NGO WORK

Defending rights and realising just economies: Human rights defenders and business (2015-2024)

Published

6 months ago

May 22, 2025

Over the past decade, human rights defenders (HRDs) have courageously organised to stop corporate abuse and prevent business activities from causing harm – exposing human rights and environmental violations, demanding accountability, and advocating for rights-respecting economic practices. From Indigenous Peoples protecting forests from mining activities to journalists exposing health and environmental harms related to logging to workers advocating for better conditions in the garment sector, HRDs are at the forefront of creating a more equitable, sustainable and abundant world where rights are protected, people and nature thrive, and just economies can flourish.

Every one of us has the right to take action to protect our rights and environments and contribute to creating a more just and equitable world, and yet those who do often face great risk. Businesses have the responsibility to respect human rights, including the right of all people to defend human rights. When companies fail to listen to HRDs, they lose important allies – people and groups fighting for transparency and accountability, and against corruption, which are all essential elements of an open and stable business operating environment. With authoritarianism on the rise, the imperative of realising a just global energy transition, and deepening inequality around the world, the role of business has rarely been so important – especially as HRDs pressing for rights-respecting corporate practice face increasing challenges.

From January 2015 to December 2024, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) recorded more than 6,400 attacks across 147 countries against people who voiced concerns about business-related risks or harms. This is close to two attacks on average every day over the past ten years. In 2024 alone, we tracked 660 attacks.

Civic space – the environment that enables all of us to organise, participate, and communicate freely in our societies – has also continued to deteriorate over the past decade. According to Civicus, only 3.6% of the world’s population currently lives in countries with open civic space, where citizens and civil society organisations are able to organise, participate and communicate without restrictions. In every region, governments have abused their power to limit the civic freedoms of people advocating for responsible business practice by detaining journalists, passing restrictive legislation (such as foreign funding bills and critical infrastructure laws), criminalising and prosecuting HRDs, and using violent force at protests, among other actions.

This is harmful for business. Civic space restrictions create an ‘information black box,’ leaving companies and investors with gaps in knowledge about potential or actual negative human rights impacts, which can lead to legal, financial, reputational and other risks. Democracy and full enjoyment of civic freedoms are central to addressing the key challenges humanity faces and to sustainable economic growth – some economists have found that democratisation causes an increase in GDP per capita of between 20% and 25%. In addition, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and subsequent guidance, business actors also have a responsibility to respect human rights, which includes engaging in robust human rights due diligence that identifies and mitigates risks to civic freedoms and HRDs.

In our current context of continued erosion of democracy, deregulation, backlash against environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, increased conflict, and the weaponsation of both law and technology against human rights defence, HRDs remind us to transcend polarisation and persist in realising a more just and abundant future for us all. Key wins over the past decade include a legally binding instrument to protect environmental defenders, regulations to curb strategic lawsuits against public participation, and important victories advancing corporate accountability following advocacy and judicial efforts. Representatives from Indigenous communities have shared a powerful vision for a rights-respecting energy transition – an essential framework for the future. They are innovating, at times together with progressive businesses, to bring about transformative new business models designed to deliver shared prosperity in alignment with Indigenous Peoples’ self-determined priorities.

Between January 2015 and December 2024, the Resource Centre documented more than 6,400 cases of attacks globally against HRDs challenging corporate harm. These attacks were against Indigenous Peoples, youth leaders, elders, women defenders, journalists, environmental defenders, communities, non-profit organisations and others, negatively affecting tens of thousands of people.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Our research is based on publicly available information, and given the severity of civic space restrictions in some countries and security concerns, many attacks go unreported. In addition, governments are largely failing in their duty to monitor attacks. In countries and regions where few attacks are documented, this does not mean that violence against defenders is nonexistent, but rather that the information is not accessible. Learn more about our research methodology.

Restrictions on civic space helped to facilitate these attacks. Other drivers included weak rule of law and unaccountable governance, economic models focused on profit maximisation through unsustainable resource extraction, racism and discrimination, and lack of consultation with potentially affected stakeholders.

“I routinely hear from Indigenous defenders working in isolated, remote or rural areas that businesses and governments do not consult with them properly – and that their right to give or withhold their free, prior and informed consent for activities negatively affecting their lives or their territories is either manipulated or ignored. Some attacks are committed by agents acting for businesses, others by government authorities and businesses acting together.”

– Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders

Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific have consistently been the most dangerous regions for HRDs raising concerns about corporate harm, accounting for close to three in four (71%) attacks in the past decade. Africa follows with 583 instances of attacks – close to a third of these occurred in Uganda.

In Latin America, the majority of attacks are concentrated in six countries that account for 35% of all attacks globally – Brazil (473), Mexico (455), Honduras (418), Colombia (331), Peru (299) and Guatemala (256). Despite comprising only 0.1% of the world’s population, 6.5% of attacks took place in Honduras. In Asia, the highest number of attacks occurred in the Philippines (411), India (385), Cambodia (279) and Indonesia (216).

Another trend is an increase in attacks in the United Kingdom, where 91% of attacks have been judicial harassment (arrests, criminal charges and SLAPPs). Attacks in the UK notably increased from seven in 2022 to 21 in 2023 – the same year the UK Government’s Public Order Act, which significantly increased the police’s power to respond to protests, came into force, undermining freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Attacks further increased in 2024 to 34. Almost all of these attacks were against people raising concerns about the fossil fuel sector.

Attacks target individuals, organisations and communities, causing physical harm, draining resources and obstructing human rights work. They can also have a chilling effect on civic space and weaken the social fabric vital for resistance, community cohesion, and an inclusive and peaceful society. In addition to harming physical security, attacks can also negatively affect HRDs’ mental, emotional and economic well-being.

Since 2015, the Resource Centre has tracked 5,323 non-lethal attacks on HRDs challenging corporate harm.Through our research and collective work with the ALLIED Coalition, we have also identified numerous cases of escalations and cyclical attacks against HRDs where threats and judicial harassment precede physical violence.

Escalation of attacks: Tumandok Peoples’ opposition to dam project

Co-authored with ALLIED and ANGOC

The Tumandok People are an Indigenous group whose ancestral lands in the Philippines have been targeted for numerous private and public development projects, driving ongoing conflict for the community. Community members have actively opposed the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project (JRMP) II infrastructure project, which includes the construction of a dam that would displace Indigenous villages and proceed without their FPIC. Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd was awarded the construction contract and the project is supported by Export-Import Bank of Korea.

Numerous attacks have been carried out against community members who voiced opposition to this project. This cyclical violence against the Tumandok is reflected in data from the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), ALLIED and other sources.

We invited Export-Import Bank of Korea and Daewoo E&C to respond. Export-Import Bank’s full response to the killing of HRDs in December 2020 is available here. Daewoo E&C did not respond.

Killings and disappearances

Over the past decade, we documented close to 1,100 killings of HRDs who bravely spoke out against corporate harm. In 2024 alone, we recorded the murders of 52 people.

We commemorate the lives, courage and vital work of these HRDs and their communities. While governments have a duty to investigate these murders, the majority of attacks – both lethal and non-lethal – go uninvestigated and unpunished, fostering a culture of impunity that only emboldens further violence.

Indigenous defenders are particularly at risk. Close to a third (31%) of those killed were Indigenous defenders. Most of the killings of Indigenous defenders occurred in Latin America, as well as the Philippines.

We also tracked 116 abductions and disappearances, which leave families and communities bereft, in the dark as to the safety and whereabouts of their loved one. Most took place in Mexico and the Philippines.

Disappearence of two defenders in Mexico

Co-authored with Global Rights Advocacy

The mining sector is the most dangerous sector for HRDs in Mexico. Over the past decade, a quarter of attacks were against HRDs raising concerns about mining; 40% of those attacks were killings. In the coastal mountains of Michoacán, there is powerful resistance by Indigenous Peoples to mining, amidst a generalised atmosphere of violence. Indigenous Peoples are defending their territories against private interests and organised crime, facing criminalisation, persecution, aggression and killings.

Read full report: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

NGO WORK

Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Published

2 days ago

November 13, 2025

witnessradio.org

Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

This report details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

Read full report: Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Source: The Oakland Institute

NGO WORK

Africa’s Land Is Not Empty: New Report Debunks the Myth of “Unused Land” and Calls for a Just Future for the Continent’s Farmland

Published

2 days ago

November 13, 2025

witnessradio.org

A new report challenges one of the most persistent and harmful myths shaping Africa’s development agenda — the idea that the continent holds vast expanses of “unused” or “underutilised” land waiting to be transformed into industrial farms or carbon markets.

Titled Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025), the study exposes how this colonial-era narrative continues to justify large-scale land acquisitions, displacements, and ecological destruction in the name of progress.

Drawing on extensive literature reviews, satellite data, and interviews with farmers in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, the report systematically dismantles five false assumptions that underpin the “land abundance” narrative:

That Africa has vast quantities of unused arable land available for cultivation
That modern technology can solve Africa’s food crisis
That smallholder farmers are unproductive and incapable of feeding the continent
That markets and higher yields automatically improve food access and nutrition
That industrial agriculture will generate millions of decent jobs

Each of these claims, the report finds, is deeply flawed. Much of the land labelled as “vacant” is, in reality, used for grazing, shifting cultivation, foraging, or sacred and ecological purposes. These multifunctional landscapes sustain millions of people and are far from empty.

The study also shows that Africa’s food systems are already dominated by small-scale farmers, who produce up to 80% of the continent’s food on 80% of its farmland. Rather than being inefficient, their agroecological practices are more resilient, locally adapted, and socially rooted than the industrial models promoted by external donors and corporations.

Meanwhile, the promise that industrial agriculture will lift millions out of poverty has not materialised. Mechanisation and land consolidation have displaced labour, while dependency on imported seeds and fertilisers has trapped farmers in cycles of debt and dependency.

A Continent Under Pressure

Beyond these myths, the report reveals a growing land squeeze as multiple global agendas compete for Africa’s territory: the expansion of mining for critical minerals, large-scale carbon-offset schemes, deforestation for timber and commodities, rapid urbanisation, and population growth.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa lost more than 3.9 million hectares of forest annually — the highest deforestation rate in the world. Grasslands, vital carbon sinks and grazing ecosystems, are disappearing at similar speed.

Powerful actors — from African governments and Gulf states to Chinese investors, multinational agribusinesses, and climate-finance institutions — are driving this race for land through opaque deals that sideline local communities and ignore customary tenure rights.

A Call for a New Vision

The report calls for a radical shift away from high-tech, market-driven, land-intensive models toward people-centred, ecologically grounded alternatives. Its key policy recommendations include:

Promoting agroecology as a pathway for food sovereignty, ecological regeneration, and rural livelihoods.
Reducing pressure on land by improving agroecological productivity, cutting food waste, and prioritising equitable distribution.
Rejecting carbon market schemes that commodify land and displace communities.
Legally recognising customary land rights, particularly for women and Indigenous peoples.
Upholding the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all land-based investments.

This report makes it clear: Africa’s land is not “empty” — it is lived on, worked on, and cared for. The future of African land must not be dictated by global capital or outdated development theories, but shaped by the people who depend on it.

Download the Report

Read the full report Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025) to explore the evidence and policy recommendations in detail.

Source: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

NGO WORK

Discover How Foreign Interests and Resource Extraction Continue to Drive Congo’s Crisis

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2025

witnessradio.org

Whereas Donald Trump hailed the “peace” agreement between Rwanda and DRC as marking the end of a deadly three-decade war, a new report from the Oakland Institute, Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC, exposes it as the latest US maneuver to control Congolese critical minerals.

Under the Guise of Peace

After three decades of deadly wars and atrocities, the June 2025 “peace” deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lays bare the United States’ role in entrenching the extraction of minerals under the guise of diplomacy. For decades, US backing of Rwanda and Uganda has fueled the violence, which has ripped millions of Congolese lives apart while enabling the looting of the country’s mineral wealth. Today, Washington presents itself as a broker of peace, yet its longstanding support for Rwanda made it possible for M23 to seize territory, capture key mining sites, and forced Kinshasa to the negotiation table with hands tied behind its back. By legitimizing Rwanda’s territorial advances, the US-brokered agreement effectively rewards aggression while sidelining accountability, justice for victims, and the sovereignty of the Congolese people.

The incorporation of “formalized” mineral supply chains from eastern DRC to Rwanda exposes the pact’s true aim: Securing access to and control over minerals under the guise of diplomacy and “regional integration.” Framed as peacemaking, this is part of United States’ broader geopolitical struggle with China for control over critical resources. Far from fostering peace – over a thousand civilians have been killed since the deal was signed while parallel negotiations with Rwanda’s rebel force have collapsed – this arrangement risks deepening Congo’s subjugation. Striking deals with the Trump administration and US firms, the DRC government is surrendering to a new era of exploitation while the raging war continues, driving the unbearable suffering of the Congolese people.

Introduction

The conflict in eastern DRC, which dates back three decades to the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent Congo Wars, has claimed over six million lives, displaced millions more, and inflicted widespread suffering. Since late 2021, Rwanda and its proxy militia, M23, have stormed through mineral-rich lands and regional capitals, inflicting brutal violence and triggering mass displacement. While billions of dollars in natural resources are extracted from the area, Congolese communities toil in extreme poverty.

On June 27, 2025, a “peace” agreement was signed between Rwanda and the DRC under the auspices of the Trump administration, with diplomatic assistance from Qatar.¹ The deal included pledges to respect the territorial integrity of both countries, to promote peaceful relations through the disarmament of armed groups, the return of refugees, and the creation of a joint security mechanism. A key clause commits the countries to launch a regional economic integration framework that would entail “mutually beneficial partnerships and investment opportunities,” specifically for the extraction of the DRC’s mineral wealth by US private interests.

Placing the deal in a historical perspective – after three decades of conflict and over seven decades of US chess game around Congolese minerals – this report examines its implications for the Congolese people as well as the interests involved in the plunder of the country’s resources.

The report begins by retracing 30 years of war, fueled by the looting of Congo’s mineral wealth and devastating for the people of eastern DRC. It then examines how US policy in Central Africa, from the Cold War to the present, has been shaped by its interest in Congolese minerals, sustained alliances with Rwanda and Uganda, and a consistent pattern of overlooking atrocities in support of these allies.

The report then analyses the implications of the regional economic integration aspect of the deal, which aims to link mineral supply chains in the DRC and Rwanda with US investors. The last sections examine the prospect for lasting peace and security resulting from the deal and the impact of growing involvement of US private actors in DRC and Rwanda.

Original Source: Oakland Institute