Over the past decade, human rights defenders (HRDs) have courageously organised to stop corporate abuse and prevent business activities from causing harm – exposing human rights and environmental violations, demanding accountability, and advocating for rights-respecting economic practices. From January 2015 to December 2024, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) recorded more than 6,400 attacks across 147 countries against people who voiced concerns about business-related risks or harms. This is close to two attacks on average every day over the past ten years. In 2024 alone, we tracked 660 attacks.

In 2023 people across the globe took to the streets demanding governments protect their and future generations’ right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Through engaging in direct action, protecting their lands and territories from fossil fuel projects, reporting about pollution and filing lawsuits against companies for environmental damage, human rights defenders (HRDs) continue to assert that true climate justice can only be achieved when human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. In 2023 the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre recorded 630 instances of attacks against people raising concerns about business-related harms. This is part of a consistent, ongoing pattern of attacks against HRDs protecting our rights and planet globally, with more than 5,300 attacks recorded since January 2015.

From fighting deforestation and illegal mining in the Amazon to raising concerns about the impacts of megaprojects in Mexico and protecting sacred Indigenous sites in Nicaragua, communities, workers and individuals are courageously protecting their rights and environments across Latin America and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, in doing this important work, they face significant risks. Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the most dangerous regions in the world for human rights defenders (HRDs). Between January 2015 and December 2022 (inclusive), we identified nearly 2,000 attacks against HRDs in Latin America and the Caribbean, representing 42% of total attacks (4,700) recorded worldwide.

The protection of human rights defenders (HRDs) in relation to business activities is vital. HRDs play a crucial role in safeguarding human rights and environmental standards against adverse impacts of business operations globally. Despite their essential work, defenders frequently face severe risks, including threats, surveillance, legal and judicial harassment, and violence. This report summarises and assesses progress and challenges over the past decade in relation to initiatives to protect human rights defenders in the context of business frameworks, guidance, initiatives and tools that have emerged at local, national and regional levels.

Every day, people across the globe raise concerns about business-related harm to their communities, environments and rights, sometimes at great personal cost. These defenders face a range of attacks, including abuse of legal systems, to deter peaceful protest and stop their legitimate human rights work. Judicial harassment – including strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs – has made up more than half of the attacks against human rights defenders raising concerns about business practice since we began tracking in 2015. This form of abuse presents a grave threat to defenders’ participation in peaceful public discourse around operations and activities which affect their lives.

Between January 2015 and August 2022, we tracked 883 attacks on Indigenous human rights defenders, including killings, threats, arbitrary detention, and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). Nearly all (95%) of attacks against Indigenous defenders between January 2015 – August 2022 were on climate, land, and environmental defenders, compared with just two-thirds (63%) for non-Indigenous defenders. This data helps show how Indigenous peoples play an outsized role in the protection of land, water, and forests and the disproportionate risks they face.

The Amazonian Community of Social Action “Cordillera del Cóndor Mirador” (CASCOMI), with the support of Latinoamérica Sustentable (LAS), presents the report: The Situation of Environmental Defenders and Responsibilities of Chinese Banks in the Mirador Mining Project. The report describes the challenges faced by community environmental defenders due to the systematic, irregular, and illegal practices of EcuaCorriente S.A. (ECSA), the company responsible for the Mirador mining project in Ecuador. The execution of this project has caused, and continues to cause, irreversible harm to the safety, dignity, and integrity of individuals and local organisations defending their rights and livelihoods.

Indigenous communities in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district are protesting a massive solar power project funded by a $434.25 million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The project requires over 2,400 hectares of land and threatens to displace around 20,000 people across 23 villages.

The Network of people affected by mining in Mexico has stated that in Canadian mining company, Equinox Gold, took control of the Los Filos mine at the beginning of 2020 and since then has been unable to maintain a respectful relationship with the community, which has meant that the community land owners of Carrizalillo have decided to break the agreement they signed in 2019 that should have lasted for 6 years.

Leaked documents from inside the Solway Group were shared with 20 media agencies by Forbidden Stories, which led the investigation. These documents bring evidence supporting that Solway’s executives, despite publicly denying it, were aware that the mining company’s activities were responsible for polluting Lake Izabal with heavy metals.

On the 2nd of April 2025, the Nile Post reported that at least nine youth activists had been arrested by police in Kampala after storming Stanbic Bank's headquarters to protest the bank's funding of the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project. The protesters, affiliated with the Students against EACOP Uganda group, were taken into custody at the Kampala Central Police Station. The demonstration was part of a larger march involving over 50 activists

The water defenders Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega were detained accused of killing an alleged army informant more than 33 years ago during El Salvador's civil war. They are all members of the Association of Economic and Social Development (ADES) and played a key role in the events that led the Salvadoran government to pass first-ever national prohibition on metal mining in 2017, with the goal of protecting the country's scarce water supply.