Human rights defenders and big corporations

Environmental activist and indigenous leader Berta Cáceres – who in 2015 was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize – was assassinated in Honduras one year later, in 2016, for leading a protest against a hydroelectric power dam. The dam was promoted at that time by a joint venture between the Honduran company DESA (Desarrollos Energéticos, S.A.), the Chinese company Sinohydro and other financial partners. Her life is one of hundreds that, each year, is brutally taken for actions meant to protect human and environmental rights. Over the period 2015 to 2020, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) documented over 2,400 attacks launched against human rights defenders fighting in conflicts involving the business sector; while the United Nations reported that, from 2017 to 2018, there were 431 confirmed killings of human rights defenders. Defenders can tackle different kinds of abuses, some focus on land and environmental rights that are at risk of being undermined by business operations, and which can in turn also damage fundamental rights like the right to life or to live in a safe environment.

Read Elisa Giuliani’s blog post for the Business and Human Rights Journal (Cambridge Core).