Collectives of the disappeared and human rights activists demand the return alive of Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, community defenders who disappeared on January 15 2023. The protest in the Glorieta to the Disappeared in Mexico City. on January 22, 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Luis Barron / Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz were working together to protect the community
of San Miguel de Aquila in Mexico from years of abuse by mining giant Ternium.
In January last year, both defenders disappeared. Neither have been found. Three months after they vanished, anti-mining activist Eustacio Alcalá also disappeared, and was found dead two days later.
Their case is featured in a new report by the environmental and human rights watchdog, Global Witness, on the killings of land and environmental defenders in 2023, which noted that there is no hard evidence that Ternium or its employees have ordered or carried out any disappearances of land defenders.
The presence of iron ore mining in the region has contributed to a “microcosm of competing interests” including the territorial expansion of organised criminals and worsening violence, the report said.
“I wish the world could see the destruction mining causes in Aquila — to our environment, to us,” Lagunes’ daughter Brenda said in the report. “I wish they could see how the water in the river has disappeared, just as my father and Ricardo have.”
Global Witness documented that 196 defenders were murdered last year after exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment from harm, warning that the actual number is likely to be higher.
There are “countless stories of defender courage we want to tell but can’t”, the NGO said.
Around the world, those who oppose the abuse of their homes and lands are met with violence and intimidation. Yet, the full scope of these attacks remains hidden, while many killings go unreported.
“Fear of retaliation keeps families from seeking justice, and communities are coerced into silence. Journalists become targets,” it said. “Stories are buried, covered up, erased. Often, we have very little information about a case at all. Many defenders will remain unnamed, their sacrifices unacknowledged, their stories of defiance untold.”
A “disturbingly small percentage of cases” result in perpetrators being held accountable and families may never find justice or closure, nor feel safe to speak out. The truth is obscured by a system of complicity: compromised civic spaces, rampant corruption and dysfunctional legal systems. “Erasure is a form of attack too.”
That 196 defenders were murdered in 2023 tips the total number of killings to more than 2000 globally since Global Witness started reporting data in 2012. The NGO estimates that the total now stands at 2 106 murders.
More than 1 500 defenders have been murdered since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change on 12 December 2015.
“Murder continues to be a common strategy for silencing defenders and is unquestionably the most brutal. But as this report shows, 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. This is happening in every region of the world and in almost every sector.”
Once again, Latin America had the highest number of recorded killings worldwide, with 166 killings overall — 54 killings in Mexico and Central America and 112 in South America.
Overall, for the second year running, Colombia was found to be the deadliest country in the world, with a record 79 deaths in total last year — compared to 60 in 2022, and 33 in 2021. This is the most defenders killed in one country in a single year Global Witness has ever recorded.
With 461 killings from 2012 to 2023, Colombia has the highest number of reported environmental defender killings globally on record. In Brazil, 25 murders were documented, while 18 were documented in Mexico and a further 18 in Honduras.
In Africa, two defenders were murdered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one in Rwanda and one in Ghana in 2023. Between 2012 and 2023, 116 defenders were murdered on the continent, most of them park rangers in the DRC (74).
“We have also documented cases in Kenya (six), South Africa (six), Chad (five), Uganda (five), Liberia (three) and Burkina Faso (two), among other countries,” the report said. “These chilling figures are most likely a gross underestimate as access to information continues to be a challenge across the continent.”
In Europe and North America, defenders are also “facing increasingly difficult situations as they exercise the right to protest”. Four demonstrators were killed in Panama last year, while two were killed in Indonesia.
In the United States, a police officer shot dead an environmental defender who was demonstrating against the destruction of a forest to make way for a police training complex.
Worldwide, Indigenous peoples and Afrodescendents continue to be disproportionately targeted, accounting for 49% of total murders.
While establishing a direct relationship between the murder of a defender and specific corporate interests remains difficult, Global Witness identified mining as the “biggest industry driver by far”, with 25 defenders killed after opposing mining operations in 2023. Other industries include fishing (five), logging (five), agribusiness (four), roads and infrastructure (four) and hydropower (two).
In total, 23 of the 25 mining-related killings globally last year happened in Latin America. But more than 40% of all mining-related killings from 2012 to 2023 occurred in Asia, which is home to significant natural reserves of key critical minerals vital for clean energy technologies.
“This report shows that in every region of the world, people who speak out and call attention to the harm caused by extractive industries — like deforestation, pollution and land grabbing — face violence, discrimination and threats,” Nonhle Mbuthuma, a 2024 Goldman prize winner and founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, wrote in the foreword. “We are land and environmental defenders. And when we speak up many of us are attacked for doing so.”
Being an environmental defender does not come without personal sacrifice, she said. “Decades of working to protect our planet has taken a toll on me physically and emotionally. There is a hidden cost to our activism. For years, I have faced death threats, brutality, criminalisation and harassment.
“knowing my life is in danger every day is deeply taxing. And I know I am not alone. Defenders and their communities are exposed to an ever-evolving range of reprisals, many of which are hidden from view. Or worse, ignored,” she said.