Environmental human rights defenders and civic space
Civil society plays a vital role in achieving a just, inclusive, and sustainable future. A vibrant civil society can halt deforestation and habitat loss, prevent species extinction, promote human rights, strengthen the rule of law, advance land rights, support digital democracy, uphold gender equality, and champion sustainable development and the interests of marginalized groups and other public benefit objectives.
Environmental human rights defenders and civic space
We strengthen protection mechanisms, enhance organizational resilience, and support defenders and institutions to operate safely, lawfully, and sustainably while advancing environmental protection and human rights.
Civil society plays a vital role in achieving a just, inclusive, and sustainable future. A strong civic space is critical to halting deforestation and habitat loss, preventing species extinction, advancing human rights, strengthening the rule of law, securing land and resource rights, supporting digital democracy, promoting gender equality, and defending the interests of marginalized communities.
Through this programme, we protect environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) and conservation organizations who face growing risks as a result of their work on climate justice, biodiversity protection, and land governance. These actors operate at the frontline of environmental protection, often in environments marked by weak accountability, extractive pressures, and increasing restrictions on civic freedoms.
Our work focuses on the Kolwezi–Katanga mining region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and key landscapes within the Congo Basin and Albertine Rift, including the Murchison–Semliki landscape, Lendu Plateau, Bili-Uélé landscape, and the Ituri–Epulu–Aru landscape. These areas form part of a globally significant biodiversity hotspot and Alliance for Zero Extinction landscapes that are increasingly threatened by mining, agribusiness expansion, infrastructure development, armed conflict, and environmental crime.
Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders
Digital threats
Indigenous people
Rangers and forest guards
Context
Across Africa and globally, the space for civil society is shrinking. Authoritarianism is on the rise, with repressive regimes intensifying crackdowns on civil society. Environmental defenders and civil society organizations are frequently exposed to intimidation, surveillance, criminalization, and violence.
Undermining civil society
Governments are increasingly adopting restrictive measures that undermine the ability of environmental human rights defenders and civil society organizations (CSOs) to establish, operate, and sustain themselves effectively and safely, limiting their capacity to research, advocate, organise, use information and communication technology, and access to international development cooperation.
Surveillance and attacks
Governments engage in practices such as mass surveillance, digital attacks and military force against peaceful protesters, stigmatizing CSOs and activists and using emergency powers as a pretext to suppress civic space.
Marginalised groups
These restrictions often disproportionately target already marginalized groups, including women, youth, and indigenous peoples.
Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders (WEHRD's)
Women’s involvement in defending local community and environmental rights is crucial. They occupy a central role in household management, health, and food security for entire communities. Creating conditions to help foster their empowerment and active participation in decision making is essential for effective interventions. International solidarity and support for WEHRDs, whether through financial, diplomatic, legal, or advocacy efforts can significantly enhance their safety and amplify the impact of their struggles.
Gender-specific threats and attacks
Women environmental human rights defenders face specific gender-specific threats and attacks, as well as additional psychological and economic burden, result of their activism and frequent role as primary caregivers. They are disproportionately subjected to sexual assault, harassment, and intimidation of a sexualized nature, particularly, indigenous WEHRDS. However, they have less access to protection resources than their male counterparts, despite facing similar or, at times, greater risks. This disparity is particularly evident in cases where intimate partner violence and other forms of family or community pressure are used to punish WEHRDs for their activism—a phenomenon that often goes unreported and unacknowledged as a legitimate threat.
Lack of recognition and exclusion
WEHRDs leadership in human rights, climate justice and forest governance struggles often goes unrecognized, deliberately ignored or excluded, as it challenges patriarchal gender norms and structures.
Compounded discrimination
In addition to external challenges, WEHRDs frequently encounter discrimination and threats from other human rights defenders within the broader human rights and climate justice spaces. Women from marginalized communities who advocate for indigenous people’s rights face compounded discrimination due to their activism, as well as their political, ethnic, social, or gender identities.
Digital threats
Digital threats targeting Environmental Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs) are increasing in both number and frequency across the Albertine Rift and Congo Basin regions, reflecting the widespread access EHRDs have to digital devices and the critical role technology plays in their work.
Governments and companies use surveillance and control technology
These digital attacks employ various tactics, including surveillance, targeted malware infections, hacking, trolling, device confiscation, and theft. Governments and companies have become increasingly sophisticated in using technology to monitor activists, journalists, and political opponents, often attempting to normalize tracking as a necessary trade-off for ensuring safer societies.
Hate speech and smear campaigns
Online smear campaigns targeting environmental human rights defenders have become increasingly common and are likely to rise further. These campaigns are inexpensive, anonymous, and difficult to counter. Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders (WEHRDs) are particularly vulnerable, as these campaigns often include gendered hate speech.
Gender based online violence
We have documented numerous cases across the region where WEHRDs have received threats on social media platforms. Disturbingly, some of these threats reveal that perpetrators have access to specific personal information and locations of the targeted individuals. Many of the threatening messages include misogynistic language and explicit threats of sexual violence against the women involved.
Indigenous People
As violence against Environmental Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs) rises, indigenous people are among the most exposed. According to Global Witness, indigenous activists account for 39% of environmental and land defenders killed over the past decade. Although women comprised only 10% of the total fatalities, nearly two-thirds of those killed were indigenous women, highlighting the critical intersection of gender and Indigenous identity. Most of these killings were linked to the mining and extractive industries, but agribusiness, hydroelectric dams, water rights disputes, and logging also contributed significantly.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders has acknowledged the threats and violence faced by EHRDs, emphasizing the link between Indigenous Peoples’ rights and environmental defense in their reports. This intersection underscores the urgent need to protect Indigenous communities and their defenders in the face of escalating violence.
Widespread discrimination and violence
Indigenous People in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo face numerous violations of their rights and freedoms, including their freedom of speech, assembly, and self-organization, as well as their access to justice and rights to land, territories, and natural resources. Widespread discrimination persists with harassment, threats, and even fatal attacks on Indigenous human rights defenders and leaders on the rise. When asserting their rights to ancestral lands, they are often labeled as terrorists or accused of sedition.
Exploitation, illicit acquisitions and land-grabbing
The growing demand for land and natural resources continues to place Indigenous Peoples’ lands at risk of exploitation, illicit acquisitions, and land-grabbing. Key drivers include mineral extraction, logging, agribusiness, and large-scale infrastructure projects, including those for green energy. As a result, Indigenous Peoples face forced evictions, human rights abuses, violations, and conflicts, which threaten their livelihoods, food security, cultural identity, and survival.
Intersectional gender based violence
Indigenous women are active change agents and key leaders in the struggle for Indigenous Peoples’ rights. However, they are frequent targets of intimidation, threats, and violence, facing criminalization through false allegations, leading to baseless legal proceedings and imprisonment. These actions aim to demoralize, paralyze their human rights defense work, and delegitimize their causes. This violence, combined with the intersecting forms of discrimination Indigenous women face, creates conditions that perpetuate and exacerbate violence against them.
Violence against Indigenous women and girls also occurs during armed conflicts, militarization of territories, implementation of development and extractive projects, and in their efforts to defend human rights. This violence is sometimes politically motivated. The cycle of poverty disproportionately affects the most vulnerable women and girls, such as unmarried mothers, child brides, orphans, widows, and women living with disabilities, perpetuating generational marginalization and impunity for violence.
Rangers and forest guards
Rangers and forest guards embody the essence of environmental human rights defenders in Africa. They play a crucial role in protecting biodiversity, conserving ecosystems, promoting sustainable development, ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources and defending the rights of local communities to a healthy environment. Addressing the challenges they face requires increased investment in their training, welfare, and equipment, as well as stronger enforcement of environmental laws and community-based conservation efforts and partnerships with local stakeholders. International support is crucial to counter the threats posed by criminal networks and armed conflicts. Recognizing their sacrifices and enhancing their capacity are essential steps toward preserving Africa’s rich biodiversity and empowering local communities to coexist harmoniously with nature.
All rangers and forest guards are environmental human rights defenders
Environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs), as defined by the United Nations, are individuals or collectives working in either their personal or professional capacity to realize basic environmental rights. By the nature of their jobs, all forest rangers should be EHRDs, as their work can help ensure a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. A healthy environment is a necessary precondition for the full realization of many human rights.
Responsibilities and contributions
Their responsibilities include patrolling protected areas, monitoring wildlife populations, combating poaching, and mitigating human-wildlife conflicts. Community rangers, often recruited from local populations, serve as vital intermediaries between conservation initiatives and local communities. By fostering collaboration, trust, and conservation awareness, they are instrumental in enforcing environmental laws, safeguarding wildlife corridors, and implementing restoration projects, making them key players in environmental human rights defense.
Facing risk and violence
Rangers and forest guards face immense challenges as they balance their roles as conservationists and members of local communities. Africa has one of the highest rates of violence against rangers and environmental defenders globally, with numerous reports of killings, injuries, and abductions. They contend with armed poachers, illegal loggers, and wildlife traffickers who view them as obstacles to lucrative illicit activities. In regions like DR Congo, the risks are heightened by armed groups and political instability. Corruption within governance structures further undermines their efforts, leading to inconsistent enforcement of environmental laws and exposing rangers to retaliation from powerful networks involved in environmental exploitation.
Limited resources and psychological toll
Rangers often operate with limited resources, including inadequate training, poor equipment, and low wages, leaving them vulnerable when confronting well-armed Beyond physical violence, rangers endure significant psychological stress from constant threats and a lack of recognition for their sacrifices, resulting in low morale and burnout.
Deep understanding and ability to mediate disputes
Rangers encounter social pressure to overlook illegal activities or face threats from neighbors, leading to conflicts of interest. However, their deep understanding of local customs and ability to mediate disputes effectively often foster greater community support for conservation projects. They also highlight the human rights dimensions of environmental protection by advocating for equitable resource access and opposing harmful development practices that threaten both ecosystems and livelihoods.