CSW66 WHRDs Talk Back: Environmental Defenders on Protecting Civic Space

Date: 15-03-2022
Time: 13:00-14:30 (CET) / 8:00-9:30 (EDT)
Location: Online

From farmers in South Asia and across the African continent, to land defenders in Mesoamerica, and indigenous water protectors in Northern America, WHRDs are battling corporate capture and government corruption at every level to maintain public control of land and natural resources, and to ensure human rights and gender equality in planning climate crisis responses. It was reported that more than 227 environment and land defenders had been killed in 2020 while trying to protect forests, rivers and other ecosystems, and connected livelihoods. Many of them were WHRDs. Civic space is essential to the work of climate and environmental justice activists and WHRDs, and yet, restrictions to civic space continue to impact them in the most deadly ways. The structural silencing of WHRDs is done through laws such as so-called ‘anti-terror’ laws, over-policing and surveillance of activists and their communities, and state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings carried out with impunity. Many WHRDs face double stigma and risks due to other intersecting identities also as indigenous, migrant, LGBTIQ+ or Dalit women. The Our Voices Our Futures panel brings together WHRDs on the frontlines of climate justice work from South Asia, East Africa and Mesoamerica, to talk about challenges to their activism, and how they’re responding to the contraction of civic space.
Organized by: Our Voices Our Futures (OVOF) consortium which consists of APC, CREA, UHAI and WO=MEN