Environmental defenders are winning real victories, in courtrooms, in communities, in policy. But repression is rising just as fast: stigmatisation, surveillance, criminalisation, and in the worst cases, assassination. Two recent cases from Latin America show exactly what that looks like and how justice systems built to protect defenders can end up shielding those who threaten them instead.
Juan López, a defender of water and land, was shot dead in September 2024, days after publicly accusing Tocoa’s then-mayor, Adán Fúnez, of corruption. Fúnez was arrested in May 2026 as an alleged mastermind of the killing. Two months later, the same judge who ordered his detention quietly released him to house arrest citing his age, despite acknowledging nothing had legally changed. A second suspect got the same treatment weeks later, and is now under house arrest in the very town where López was killed.
Pablo López Alavez, an Indigenous Zapotec defender, was released this March, after 15 years in prison. Not because his conviction was overturned, but because a court decided he’d already served enough. The UN flagged his detention as arbitrary back in 2017. Nobody acted. His family, meanwhile, was forced from their community by threats.
These aren’t isolated stories. In a new submission to the UN, OMCT-FIDH document a shrinking space for environmental defenders worldwide, real wins on paper, but little political will to enforce them. Honduras and Mexico are symbols of a much wider pattern: justice delayed, protection promised but not delivered.
This is a reminder: protecting environmental defenders means holding justice systems accountable, not just responding when they fail defenders directly.
