Companies respond to "Defending rights and realising just economies: Human rights defenders and business 2015-2024"
Over the past decade, human rights defenders (HRDs) have courageously organised to stop corporate abuse and prevent business activities from causing harm – exposing human rights and environmental violations, demanding accountability, and advocating for rights-respecting economic practices.
From January 2015 to December 2024, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) recorded more than 6,400 attacks across 147 countries against people who voiced concerns about business-related risks or harms. This is close to two attacks on average every day over the past ten years. In 2024 alone, we tracked 660 attacks.
Additional key findings include:
- Attacks against HRDs occurred in relation to almost every business sector in every region of the world.
- Mining, agribusiness and fossil fuels were the sectors connected with the highest number of attacks.
- Nearly three quarters of attacks targeted climate, land and environmental defenders. This includes a severe crackdown on the right to protest by governments across the globe.
- One in five attacks were on Indigenous Peoples, despite comprising only 6% of the world’s population.
- Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific have consistently been the most dangerous regions for HRDs raising concerns about corporate harm, accounting for close to three in four total attacks recorded.
- There have been more than 530 instances of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) brought or initiated by private actors against HRDs raising concerns about business since 2015.
- The highest numbers of attacks occurred when people raised concerns about social and enviornmental risks or harms associated with large business projects, and governments and/or companies attempted to suppress dissent. The projects associated with the highest number of attacks over the past decade have been the Lake Albert oil extraction and development project (which includes the East African Crude Oil Pipeline) (Uganda and Tanzania), Inversiones los Pinares (Honduras), Dakota Access Pipeline (USA), Las Bambas mine (Peru), and Line 3 Pipeline (USA and Canada).
- Attacks on HRDs and restrictions on civic freedoms are bad for business. They prevent companies and investors from accessing crucial information about human rights risks and impacts, increasing operational, financial and reputational risk.
We invited Brasil BioFuels, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Tehuantepec Isthmus (CIIT), Inversiones los Pinares, Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), Grupo EMCO Holding, TotalEnergies, TotalEnergies Uganda, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC), Minera Las Bambas, Minerals and Metals Group (MMG), China Minmetals, CITIC Metal, Guoxin International Investment, Energy Transfer, Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum, Enbridge, Lin Vatey, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel (CGN), Solway Group, PT Makmur Elok Graha (MEG), Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd, Export-Import Bank of Korea, Ternium, Technit Group, Indorama Agro, IFC, EBRD, ADB and Citigroup to respond.
Brasil BioFuels, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Tehuantepec Isthmus (CIIT), TotalEnergies, TotalEnergies Uganda, Minera Las Bambas, Minerals and Metals Group (MMG), Energy Transfer, Enbridge, Solway Group, Ternium, IFC, EBRD, ADB and Citigroup responded; their responses are available below.
The other companies did not respond.