2023-06-06 01:26:43
In different parts of the world women environmental defenders may face reprisals for mobilizing against extractive and polluting projects, and 81 of them were murder victims, according to a report published by Nature Sustainability based on 523 cases from the last decades.
The problem, which also entails displacement, repression, criminal prosecution and physical harassment, It is mainly concentrated in Latin America, Asia and Africa, but it also occurs in North America and Europe.
Thus, the study counts 81 women murdered around the world for their
activism: including 19 in the Philippines, 7 in Colombia and 7 in Brazil, 6 in Mexico, 4 in Guatemala and 4 in Peru, 2 in the United Kingdom, 2 in the United States and 1 in Spain.
The researchers, who warn that these data demonstrate the perpetuation of violence against indigenous, minority, poor and rural communities, point out the urgent need to address systemic patterns of violence affecting women environmental defenders, that “are often overlooked and unreported.”
Environmental conflicts often occur when natural resource extraction projects for export lead to land grabbing and ecological destruction that threaten the cultural and physical existence of local communities, summarizes the magazine.
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According to the study, violence against women environmental defenders is largely underestimated.
When environmental defenders facing violent reprisals are women, incidents are often not documented due to censorship and a lack of data. Consequently, violence against women environmental defenders is largely underestimated.
Dalena Tran, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Ksenija Hanacek, from the University of Helsinki, examined all the cases available up to January 2022 on the World Map of Environmental Justice, which covers conflicts such as those related to water, fossil fuels , agriculture and deforestation.
The authors identified 523 cases in which women defenders of the environment were involved, concentrated in mining, agro-industrial and industrial conflicts in the geographic south.
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They describe that in 81 cases women were murdered for their defense of the environment and suggest that this is an extreme, albeit common, outcome when violence in conflicts worsens.
Of these 81 cases in which murders were reported, 19 occurred in the Philippines, with large concentrations also in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.. The murders were not limited to the global south, as six occurred in the United States and in European countries, including Spain.
Women defenders of the environment suffer high rates of violence.
The analysis also reveals that women defenders suffer high rates of violence, regardless of countries’ responsibility for governance and gender equality.
The scientists note that monitoring data on violence against environmental defenders is rarely disaggregated by gender; therefore, there could be as many murders of women environmental defenders as there are of male environmental defenders.
They conclude that better documentation and analysis are also needed to explore how violence against women occurs and to identify patterns of violence against various groups, such as indigenous environmental defenders.
EFE
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