Why Aren't Countries Reporting Environmental Defender Killings?
It’s been nearly 10 years
since Chut Wutty, an environmental investigator and activist from Cambodia, was
murdered while trying to halt an illegal logging operation.
His death prompted
widespread indignation and inspired the civil society organization Global
Witness to begin documenting the killing of land and environmental defenders
worldwide. This led to the publication of “Deadly Environment,” in 2014, a
landmark report that would become an annual account of killings against such
activists worldwide. In its first report, Global Witness noted that killings
were “notoriously under-reported” by governments.
A year later, in 2015,
the question was taken up by the United Nations, which adopted Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) 16 to achieve peace, justice and transparent
institutions. The framework included a specific benchmark — indicator 16.10.1 —
calling on countries to monitor killings of all human rights defenders and
protect them.
But in the six years
since the SDGs were approved, violence perpetrated against human rights
defenders, specifically land and environmental defenders, has continued
unabated. In fact, despite growing international attention, the overwhelming
majority of governments have failed to take meaningful steps to better protect
them.
Governments Aren’t
Tracking and Reporting Violence Against Environmental Defenders
For years, land and
environmental defenders have served as our first line of defense against the
destruction of vital natural resources, livelihoods and territories that have
mitigated an impending climate disaster. They have exercised their fundamental
rights to challenge companies, governments and private actors who have driven
destruction of the water, land, biodiversity and climate on which we all
depend.
Their crucial
contribution has made environmental activists an unequalled target for
violence, yet states have failed to monitor their situation in a meaningful and
systematic way.
A person holds a photo of
Berta Cáceres, an Indigenous environmentalist who was assassinated in March
2016 in Honduras.
A person holds a photo of
Berta Cáceres, an Indigenous environmentalist who was assassinated in March
2016 in Honduras. Photo by Peg Hunter
The recent Crucial Gap
report, released by the Alliance for Land Indigenous and Environmental
Defenders (ALLIED coalition), of which WRI is a member, details the concerning
extent to which official data on land and environmental defenders is missing.
Since 2015, only 14
countries* have reported any cases of violence against human rights defenders
to the U.N., whether through Voluntary National Reviews — progress reports,
presented by states at the High Level Political Forum — or other mechanisms. Of
the 162 countries that submitted Voluntary National Reviews since 2015, just
three countries — Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Palestine, fewer than
2% — indicated that at least one human rights defender had been killed or
attacked. Seven countries reported no cases of violence, while 94% of countries
did not report at all.
The low numbers presented
by governments at the High Level Political Forum comes in stark contrast to the
widespread violence against these defenders, well documented by civil society
groups and non-profits. In its recently published report, Last Line of Defence,
Global Witness reported 227 land and environmental defenders murdered in 2020
alone, the highest number of lethal attacks ever recorded. Front Line
Defenders, reporting cases from the Human Rights Defenders Memorial, noted that
331 human rights defenders, including land and environmental defenders, were
killed during the same period.
The U.N. has also
recognized the extent of violence beyond that reported by governments. In his
2020 SDG Progress Report, the Secretary-General stated that the U.N. had
verified at least 1,940 killings of defenders from 81 between 2015 and 2019 —
cases that largely came from civil society reporting. The dataset published by
the U.N. remains limited to killings (and enforced disappearances) of human
rights defenders by region and sex. The agency does not release country-level
data, nor specific figures for land and environmental defenders, ethnicity or
affiliation with indigenous groups.
For years, civil society
has been working to cover this crucial reporting gap, but they cannot stand in
for the state. Ultimately, it is the government that bears the responsibility
for guaranteeing fundamental rights to all citizens, protecting them from harm,
and upholding binding commitments made in regional and global human rights
mechanisms.
How to Better Document
Violence Against Environmental Defenders
There are, however, some
glimmers of hope.
A small number of
national human rights institutes and government agencies — in cooperation with
national statistical offices, and the U.N.’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) — are
working to bolster national-level data collection, further encouraged by the
Global Action Plan set forth by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights
Institutes. The U.N. is supporting this work in many countries, but progress
remains limited.
In the meantime, civil
society continues to organize their data collection and explore ways to further
support the construction of better national datasets. The ALLIED Data Working
Group represents a number of these organizations, such as CEMDA in Mexico,
ANGOC’ in Indonesia, UDEFEGUA in Guatemala and CINEP in Colombia, though many
others could be mentioned.
Such monitoring
initiatives have been central to efforts to protect activists in many
countries, but this is ultimately an obligation that must be assumed by the
state to fulfil their SDG requirements. Unless they commit to monitoring
violence against human rights defenders, states will continue to fail to
understand the root causes of such violence and will not be able to build the
evidence-based policies needed to prevent further violence.
Among its findings, the
Crucial Gap report recommends five specific actions, relevant to state and
intergovernmental bodies, and to data collectors broadly:
States must develop and
sustain mechanisms that collect and report data on attacks on environmental and
human rights defenders.
States should develop and
support national human rights institutes to be independent, authoritative
monitoring bodies of attacks.
States and reporting
agencies must recognize and protect the important role played by civil society
data collectors, providing for their meaningful participation in monitoring
processes and acknowledging their contributions, as well as the risk they incur
for the work they do.
Reporting bodies —
including National Human Rights Institutes, custodian agencies, treaty bodies,
and other data collectors — must make the work of particularly vulnerable
groups, including land, environmental and indigenous human rights defenders,
more visible.
The international
community must work towards a global, harmonized database of attacks and
killings to capture the verified cases violence against land and environmental
activists (and human rights defenders, more broadly), building on the work of
ALLIED and others.
In order to better
protect land and environmental defenders and to build policies that foster an
enabling environment, the state — not civil society alone — must be monitoring,
reporting on and ultimately responding to their situation. In many cases, we
see government discrediting civil society monitoring work while they fail to
protect defenders themselves.
Until national
governments commit resources to build monitoring capacity and develop
mechanisms to document violence against defenders, the message sent to civil
society and the global community will be the same: that stopping violence
against activists is not a priority and, as a result, it’s not monitored.
Without a state-led
commitment to stop this violence, such attacks will continue.
In the nearly 10 years
since Chut Wutty died, thousands of defenders across the world have lost their
lives in defense of the land, environment and indigenous territories. It is
time for governments to step up, assume their responsibilities, and in the next
10 years, do a better job of defending their defenders.
Endnote:
*Four additional
countries – Colombia, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines – reported data
directly to OHCHR, the custodian of indicator 16.10.1.
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