Human rights defenders (HRDs) provide a vital safeguard for human rights when states fall short in holding power to account. Yet despite their importance, they increasingly face an unacceptable risk of attack.

From 2015 to 2019, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has documented more than 2,000 attacks on HRDs raising concerns about business-related human rights abuses - from frivolous lawsuits, arbitrary arrests and detentions to death threats, beatings and even killings.

There were 572 attacks in 2019 alone, up from 492 in 2018. Most of these attacks took place in Latin America, followed by Asia and the Pacific region, and Eastern Europe and Russia.

The main driver of these attacks is the failure by states to adequately protect the environment, labour rights, land rights, and indigenous peoples’ rights. This often takes place in the context of economic models which prioritise investments and profit over respect for human rights and protecting the environment. This is manifest in weak regulations and poor enforcement of existing laws and international norms, including the frequent failure to ensure that indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent is respected.  In turn, these become the structural driving forces that allow companies to ignore or silence dissent by communities and HRDs raising concerns about their projects.

This is compounded by a lack of laws protecting HRDs and a gap in public understanding of the important role HRDs play in development, peace and democracy. This toxic combination of a growing need to protect human rights affected by business, and a lack of protections for HRDs, is leaving brave people who are at the forefront of protecting our rights and planet increasingly at risk, to the detriment of everyone including companies.

Mining and agribusiness were the most dangerous sectors for HRDs

The sectors that saw the most attacks in 2019 were mining (including illegal mining) (143 attacks), agribusiness (85), waste disposal (51), renewable energy (47), construction (42), oil, gas and coal (38), and logging and lumber (38). Attacks related to waste disposal were mostly connected to large protests against open-air landfills and waste processing plants in Russia.

We have also seen a steady increase in restrictions on worker organising and violence against labour rights defenders. Peaceful protests by workers are often met with heavy-handed police or army responses. The most common reprisal faced by workers and their representatives are dismissals - a tactic used by employers to stifle civic action.

For example, more than 12,000 garment factory workers in Bangladesh were fired for their protests in January 2019 over wages. But union leaders are not safe from deadly violence either. For example, Dennis Sequeña was a long-time organiser and ally of workers facing labour abuses in the Cavite economic zone in the Philippines. He was shot to death by an unidentified gunman on 2 June 2019 while conducting a labour rights seminar with local workers.

Rising criminalisation and judicial attacks on HRDs

One of the preferred tactics to silence HRDs, according to our data, is criminalisation: Subjecting individuals and communities defending rights to undue criminal prosecution.

We tracked 98 criminal cases initiated against HRDs in 2019, up from 62 in 2018. While companies may launch legal complaints leading to criminal charges, the actual process is often carried out by states. This tactic, alongside other types of judicial harassment such as arbitrary arrests, detentions, and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) brought by companies, were the most common type of attack on HRDs in 2019.

In 2019, Honduras was the country with the highest number of attacks against HRDs related to business. Other countries with high numbers of attacks were Colombia, Mexico, Russia, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Peru, and Guatemala. The situation in Honduras for civil society and defenders has been difficult for years, as Global Witness reported. Since the 2009 coup, Honduras’s economic growth strategy has been focused on opening the country to mining, agribusiness and renewable energy investment and in 2011, the government declared the country "open for business".

As part of this promise, the government has relaxed environmental regulations, and approved projects without ensuring free, prior and informed consent. In 2019 we recorded 98 attacks on HRDs in Honduras, up from 31 in 2018. After visiting Honduras in 2019, Anita Ramasastry, a member of the UN Working Group (UNWG) on Business and Human Rights, said: “The majority of conflicts related to large-scale investments results from the systematic lack of transparency and meaningful participation of affected communities in any decisions regarding business activity.”

Impunity for these attacks is common. In December 2019, a historic sentence was passed against seven men over the murder in 2016 of HRD Berta Cáceres, who campaigned tirelessly against negative impacts by the construction of a dam in her ancestral territory. However, as the sentence was handed down, Berta’s family denounced the failure to punish the intellectual authors of the killing, and noted that her family and her organisation, COPINH, continue to receive threats.

Recommendations

In 2019 the UNWG on Business & Human Rights stressed:

“The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights already provide a clear framework to protect HRDs in the context of business. They are intrinsically linked to states’ international obligations and commitments to protect fundamental rights and freedoms and the goals of sustainable development.

“The Guiding Principles also clarify that when states fail in their duty, companies nevertheless have a responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to attacks and seek to prevent and address attacks against HRDs linked to their own operations and business relationships.”

All companies need to reflect this in their policies and practice.

• Businesses should exercise human rights due diligence that recognises risks to HRDs, and adopt policies and a zero-tolerance approach on reprisals and attacks on HRDs, both in their operations and when they are linked to attacks through their value chain and business relationships
• Businesses should recognise that they and civil society operate in and benefit from a “shared space” that respects the rule of law, and speak out publicly and/or privately in favour of freedoms of expression, association, and assembly and of HRDs

All states need to do more to address the drivers of attacks. This includes:

• Enacting strong legal protection of the environment and human rights, including land, labour, and indigenous peoples’ rights
• Passing laws that recognise the role of HRDs
• Introducing mandatory corporate human rights due diligence that recognises the need to address risks to HRDs
• As the owners of international financial institutions, mandating them to create appropriate mechanisms to address attacks, reprisals and criminalisation of HRDs

A compilation of specific recommendations to companies and investors is available here.