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The defenders

In 2017 and 2018, in collaboration with Global Witness, the Guardian compiled all the recorded deaths of people who were killed while defending their land, forests, rivers or wildlife – most often against the harmful impacts of extractive industries such as mining, logging and agribusiness. We also documented the stories of some of the land and environmental defenders under ongoing attack
  • T’Boli community member Marivic Danyan, Philippines

    'I tended to the bodies': attacked by the Philippine army

    Villagers massacred amid conflict between indigenous community and coffee plantation
  • Teurn Soknai, one of three Cambodian forest defenders killed after confronting illegal loggers on 30 January 2018

    Interactive
    Recording the deaths of environmental defenders around the world

    • DO NOT USE. FOR 21 JULY 2018. GLOBAL WITNESS. GLOBAL DEFENDERS. Tuğba Günal and Birhan Erkutlu  - Alakır Valley ,Tukey - 29th June 2018

      'We have become guardians': Turkey's accidental forest protectors

    • Maria do Socorro Silva, Brazil, environment defenders series

      'They should be put in prison': battling Brazil's huge alumina plant

    • Ramón Bedoya

      'This is a last hold-out': son of a murdered farmer in Colombia

    • DO NOT USE. FOR 21 JULY 2018. GLOBAL WITNESS. GLOBAL DEFENDERS. Backdrop-Samuel Loware - Kidepo Valley National Park, behind him the hills of South Sudan - Uganda - 31st May 2018

      'You will never run from death': shot by poachers in Uganda

  • Relatives and friends of Luis Dagua, a peasant leader killed and whose body was found on the side of a road with apparent signs of violence, attend his funeral in rural area of Caloto, Cauca Department, Colombia, on July 18, 2018.  Being a social leader is perhaps the most dangerous activity in Colombia today.

    Colombia
    Activists face 'extermination' by criminal gangs

  • Fikile Ntshangase

    South African environmental activist shot dead in her home

  • Inspecting illegally cut wood on Palawan island in the Philippines

    Philippines is deadliest country for defenders of environment

  • Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador

    Mexican activist shot dead before vote on power project he opposed

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