Supporters of imprisoned environmental activists stage a protest during their appeal hearing outside of the Royal Courts of Justice, London, January 29, 2025.
As space for environmental advocacy rapidly shrinks, Indigenous peoples, climate activists, and land defenders increasingly face harassment, criminalization, and repression for protecting lands, ecosystems, and communities from environmental harm. The use of violence, intimidation, and threats to silence environmental defenders is an urgent challenge.
Human Rights Watch Submission on Environmental Defenders for Sixth Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to a Healthy Environment
Against this backdrop, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment is compiling a report on environmental defenders worldwide, to which Human Rights Watch submitted input on August 19.
In Brazil, HRW has extensively documented how criminal networks engaged in illegal deforestation, mining, and land-grabbing threaten and sometimes kill Indigenous people, small farmers, and environmental agents who stand in their way. HRW also documented police beating defenders peacefully protesting mining in Indonesia.
Environmental defenders face governments’ mounting efforts to criminalize peaceful protest. While the United Kingdom and Australia have in recent years passed draconian laws criminalizing peaceful protests, countries such as Vietnam and Turkey have used broad legislation to harshly punish climate activists. In Indonesia, authorities prosecuted and wrongly punished hundreds of Indigenous activists and those protesting deforestation and environmental damages, including prosecutions for “spreading communism.”
Labeling environmental defenders as terrorists or criminals, governments have also restricted advocacy
