IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Violence against HRDs and journalists remains acute in the Americas. The region accounted for a disproportionate number of killings of HRDs recorded by the CIVICUS Monitor, with over 60 per cent of the total cases documented in 2022. Similarly, it was the region with the highest number of reports of killings of journalists. HRDs were killed in at least eight countries and journalists in at least nine.

Indigenous, environmental and land rights defenders were disproportionately affected by this violence. In Brazil, Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were ambushed and killed as they returned from a reporting trip in a remote part of the Amazon rainforest. They had been documenting Indigenous people’s efforts to resist predatory criminal activities in their territory. The 10-day search for them was driven initially by Indigenous organisations in the face of government negligence, something symptomatic of the attitude of the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro toward human rights, Indigenous peoples and independent media.

Sadly, Colombia saw a new record number of assassinations of HRDs and social leaders. According to the country’s Ombudsperson’s Office, nearly 200 of these advocates were killed in 2022. Frontline defenders and community leaders were particularly targeted. In Honduras, a trans activist who advocated for the rights of people with HIV was killed in a brazen attack in her home. Before she died, Thalía Rodríguez had underscored in an interview that she was one of the last Honduran trans activists of her generation still living.

In Mexico, at least five women defenders who searched for answers about missing people were killed. Press workers faced a particularly deadly year in the country, with four journalists assassinated in January 2022 alone. The authorities have failed to coordinate a comprehensive response to the violence. Mexico’s underfunded and understaffed protection mechanism lacks the capacity to ensure the safety of the hundreds who need it. 2022 ended with Mexico again topping the list of countries outside war zones with the most journalists killed during the year.

The reproduction of this shameful trend, year after year, displays the urgent need for governments across the region to adopt and improve measures to protect HRDs and journalists and to tackle the prevailing impunity for crimes committed against them.