This morning I blogged about Front Line Defenders Global Analysis 2018 report which notes a record number of human rights defenders killed in 2018 with the majority being environmental defenders [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/01/09/front-line-defenders-says-record-number-of-activists-killed-in-2018/]. On 24 December 2018 Taran Volckhausen, referring to a preliminary Global Witness report, wrote that – while the numbers were still being finalized – the death toll for this group in 2018 was slightly lower than in 2017 (“For embattled environmental defenders, a reprieve of sorts in 2018”). This is most likely due to definition issues.
Posts Tagged ‘Mongabay’
Killings of environmental human rights defenders up again compared to last year!
April 24, 2015Jeremy Hance – writing in Mongabay on 20 April, under the title “Killings of environmental activists jumped by 20 percent last year“ confirms again the terrible truth that it is in the countryside, away from monitors, and in disputes over land issues that the most gruesome repression takes place and the leader is..Brazil! [for last year’s report see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/environment-deadly-for-human-rights-defenders-says-global-witness/]
Soy field in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
The assassination, murder, and extrajudicial killing of environmental activists rose by 20 percent last year, according to a new grim report by Global Witness. The organization documented 116 killings in 2014 across 17 countries with the highest number in Brazil, which saw 29 environmental and land defenders killed. Still, the report is a major understatement of the problem as data across much of Africa, China, the Middle East, and Central Asia remains scarce to non-existent.
“Across the world environmental defenders are being shot dead in broad daylight, kidnapped, threatened, or tried as terrorists for standing in the way of so-called ‘development’,” said Billy Kyte, a campaigner with Global Witness. “The true authors of these crimes—a powerful nexus of corporate and state interests—are escaping unpunished. Urgent action is needed to protect citizens and bring perpetrators to justice.”
Most of the deaths last year—116 of them—were related to disputes over land. But mining was linked to 25 deaths, and hydroelectric dams and agribusiness to 14 each. Indigenous people also remain among the most targeted.
“In 2014, 47 indigenous people were killed defending their natural resources, 40 percent of the total deaths of environmental and land defenders,” reads Global Witness’s new report, entitled How Many More?. This year’s report follows a landmark document last year that tracked environmental activist killing—all 908 of them—over a dozen years.
Environmental activist killings by sector. Image courtesy of Global Witness.
Human rights defenders are stigmatized (as ‘anti-development’) and criminalized in order to silence their opposition.
While Brazil had the highest number of environmental activist murders in 2014, the most dangerous place to be an environmental activist was actually Honduras, according to Global Witness. During the last five years (2010-2014), Honduras lost 101 activists, giving it the highest rate of environmental activist killings per capita.
“A UN Human Rights Council resolution addressing the heightened risk posed to environmental and land defenders would be a start,” Kyte said. “But, in the end, governments themselves have to take responsibility and ensure impartial, exhaustive investigations into killings of these activists. And they have to bring perpetrators to account. Many targeted assassinations of activists are being passed off as ‘common’ murders and are going unnoticed.”
Environmental activist killings by country. Those in red were indigenous people. Image courtesy of Global Witness.
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0420-hance-activist-murder-rise.html#ixzz3XxWqLdTV
Killings of environmental activists jumped by 20 percent last year.
