Environmental defenders remain among world’s most targeted activists

Environmental and Indigenous rights defenders remained among the world’s most targeted human rights advocates in 2025, despite landmark rulings by international courts affirming governments’ obligations to protect both the environment and those who defend it. At least 358 human rights defenders were killed last year, according to a report released last week by Front Line Defenders, a Dublin-based group that provides support for global human rights activists. Nearly a quarter, 84, were targeted because of their often unpaid work protecting land and the environment. Those killings were documented in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Peru, Philippines, Turkey, Somalia, and Palestine. Indigenous-rights defenders — often working on environmental issues but tracked separately from environmental defenders — accounted for another 17 percent of the killings documented by the group. Beyond the killings, even more defenders faced threats and attacks ranging from surveillance and smear campaigns to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and killings. Read Next Indigenous people defending their land face a disproportionate share of violence and threats Taylar Dawn Stagner There were nearly 4,000 nonlethal attacks on human rights defenders across 119 countries last year, a figure that includes multiple violations against the same individual in some cases, according to the report. That number is likely a vast undercount, the authors said, because many attacks go unreported — and their perpetrators are rarely held accountable. “The imposition of internet blackouts, suppression of media, targeting of documenters, self-censorship, or the total closure of civic space” makes some cases impossible to document, the report said, highlighting countries including China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iran that are politically restrictive, conflict-riven, or both. Human rights defenders are people who act peacefully to pr