Mexico, Brazil and Colombia lead the number of deaths of environmentalists in the world

First modification: 09/30/2022 – 02:34

A report published by the NGO Global Witness shows how Mexico, Colombia and Brazil led more than half of the attacks on environmentalists in 2021, 78% of them occurred in the Amazon.

In Mexico, most conflicts over land and mining caused 54 people to be killed, “nearly half of them indigenous.” In the last 10 years, the North American country has seen a significant increase in these cases, with 154 registered, where 131 were between 2017 and 2021. Something that has made Mexico one of the most dangerous places in the world for activism, according to reports the NGO.

The report reveals that, “most of these crimes occur in places remote from power and are inflicted on those with, in many ways, the least power.”

Global Witness Executive Director Mike Davis said, “Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and environmental defenders are risking their lives in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Activists, as well as communities, play a crucial role in the first line of defense against ecological collapse, as well as being leaders in the campaign to prevent it.”

For the NGO’s researchers, the data is only an approximation, since “our data on murders is likely to be an underestimate, given that many murders go unreported, especially in rural areas and in certain countries.”

Colombia, meanwhile, remains one of the most violent countries in the world. There, some 33 environmental leaders and land defenders were killed in 2021, the report says. Despite the fact that in 2016 the Government signed the peace agreement with the extinct FARC guerrilla, the disputes over the territory continue. In any case, the murder figures were reduced compared to 2020, when 65 people were killed.

In Brazil, 26 homicides were recorded. “With the powerful agricultural interests at the heart of the Brazilian economy so focused on exports, there is a battle over land and resources that has intensified with the election of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018,” says the report.

Since 2012, some 1,733 people have been killed in the world trying to protect “protect their lands and resources: this means an average of one defender killed approximately every two days for ten years”, reveals Global Witness.

The NGO says that in these ten years 39% of the deaths have been in indigenous peoples, 11% have been women defenders of the land and 68% have occurred in Latin America, despite the entry into force of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement, which has not yet been ratified in countries such as Colombia and Brazil, and in Mexico it has not been effectively implemented.

Global Witness recommends that governments have laws that protect activists, seek the consent of indigenous groups when works or exploitation are carried out in their territories. In addition, he hopes that companies will be held accountable for their global operations and that they will not tolerate attacks on defenders of the earth.

The stories of some victims

In western Mexico, in Jalisco, in April 2021 José Santos Isaac Chávez was assassinated after running for local elections. He was a fervent opponent of mining in his region. Before the elections he was taken from his house by armed men and forced to get into his own vehicle, he was found dead on a cliff with signs of torture.

In Colombia, Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, who was an indigenous governor and fought for the eradication of illicit coca crops, was assassinated near her home in April 2021. Her death was condemned by the UN, non-governmental organizations and foreign governments.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where there were eight environmentalists killed in 2021, Brigadier Etienne Mutazimiza Kanyaruchinya was shot by 100 gunmen, believed to be members of the M23 rebel group. In Virunga Park, where the brigadier was head of the rangers of the conservation park for the world’s last mountain gorillas, there is a dispute over control of natural resources in the Congo between the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the M23 and others.

with AP