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.

Human rights defenders continue to face intolerable levels of risk and harm. In their vital work to promote human rights and protect the environment, they confront powerful actors and interests. They raise concerns about companies and investors engaged in irresponsible practice, governments failing in their duty to protect human rights, and other non-state actors profiting from environmental destruction. According to CIVICUS, 2022 was marked by a serious decline in civic space, with only 3% of the world’s population living in countries with open civic space, where the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, and expression are respected.

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.

On Thursday 29 June 2023, the police in the Jujuy province of Argentina raided the home of Indigenous and social leader Milagro Sala, who has been imprisoned since January 2016. Human rights and social activists allege that the charges that led to the raid are politically motivated.

In June 2023 four union leaders from the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Gildan San Miguel union were among 13 people killed in Choloma, Honduras, after a shooting during a birthday celebration. All four leaders - ​​Xiomara Cocas, Delmer Garcia, Lesther Almendarez and José Rufino Ortiz - represented workers at Gildan Activewear's San Miguel plant. Xiomara Cocas was the union president.

Civil society organisations and rights groups express their concern over the ongoing criminalization of ten human rights defenders and members of Karapatan, GABRIELA and the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) in retaliation for their legitimate human rights work. If convicted, they could face up to four months or up to more than two years of imprisonment.

15 Maya Poqomchi and Maya Q'eqchi communities of Sierra de Minas, Municipality of Purulha, Baja Verapaz face the evictions and aggression by security forces, aimed to arrest Mayan Indigenous leaders, forcefully evict them from their lands in favor of farmers and facilitate the establishment of extractive companies.

Sithar, the recently re-elected president of the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of NagaWorld (LRSU), was arrested at immigration at the Phnom Penh airport, as she was returning from the International Trade Union Confederation World Conference in Australia.

The Association for Social Economic Development (ADES) filed a legal appeal in favor of the Santa Marta's community environmental leaders who remain detained and accused of murdering a woman in 1989. Before the Sensuntepeque Court, their defense attorney requested alternative measures to preventive detention, arguing that they are in delicate health conditions. Three months ago, however, this same Salvadoran court rejected a similar petition...