One year ago the world was shocked and saddened by the assassination of Berta Cáceres, a high-profile Honduran land rights activist and former Goldman Prize winner, who was targeted for leading the opposition against a project to construct a dam on community lands. The murder of Cáceres underscored the vulnerability of indigenous leaders, and in particular indigenous women leaders, who face violence and criminalization for defending their communities’ lands and livelihoods.
Indigenous Peoples and local sustainable development, climate change mitigation efforts, and societal stability. Research from RRI and others has shown that addressing insecure land rights is essential to preserving massive stores of aboveground carbon, and maintaining
In spite of the widespread benefits of secure community land tenure, the targeting of land rights defenders continues. A June 2016 report by Global Witness named 2015 the worst year on record for the killing of environmental and land rights activists: it documented 185 deaths, 122 of them in Latin America. A report by Oxfam International found an increase in attacks against female human rights activists in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. This unprecedented level of violence continued in 2016.
A recent series of killings targeting indigenous activists in Colombia shows how such violence can impede efforts to foster peace. A report by the Colombian NGO Programa Somos Defensores (“We are Defenders Program”) documented 80 murders of human rights activists in 2016, the majority of whom were working to defend indigenous, campesino, and Afro-Colombian groups. Since the historic signing of a peace deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), attacks against community leaders have risen steadily. While the #BertaVive Tweets