The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, through its Rapporteurship on Human Rights Defenders, considers that environmental defenders play a key role in guaranteeing the enjoyment of essential rights such as life and personal integrity of human beings who are exposed to pollutants which stem from different sources and can affect the quality of the air, water, soil and subsoil and harm the enjoyment of human rights, says Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez.

By Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

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The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, through its Rapporteurship on Human Rights Defenders, considers that environmental defenders play a key role in guaranteeing the enjoyment of essential rights such as life and personal integrity of human beings who are exposed to pollutants which stem from different sources and can affect the quality of the air, water, soil and subsoil and harm the enjoyment of human rights, as well as in securing the right balance between environment protection and development in the countries of the region.

In the past years, there is a frightening increase of the number of complaints on criminalisation, threats, acts of violence and murders of environment defenders, in the context of their opposition to large-scale projects, of land conflicts, of the right to previous consultations and of the defense of environment and of ancestral lands. In this sense, in its Second report on the situation of human rights defenders in the Americas, the Rapporteurship highlighted the situation of special risk that affects the defenders of land rights and natural resources.

With the aim to address this situation along the years, the Commission has analysed the issues related to the link that exists between the environment, the defenders, and human rights. [1] It has done so through its different mechanisms of promotion and protection of human rights. Thus, by means of its system of petitions[2], its requests of precautionary measures[3], its requests of information to States, its press releases[4], its thematic reports[5], and the public hearings and working meetings, amongst many others, the Commission has identified the obstacles that are faced by defenders who work towards a healthy environment and/or those who defend indigenous and tribal peoples’ natural resources, calling on states to recognise their work and to guarantee the means and conditions necessary to carry out their defence activities in a safe context, free of risks to life and to personal integrity. Moreover, the Commission called on states to undertake, as a public policy, a struggle against impunity through exhaustive and independent investigations on the attacks suffered by the human rights defenders, with the aim to sanction the material and intellectual authors of those violations. Finally, the Commission, though its Rapporteurship on Human Rights Defenders, acknowledges the right of every individual to defend human rights, and reminds that this concerns not only the civil and political rights, but also the activities of denouncing, monitoring and promoting social, economic and cultural rights.