Who Are Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders?
Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders – WEHRDs are any individual or group working to protect or promote human rights in the context of the environment, such as the defense of land rights, access to natural resources and the right to a healthy environment, and that they are often members of indigenous and traditional communities who play a key role in combating environmental crime.
International Recognition and Protection
The UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (1998) calls for the full and effective implementation of, and for promoting respect, support, and protection for, the activities of human rights defenders, including women and indigenous human rights defenders. This recognition is essential to the overall enjoyment of human rights and to the protection and conservation of the environment, including the rights to life, to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food and housing, to safe drinking water and sanitation, and to cultural rights.
However, in recent years, there have been an increasing rate of killings, violent acts, including gender-based violence, threats, harassment, intimidation, smear campaigns, criminalization, judicial harassment, forced eviction and displacement of environmental human rights defenders, including indigenous and women human rights defenders particularly, and other human rights defenders addressing issues relating to land rights.
The Scale of the Threat
Across the world, Global Witness recorded that at least 212 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019, an average of more than four people a week. Over one in ten of those killed were women. Mining, agribusiness, and logging were the sectors linked to the highest numbers of murders and security threats. More than two-thirds of the killings took place in Latin America, which has consistently ranked as the worst-affected region since Global Witness began publishing this data in 2012. According to Global Witness, verifying cases from Africa remains difficult, and limited civil society monitoring, media repression, and localized conflict mean that attacks in the region are likely underreported.
WEHRDs are particularly targeted because they act and speak out against environmental harms and human rights abuses, and they are increasingly targeted with gender-specific threats, including sexual violence and violence against their children or other family members.
ED’s Response in the Albertine Region
Environmental Defenders – ED is working closely with the communities in the Albertine region of Uganda that suffer the direct consequences of environmental harms and human rights violations linked to mining, agribusiness and logging through providing digital and physical protection for WEHRDs and their organizations as well as communities. Providing emergency psychosocial support and legal advice to WEHRDs and their organizations as well as communities at the grassroots level in the region.
Oil, Gas, and Human Rights Violations
The communities that ED supports are those negatively impacted by the ongoing Oil and gas exploration activities with their associated negative impacts on the environment and the human rights of the populations residing in the areas affected by the oil project, and which they attribute to a diverse range of actors. In particular, communities’ right to land, housing, and an adequate standard of living, the right to health and clean water and the right to a healthy environment have been negatively affected. The violations of these rights are inextricably related to violations of the right to information, the right to participation, and the right of access to justice perpetrated by the Oil project by China National Offshore Oil Corporation – CNOOC and TotalEnergies EP Uganda.
The activities of WEHRDs and their organizations as well as communities are met with constant Government harassment and restrictions, along with the threat of various forms of repression. For example, Police raids and administrative and judicial harassment are used as deterrents against the work of WEHRDs and their organisations. This worrying context for human rights sets a negative precedent that may aggravate the impacts of the activities of the oil industry.
Our Demands
Environmental Defenders – ED demand the Ugandan government and oil companies:
- to listen to Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders – WEHRDs and to apply specific urgent protective and preventive measures in order to reduce the alarming numbers of threats and violence against WEHRDs and their organizations;
- (Government) to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights, including in all actions undertaken to address environmental challenges, including the rights to life and to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to an adequate standard of living, to adequate food and housing, safe drinking water and sanitation, and cultural rights, and to human rights as they relate to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment;
- (Government) to adopt and uphold laws aimed at the protection of WEHRDs and other human rights defenders and, to put in place holistic protection measures for, and in consultation with, WEHRDs and other human rights defenders and communities, and to ensure accountability and prosecution for threats and attacks against women environmental human rights defenders in the Albertine region.