Environmental Human Rights Defenders: Legal Protections across International Borders
Part VII: Considerations for Future
Shared with permission from Tamo Campos, Beyond Boarding.
Thank you for your continued support as we navigated this series on Environmental Human Rights Defenders.
It is abundantly clear that the human rights and environmental violations which are occurring around the world are as much a pandemic as the Coronavirus, requiring earnest focus on ensuring the health, safety, and wellbeing of those affected (EHRDs). Despite being entrenched in Conventions and UN Declarations dating back over half a century, the discourse around EHRDs is a very current issue, evolving daily. The publicly available information and independent reports from NGOs are unanimous in their message that current provisions for protections are not enough as they are not legally binding on an international scale.
The persecution faced by Environmental Human Rights Defenders is unique in that refugee laws and provisions would not be an appropriate remedy to extend to those facing persecution (although they should be welcome to such options should they so choose). Physical removal of EHRDs would be detrimental and contradictory, begging the question: if EHRDs leave their lands and territories, who will protect them from extractivism?
The challenge is to create binding international legal structures which compel states to take drastic action against those committing murder and other harms against EHRDs, increase the rights and freedoms of EHRDs, cease the criminalization of environmental and human rights defense work, and even promote their causes. The secondary aspect would be to establish measures for the safe and peaceful intervention of other states/ an international governing body if these rights and protections are not being met, thus encouraging accountability and forthright reporting from states.
There is an international responsibility to hold nations accountable for their inaction in the mitigation of this human rights crisis faced by environmental human rights defenders worldwide. The case studies concerning Latin America and the Philippines illustrate the way that States are failing to uphold this duty, and make evident the required intervention of an international body, or other Convention/ Agreement signatory States to protect EHRDs.
In both of these geographical areas, the persecution rates of these rights defenders, in the face of a climate change emergency, has steadily increased in direct correlation with the increase in extractive industry projects. Although there is growing awareness and mainstream news coverage, over 20 years after its emergence as an international concern, the scholarly work on the remediation and particularly the international involvement remains insufficient.
The academic community has approached this issue from sociological and scientific standpoints, working to eliminate violence against EHRDs, and to understand why these activists continue their community-based work despite the threats against them. Latin America and the Philippines are only two examples of these circumstances, and there are many other EHRDs worldwide, (including Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa) who require such protections.
Reports of violence against Environmental Human Rights Defenders must be met with international action. Devastating as it is to witness the list of 304 EHRDs known to be killed internationally in 2019, there are many more unnamed victims of these kinds of rights violations that deserve legal recognition and protection to avoid similar persecution.
These studies, and the overwhelming number of EHRD deaths suggest that international legal involvement is necessary, and that jurisdiction exceeds state boundaries. Through the emerging legal instruments in this field, and international human rights precedents, it is possible to envision a future where ecosystem and human health is prioritized, facilitating and legitimizing the work of Indigenous and community Environmental Human Rights Defenders.
Adapted from an Academic Paper submitted for International Environmental Law, Osgoode Law Hall & the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University; 2020.
