to defend against attempts by transnational mining companies to dispossess the people in the region of their land and water sources. He is also president of the North Zone Road Committee, which represents 15 communities in the region. As a community leader, the human rights defender has sought support from the competent authorities to stop criminal acts and illicit activities, mainly assaults and robberies caused by criminal groups that threaten the area. Javier has played an important role in the defence of water, nature and the territories belonging to the communities who he represents.
Since 2 October 2023, human rights defender Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa has been the target of several death threats. Over the course of two weeks, he has received calls and voice messages threatening to kill him and his family. The callers claimed to be keeping the human rights defender under surveillance, and maintained that they had access to his data, as well as all his moves. The level of violence articulated in these threats increased over the weeks, causing the human rights defender to stop responding to messages or calls altogether, and provoking him to block the numbers of those who called him. The threats continued up until 16 October 2023. The human rights defender has been filing relevant complaints with the Prosecutor’s Office about the recent threats and has requested that the Police Commander of Zone 6 take the necessary measures protect him and his family.
Violence against human rights defenders working on indigenous, land and environmental rights has been on the rise in Ecuador; human rights defenders Andrés Durazno and Alba Bermeo were murdered in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Still to this day no one has been charged with their murder.
In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the passing of draconian new laws, the imposing of severe sentences for non-violent protests and the labelling of activists as hooligans, saboteurs or eco-terrorists. The crackdowns have come in spite of calls by senior human rights advocates and environmental campaigners to allow civic space for the right to non-violent protest, after a summer of record-breaking heat in southern Europe that is attributed to the effects of climate breakdown.
The UK has led the way in the crackdown, experts say, with judges recently refusing an appeal against multi-year sentences for climate activists who blocked a motorway bridge in east London. The three-year jail terms for Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland earlier this year are thought to be the longest handed out by a British judge for non-violent protest.
“Since my appointment I have been travelling to many countries in Europe and there is a clear trend,” Forst told the Guardian. “We can see an increasing number of cases by which these climate activists are brought to court more and more often and more and more severe laws being passed to facilitate these attacks on defenders.”
He added: “I’m sure that there is European cooperation among the police forces against these kinds of activities. My concern is that when [governments] are calling these people eco-terrorists, or are using new forms of vilifications and defamation … it has a huge impact on how the population may perceive them and the cause for which these people are fighting. It is a huge concern for me.”
Amnesty International said it was investigating a continent-wide crackdown on protest. Catrinel Motoc, the organisation’s senior campaigner on civil space and right to protest in Europe, said: “People all around the world are bravely raising their voices to call for urgent actions on the climate crisis but many face dire consequences for their peaceful activism.
“Peaceful protesters are left with no choice but to stage public protests and non-violent direct actions because European countries are not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis.
“There’s alarming evidence of criminalisation, harassment, stigmatisation and negative rhetoric towards environmental defenders.”
In June, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, also called for an end to crackdowns on environmental activists. Last December, Volker Türk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, appealed to governments to protect the “civic space” for young environmental activists, and “not crack down in a way that we have seen in many parts of the world”.
There was widespread outrage this summer when France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, used one of the state’s most-powerful tools to order the banning of one of the country’s leading environmental protest groups. Les Soulévements de la Terre, a collective of local environmental campaigns, had staged a series of protests, with tactics including sabotage, that ended with violent confrontations with police, and Darmanin denouncing the activists as “far left” and “ecoterrorists”.
In the Netherlands, one of a series of roadblock protests on the A12 highway in The Hague in May was dispersed by police using water cannon, with more than 1,500 arrested. Seven climate activists were convicted of sedition – a charge that had never before been levelled against climate protesters – in relation to online posts calling for people to join an earlier demonstration.
In Sweden, about two dozen members of the Återställ Våtmarker [Restore Wetlands] group were convicted of sabotage for blocking highways in the capital, Stockholm. Others were held on remand for up to four weeks for taking part in protests.
In Germany in May, police staged nationwide raids against the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) group, whose supporters had glued themselves to roads on a near-weekly basis for months, as well as targeting art galleries and other cultural spaces. On a police directive, the homepage of the group was shut down and possessions belonging to members were seized.
At the most recent count, supplied by the activists, police had made more than 4,000 arrests of supporters of Last Generation taking part in road blocks in Berlin alone.
Authorities in Italy have used anti-organised crime laws to crack down on protests, where the Ultima Generazione (also Last Generation) group has staged road blocks since last year. The Digos police unit, which specialises in counter-terrorism, in April justified the use of anti-Mafia laws to target the group by saying its civil disobedience actions had not taken place spontaneously, but were organised, discussed and weighed up by an internal hierarchy. This came along with new, stiffer penalties for protests, with activists facing fines of up to €40,000 for actions targeting artworks and other cultural heritage.
Richard Pearshouse, director of the environment division at Human Rights Watch, said: “These restrictions on environmental protest across Europe and the UK are incredibly short-sighted. These governments haven’t grasped that we all have a huge interest in more people taking to the streets to demand better environmental protection and more climate action.
“Governments need to respect the rights to assembly and expression, and ramp up their own environmental protections and climate ambitions. That’s the only way we have a chance to get out of this climate crisis with our democratic institutions intact.”
A spokesperson for the UK Home Office said: “The right to protest is a fundamental part of our democracy but we must also protect the law-abiding majority’s right to go about their daily lives.
“The Public Order Act brings in new criminal offences and proper penalties for selfish, guerrilla protest tactics.”
The French interior ministry said local officials had the right to ban demonstrations with a serious risk of disturbing public order. “These one-off bans, of which there are very few in absolute terms, are not imposed because of the reason for the demonstration.”
The Italian interior ministry referred to a statement from the culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano in April, who said attacks on monuments cause economic damage to the community that is is expensive to clean up. “Those who cause damage must pay personally.”
The German interior ministry declined to comment. The Bavarian interior ministry referred the Guardian to the public prosecutor’s office in Munich, which provided a statement from June in which it confirmed it had authorised the tapping of phones for six of seven Last Generation members under criminal investigation.
The Swedish interior ministry declined to comment. The Dutch ministry of justice did not respond to requests for comment.
Still, the message is what matters: “Rights defenders as a whole face a number of major challenges and risks in many countries, including in Europe, but those who are currently paying the highest price are precisely environmental activists and people trying to defend their land and the climate,” said Michel Frost in an interview with Lusa.
Forst was in Portugal today to take part in the international conference of the Human Rights Platform, taking place at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and confessed to Lusa that he didn’t understand the reasons behind this increase in pressure.
“I don’t understand why, but the fact is that more and more politicians in more countries are comparing people who are actually peaceful demonstrators with violent terrorists,” he said, noting that he sees this “in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK, Germany and Switzerland”.
The issue worries him a lot, he recognized, not least because different ways of attacking activists are being used in various countries.
“I toured more than 20 European Union (EU) countries to meet with activists and governments, inviting them to describe the atmosphere they face in their countries, and I can assure you that the situation is becoming very, very, very tense,” he said, pointing out that governments such as those in France or Austria classify these activists as “eco-terrorists or green Taliban”.
Michel Forst explained to Lusa that he is currently working with a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “to try to better understand what is happening in Europe, with a view to guiding EU governments on how to respond to civil disobedience”.
Stressing that civil disobedience is regulated by international human rights law, the UN official said he was alarmed when he met judges from Spain, France and Germany and realized that they “didn’t understand international human rights law at all”.
Activists who engage in civil disobedience “should not be penalized”, but in reality we see that “judges and governments do not comply with international obligations”, Michel Forst pointed out.
For this reason, he explained, his aim for now is to provide documents and guidelines for states to ensure better fulfilment of their international obligations.
“Some states have been very receptive, such as Ireland and Norway, but many others have not,” he denounced, naming the example of the United Kingdom and adding that, in some cases, the police infiltrate groups in order to know what is being prepared and to be able to better control the activists.
“We now have evidence that some [environmental campaigners] have been placed under strict surveillance, with their phones being hacked and their computers being tapped,” he said.
For Michel Forst, environmental campaigners are no different from those who fight for human rights.
“It’s the same thing,” he emphasised, explaining that environmental activists are just gaining more visibility.
“They are using new forms of mobilisation that others haven’t used, like sticking their hands in the ground or handcuffing themselves to a barrier or breaking down doors to cut genetically modified maize,” he listed.
Their growing visibility leads them to face what human rights defenders were already facing, namely the fact that “civic space is shrinking in Europe,” he said, noting that this is not only his assessment, but also that of the Council of Europe and the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.
And against this, Michel Forst expects only one thing: “A strong reaction from citizens”.
With regard to the authorities, the UN Special Rapporteur also expressed his expectations.
“We need to see the results [of the guidelines that will be issued] and then ask the most receptive.
The 2023 laureates face off against social taboos around abortion in African countries, Cambodia’s authoritarian regime and corrupt businesses, a growing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea, and unsafe industrial practices in Kenya to demand a liveable future for all. For more on the Right Livelihood Award and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/97238E26-A05A-4A7C-8A98-0D267FDDAD59
The 2023 Right Livelihood Award goes to:
Eunice Brookman-Amissah, who is a Ghanaian physician whose leadership has been instrumental in advancing safe abortion access across Africa. For three decades, she has spearheaded high-level advocacy, sensitisation programmes and training on women’s reproductive rights. Her efforts have successfully united healthcare providers, government officials, lawyers and activists in support of abortion law reforms in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Benin, Eswatini and Kenya, and abortion law implementation in Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, Senegal and Mauritius, among others.
When Brookman-Amissah began her advocacy, the term abortion was too taboo to mention, let alone champion at high-level forums. Nonetheless, she tirelessly raised the issue to empower women, enhance their autonomy, improve their health, and ultimately, create an environment where they can thrive personally and professionally. Brookman-Amissah is a pioneer in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
Mother Nature Cambodia is the country’s pre-eminent youth-led environmental rights organisation, working on the frontlines with local communities to preserve nature and livelihoods even in the face of a growing government crackdown on civil society activism. Using innovative techniques such as viral videos, training and the mobilisation of young Cambodians nationally and locally, Mother Nature Cambodia has helped highlight and stop environmental violations. Successful campaigns include stopping the Chinese-led construction of a hydroelectric dam threatening an Indigenous community and helping end the largely corrupted business of sand export from the coastal estuaries of Koh Kong, which was destroying the local ecosystem and fishing grounds.
Founded in 2012, Mother Nature Cambodia’s small and agile core team works to mobilise against destructive and corrupt construction projects. Indicative of the government’s hostile stance against the organisation, 11 of their activists have been jailed and dozens arrested since 2015, while one staffer and the founder, Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, have been forced to leave the country. Local community members campaigning with Mother Nature Cambodia have also been subject to intimidation, legal harassment and surveillance by the police.
Despite the harassment and constant threat of arrest, the organisation has stayed the course and continued to campaign fearlessly. Highlighting the connection between democracy, human rights and environmental activism, Mother Nature Cambodia has emerged as a beacon of hope for future generations, fighting for the preservation of nature and human rights in Cambodia. [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/d41428d8-4b96-4370-975e-f11b36778f51]
SOS MEDITERRANEE is a European maritime-humanitarian organisation saving people’s lives in the Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest migration route. Carrying out search and rescue operations, the organisation has brought more than 38,500 people to safety since operations began in 2016. SOS MEDITERRANEE follows a strict legal framework based on maritime law, setting high standards for search and rescue operations, and showing that assisting people in distress at sea is a legal obligation.
The organisation, which is an association of four offices located in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, was founded by civilians in May 2015, in response to the tragic loss of lives in the Mediterranean and the European Union’s inability to effectively address this issue. Pooling resources, the association finances and operates the Ocean Viking rescue ship with a professional crew. Once brought aboard, survivors are provided with medical and psycho-social care. SOS MEDITERRANEE also aims to amplify the voices of survivors by sharing their stories.
Phyllis Omido is a Kenyan environmental activist leading the battle for the justice and health of the Owino Uhuru community that has suffered from lead poisoning ever since a battery smelting plant began operating in their village. Omido’s use of litigation, advocacy and media engagement has set vital legal precedents, affirming people’s right to a clean and healthy environment and the state’s responsibility to safeguard it.
Omido, dubbed the “Erin Brockovich of East Africa,” initially worked at the battery smelting plant that poisoned her, her son and thousands of Owino Uhuru community members. When the plant owners and government officials refused to act on the environmental impact report she conducted, Omido mobilised the community in protest. Following a 2012 demonstration, Omido was attacked by two men at her home and arrested on unfounded charges of terrorism and inciting violence.
Thanks to Omido’s activism, 17 toxic sites have been closed across Kenya. She has also used her experience to consult the United Nations, leading to a resolution on lead-acid battery recycling in Africa. Determined to spread knowledge on environmental rights far beyond Owino Uhuru, Omido has established a network of 120 grassroots land and environmental defenders (LEDs) across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, empowering and mentoring others to protect their communities. [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/79079c38-3ac4-4324-9e93-2cfb3f03fb28]
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 