“Ecuador: Faced with a lack of state protection, Amazonian Women are risking their lives to defend the environment”, 30^th April 2019

The Ecuadorian authorities’ capacity and will to adequately and effectively provide protection and conduct criminal investigations into the attacks and threats against Amazonian Women’s environmental defenders is placing their lives at risk, as well as those of others who are protecting the Amazon from political and economic interests linked to large-scale extractive projects on Indigenous territories...‘They will not stop us’ Ecuador: Justice and protection for Amazonian Women, defenders of the land, territory and environment exposes the failings of the Ecuadorian Attorney General’s Office when responding to a series of attacks and death threats recorded in 2018 against Patricia Gualinga, Nema Grefa, Salomé Aranda and Margoth Escobar. The four women are members of Amazonian Women, a collective comprising dozens of Ecuadorian women defending the Amazonian environment and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. The work of environmental defenders such as Amazonian Women…is urgent and necessary in Ecuador and across the world given the increasingly clear impacts of the global environmental crisis on the human rights of us all.  “Despite the promises of President Moreno’s government, the lack of will to seriously investigate these attacks against human rights defenders and provide them with adequate protection sends a clear message to society: that these crimes are tolerated in Ecuador…,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.