When a gold mine in rural Liberia spewed three million gallons of cyanide-laced wastewater into soil and groundwater in 2016, affected Indigenous communities’ calls for accountability went largely unanswered.

Locals protested the Turkish company responsible and criticized its officials for failing to clean up the toxic mess. 

In response, the Liberian government arrested, tortured and charged 73 people with crimes including “terrorist activity,” according to a complaint submitted to the United Nations. In a later trial, allegedly riddled with irregularities, two dozen people were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. 

The situation is one of a slew of instances where human rights defenders in remote locations have faced retaliation, according to a new report from Mary Lawlor, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. Such defenders are people who peacefully act to promote and protect human rights. 

The Liberian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment. 

Lawlor, an Irish citizen and longtime rights advocate, said the struggles of the Liberian defenders are far from unique. Each year, hundreds of human rights defenders are killed for their work while many more face threats, intimidation, surveillance and arbitrary arrests or lawsuits. 

Indigenous leaders, community organizers and activists challenging extractive industries, pollution and other forms of environmental destruction tend to be at heightened risk because of the remote regions where they work. 

Though these defenders’ personal sacrifices benefit people living worldwide—their work has impeded nature-damaging activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss—they receive little acknowledgment or support, Lawlor said. 

In March, Lawlor presented her report spotlighting defenders working in rural, remote and isolated locations to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Inside Climate News talked with her about her findings and her broader work on human rights. 

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

KATIE SURMA: Your report focuses on human rights defenders working in isolated, remote and rural contexts. Why did you choose this topic in particular?

MARY LAWLOR: Rural and isolated human rights defenders who are living geographically very far away have been a priority for me since I took up this mandate in 2020 because they’re often overlooked or ignored, and they’re doing amazing work.

They face a multiplier of risks because they are out of sight. When I started this position, I spoke to the Garifuna women in Honduras, and they were providing information on the coronavirus during the outset of the pandemic, making sure that people in these very isolated communities were getting correct information about the coronavirus and also providing food for them. But nobody saw that. 

The other thing is they don’t get support, and their work is rarely highlighted. They’re out of sight from the power bases—the big cities and the political capitals. So they’re doing this work very bravely, without any support. 

And then, because they are successful, they get targeted. And of course, there are no embassies nearby. There’s very few NGOs nearby. So they’re away from any kind of support from people who might help them.

SURMA: When you say “they’re targeted,” who is targeting them?

LAWLOR: It can be a mixture of people. I opened the report with the example of Quinto Inuma Alvarado from Peru. He had been working against illegal logging and drug trafficking for 25 years. And he was assassinated in 2023 as he made his way along this river to his remote community. The attackers put a log across the river and shot him. Shot him dead—three times in the back and once in the head.

In some cases the attackers are armed gangs. In some cases it’s security forces, corrupt security forces aligned with big business, or … some form of military gang. In other cases, it’s done in conjunction with the state. It’s always very, very difficult to find out who exactly ordered it and who pulled the trigger.

SURMA: Why is it hard to find out who is behind these attacks and killings?

LAWLOR: It’s murky at the best of times. But if you’re in a remote community, if you’re in a rural and isolated community, the chances are that it won’t be seen, it won’t be documented, it won’t be investigated. And of course, impunity is ripe in the best of cases, but this is really, really a huge issue because perpetrators have to be brought to justice. Otherwise, these kinds of killings and attacks will continue.

SURMA: The report makes apparent that a lot of these remote defenders are people defending their forests, their water and their territories. How does the environment intersect with this topic?

LAWLOR: It’s really quite extraordinary to meet Indigenous and environmental human rights defenders. I was in Brazil last year on a country visit, and we went to meet Indigenous and Quilombola communities around the Amazon. They were all engaged in defending the environment and the human rights that come out of that as well. 

For example, a lot of the Indigenous communities I visited live by what they can grow, their sustainable farms. And if they can’t grow their food, and if their rivers are polluted and if their land is cut down, that’s a deep cultural and physical sickness to them. I remember one woman human rights defender saying that she got physically ill if she had to leave her land, which she frequently had to do for safety reasons. 

The other thing I noticed was—and this is not just Brazil, it’s with any land defenders anywhere—is that apart from this deeply spiritual and cultural attachment to their land, it’s about their ancestors. They talk about their mothers, their grandmothers and their fathers and that they’re the custodians of the land for their children. It’s always about protecting the land and protecting the environment and protecting the human rights of the people. People who, after all, are being denied their fundamental human rights like the right to food, the right to clean water and the right to life.

SURMA: There was an almost unanimous vote at the United Nations General Assembly in 2022 in support of the human right to a healthy environment. How does that recognition help environmental defenders?

LAWLOR: Having worked in the human rights field for coming up on 50 years now, I think you need all the help you can get. 

So any kind of awareness raising, any kind of moving the dial a little bit, through U.N. resolutions or recognition of a right which hadn’t previously been recognized, is always good because it gives people, it gives campaigners and human rights defenders, more of a hook that you can say categorically this right is being recognized. 

I think that the evolution of rights is a kind of progressive thing. It does go up and down, because states are always driven by their political and strategic interests, and they dump on their enemies and go easy on their friends. Always have and always will, as far as I can see. 

But at least you know you are creating awareness about a right that should be respected. It doesn’t mean it will be implemented, though. 

And to be fair, it’s quite difficult for huge countries like Brazil, if they are actually trying. They have protection programs in place. They’re not organized enough and do not have enough resources and there are some administrative failings. But they are trying. 

But land is at the crux of everything—demarcation and titling of land—which you will find everywhere. Indigenous communities’ land is constantly being overrun or taken over or abused by big business or extractive mining or illegal logging or by big land owners. 

SURMA: Are you saying governments are trying, but it’s difficult?

LAWLOR: They’re not all trying. They’re not trying hard enough. And they’re not putting the same amount of resources into this kind of protection of human rights defenders, who should be natural allies. They shouldn’t be seen as an enemy. But other government programs see them that way. 

SURMA: What role do businesses have here? How can they make defenders’ work more dangerous?

LAWLOR: They have a huge role to play in the abuse of human rights defenders. You will find that it’s defenders who are trying to work for the rights of their communities, be they Indigenous communities or poor and marginalized communities. 

And, of course, it’s always the poor and the disenfranchised who are the easy targets.

So what businesses do is, they do deals with governments. And they begin drilling, extracting and mining. And this is where you find the vast amount of killings and physical attacks taking place. 

So we know that there’s over 300 killings of human rights defenders every year, and about 70 percent of them are on people defending land: Indigenous and environmental defenders. This doesn’t include a count for people who are attacked but don’t die. 

What businesses [also] do is they do these SLAPPS, Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. They’re strategic lawsuits against human rights defenders. 

I’ll give you an example. There’s an organization in Malaysia called Save Rivers. They work with Indigenous communities to help them protect their land and their rivers and their wildlife and their watersheds from environmental damage. But two companies involved filed a strategic lawsuit against them for $1.2 million because they said that they had been defamed in an article on the Save Rivers’ website, which said that they didn’t do enough to comply with communities’ right to free, prior and informed consent. 

“There’s over 300 killings of human rights defenders every year, and about 70 percent of them are on people defending land.”

That means that the communities didn’t have a proper and meaningful consultation in accordance with the U.N. Principles on Business and Human Rights. 

Luckily, the case was thrown out in court. But these kinds of lawsuits, they tie up people for years, and they prevent them from doing their work. Very often, if the defenders are remote and rural and isolated, they can’t even get lawyers because there’s no lawyers in most rural areas. 

They also can’t travel to do the necessary documentation, because where they have to file legal documents is always in a bigger city or the capital or something like that. 

SURMA: You mentioned the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which are voluntary guidelines for businesses. There’s been an effort over the years to put binding due-diligence requirements on businesses. Why has that effort had trouble advancing?

LAWLOR: Because big business is very powerful. The European Union managed to get a directive on due diligence that would have made businesses conduct mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. Now, this year, it’s being watered [down]. We had lobbied for over a year, with all the various parties, for this law and we were delighted when human rights defenders were named in it. But now, it’s going backwards. 

The U.N. itself has been trying to do a binding treaty on business and human rights for years. But business is just so powerful. And you know, whether governments are corrupt or whether they need the money that business will bring in, whatever the reason is, it seems as if business always has the upper hand. So any kind of advances in this area make it very, very difficult.

SURMA: You’ve talked with me about some of the obstacles that defenders face, like their remoteness and hurdles to accessing justice. Do remote human rights defenders face other obstacles or challenges that you want to highlight?

LAWLOR: Yes, when it comes to women human rights defenders or LGBTI human rights defenders, they are targeted for what they do, but also because of who they are. 

I was in Ghana, Angola and South Africa in November last year, and this young woman told me that when she is in her country where she is living, women have to be silent in spaces where men are present. They aren’t allowed to speak. 

In South Africa, a woman told me that if you’re a young human rights defender there, you have to choose between your family and your human rights work because whatever rural, remote area she was in, it was culturally not acceptable for her as a woman to be doing human rights work. So you have all the additional challenges in some communities of things like patriarchy.

Another thing is where human rights defenders are trying to document offenses in conflict zones. We’ve seen it in Sudan, we’ve seen it in Gaza. We’ve seen it now in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. I’ve been talking to a lot of defenders in the Eastern DRC, and they are very much at risk. Of course, nobody wants to go there because it’s too dangerous. 

There’s an organization in Kharkiv in Ukraine called Rose on Hand. They deliver humanitarian supplies to people. They are at risk, but they say nobody comes near them because people are fearful. So they’re totally relying on themselves. They don’t get any support, be it moral or financial. 

Then, of course, you have the normal difficulties. There’s little internet access in a lot of these places, or it’s very patchy. I couldn’t tell you how many times over the last five years I’ve had internet calls with people, and the connection just keeps falling out. Even things like banking. Things you need for everyday living—they are denied.

There are also times when isolation is manufactured. An example is when people are put in prisons that are very, very far away from their families and their lawyers. It’s a deliberate tactic by the state to basically get rid of them.

Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist, was arrested by China in 2014 and accused of being a separatist. He’s now serving a life sentence. He’s been put in a prison 2,700 kilometers away from his family. Now, there’s no way China will allow the family to visit him. But even if the government allowed it, there’s no way they could. We have many, many examples of that kind of thing. We’ve seen it in Gaza with Israel. We’ve seen it in Morocco with Western Sahara. 

SURMA: Your report talks about some creative ways that defenders are protecting themselves in this void of support from the state or otherwise. What are some examples of that?

LAWLOR: Networks offer the best kind of protection. Defenders who are working in rural, remote areas align themselves with other defenders. They pool resources, and they act as sounding posts for each other and as information spotters for each other.

I’ve always loved the Indigenous Guard in Colombia. They’re so powerful. They came up with this idea of collective protection. They wear green for the land and red for the blood their ancestors have shed. They start their training very early with little ones. They teach them how to shelter if there’s shooting going on and where to find safe places to shelter. They teach them how to carry injured people. 

Other networks do similar information sharing and resource sharing. In many cases, they set up places where defenders who are at a specific risk or in specific danger can go for safety. The women human rights defenders in the Philippines who were under threat had a great network of safe houses where they could go. 

This has been worked out because the defenders living in rural, remote and isolated areas know that they can’t rely on anyone other than themselves. So, they come up with their own protocols and ways to try and minimize their danger. 

One of the first cases I took up was a 14-year-old Indigenous child in Colombia who’d been killed. The oldest person whose case I took up was a woman from South Africa—Mama Fikile. Last year, I went to the room where she was murdered. She was advocating against the expansion of a coal mine and protecting a nature reserve. She was murdered in her kitchen as she was cooking, chopping onions. I could see the bullet holes they had sprayed around the place. 

SURMA: There has been a clear shift in some countries around the world: Countries that had stood for human rights, at least on paper, are now backsliding. How does that affect human rights defenders?

LAWLOR: I started this work in the ’70s, when there were military dictatorships all over Latin America. They have democracies now, not perfect, and with tons of human rights abuses. But they’re not dropping people out of planes or torturing them until they’re dead in football stadiums. 

“There are more and more people today working in human rights than ever before. And that is the hope for humanity.”

The Soviet Union was putting people away for life and injecting them with psychiatric drugs and boiling them alive. Then, as time went on, you had Rwanda, you had Sierra Leone, you have in the last few years Syria, Yemen, Gaza. Now we also have Sudan and the Eastern DRC. 

So I think that you can never say that things will go on an even keel. Countries go up and down. Dictators go in and out. Authoritarian people go in and out. The one thing that is constant is the fact that there are more and more people today working in human rights than ever before. And that is the hope for humanity. It is the fact that states can’t kill this idea of hope and this idea that human rights are universal. Because everybody wants them. Even the autocrats, they want them for themselves and their families. 

So it is a bad time at the moment, of course, because you see all these rollbacks with legislation and with lack of funding—all around the world.

There is definitely a rise in populism happening. But the thing that stops even more abuses is the work of human rights defenders and civil society. It’s the only thing that can hold governments and autocrats and dictators to account. That’s why the work of human rights defenders is so important. 

SURMA: What actions would be most impactful to help protect human rights defenders and allow them to do their work?

LAWLOR: It comes down to three things. First, it’s very important to legitimize human rights defenders and give them visibility. 

You can’t have presidents or high-ranking officials or big business smearing and de-legitimizing human rights defenders for their work. Their work is legitimate. It’s in accordance with the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by consensus at the General Assembly in 1998. So, I think the first thing is you have to give visibility and legitimacy to human rights defenders. 

The second thing you need to put in place are the laws, the policies and procedures that allow defenders to do their work without fear. Particularly when it comes to rural, isolated and remote defenders, somebody needs to know about them. And, really, that comes down to the state supporting them. State support through protection programs or through visits. 

Then, other embassies should make it their business to either go and see defenders in their place of work and legitimize them and speak about them. They should listen to defenders about what they need and ask how they can support them. It also means civil society and the U.N. and local society have to support them as well. It’s no good if society hasn’t been educated enough about the work that defenders do. 

At the end of the day, though, it’s root causes. Root causes are very hard to eliminate because human rights defenders work against injustice.

Katie Surma

Reporter, Pittsburgh

Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jim Crowell.

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