"Uncovering the Hidden Iceberg 2024", 23 October 2024

...Worldwide, the climate crisis has lent an urgency to the defence of land, territories and natural resources, while the green transition has also posed new threats to defenders. Violence against Indigenous Peoples, land and environmental defenders has continued unabated, with Indigenous communities, which protect some of the most important global biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks, being disproportionately targeted. Impunity prevails at alarming rates while defenders are criminalized and subjected to legal harassment by private actors through laws used to curb opposition.

New ALLIED data – a combined dataset produced by a group of local, regional and global data collectors – uncovers the hidden iceberg of non-lethal attacks against Indigenous, land and environmental defenders (ILED), as well as their organizations and communities. The data reveals extensive patterns of violence that can precede the killing of these defenders. Likewise, they also represent a crucial opportunity for intervention.

For the first time, ALLIED has documented non-lethal attacks against Indigenous, land and environmental defenders from across 46 countries. Moreover, using over three years of data, ALLIED is now able to track escalations of violence and follow defenders in their heartbreaking rise from the bottom to top of the iceberg.  

Highlights

• For every killing of an Indigenous, land and environmental defender documented in 2022, at least 5 non-lethal attacks took place.
• 64.8% of all attacks against defenders were against those defending land and territories.
• Victims were disproportionately Indigenous. Only 6% of the global population is Indigenous but they accounted for nearly one in every four attacks.
• Across all 46 countries analysed, defenders speaking out against industrial agriculture and mining were most at risk, making up 64% of attacks, where data was available.

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