Publications

Stand with Pastor Omot on World Earth Day

In the fertile lands of Gambela, in western Ethiopia, local indigenous populations have been planting their crops for hundreds of years.

Ana Maria has helped hundreds of Dominicans of Haitian descent reclaim their rights, and resist racism and discrimination. Lorraine leads innovative education initiatives, to raise awareness about environmental rights in communities affected by coal mining in South Africa. Nisha successfully challenged a law discriminating against transgender people in Malaysia, and set up the first organisation providing support to the trans community in her country.

Here are the activists at risk for defending them.

When members of Juan Francisco Martínez’s community found his body in January 2015, his body bore marks of torture. One of his hands was still tied with what appeared to be laces from military boots.

Juan, a human rights defender and indigenous Lenca man from Honduras, was found on 5 January 2015 in the village of Tapuyman in the Santa Elena Municipality of La Paz, Honduras. He had been killed the day before.

As the 2016 Annual Report documents, at least 156 human rights defenders were killed or died in detention in 2015. More than half of those killings, 87, took place in Latin America, with Colombia alone accounting for 54 killings. Outside the Americas one of the starkest figures was the total of 31 targeted killings of HRDs in the Philippines.