"Missing voices: The violent erasure of land and environmental defenders", 9 September 2024

...Global Witness documented that 196 defenders were murdered in 2023 after exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment from harm. The actual number is likely to be higher. This tips the total number of killings to over 2,000 globally since Global Witness started reporting data in 2012...

Lethal attacks often occur alongside wider retaliations against defenders who are being targeted by government, business and other non-state actors with violence, intimidation, smear campaigns and criminalisation...  

Of those murdered in 2023, 43% were Indigenous Peoples and 12% murdered were women.  

Colombia is the world’s deadliest country for land and environmental defenders, with 79 murdered in 2023 – 40% of all reported cases...

Establishing a direct relationship between the murder of a defender and specific corporate interests remains difficult. However, we were able to identify mining as the biggest industry driver by far, with 25 defenders killed after opposing mining operations in 2023...

Over 40% of all mining-related killings have occurred in Asia between 2012 and 2023. The region has significant natural reserves of key critical minerals vital for clean energy technologies, including nickel, tin, rare-earth elements and bauxite...