'Five years after Berta Cáceres was murdered, states are still failing to protect human rights defenders', 2 March 2021

It’s five years today since environmental human rights defender Berta Cáceres was murdered in her home in Honduras. She was one of hundreds of human rights defenders killed that year because of their peaceful work, and hundreds more defenders have been killed every year since. Those responsible are rarely brought to justice. Although some have been convicted of Berta Cáceres’ killing, others believed to have been involved have still not been brought to account... businesses are also shirking their responsibilities to prevent attacks on defenders or are even responsible for the attacks... Many of the killings are preceded by threats... Berta Cáceres’ murder “was a tragedy waiting to happen,” and she had “repeatedly denounced aggression and death threats against her. They had increased as she campaigned against the construction of a hydroelectric dam project called Agua Zarca and the impact it would have on the territory of the Lenca Indigenous people.”... The murders of human rights defenders are not inevitable, many are signalled in advance, and yet governments fail, year after year, to provide enough resources to prevent them, and fail, year after year, to hold the murderers to account...