Water is life, and this is not a metaphor but a material reality, water shapes the lives of millions of communities around the world. And yet, for many of the people who depend on it most, access to water is not a given, it is something to be defended, often at great personal risk.
On World Water Day, we turn our attention to the human beings behind the struggle for land and natural resources, the defenders who put their bodies, their freedom, and often their lives on the line to protect what sustains their communities.
Indigenous, land, and environmental defenders are among the most targeted human rights defenders worldwide, a reality consistently documented in our work and reporting. In Latin America, these defenders face threats from illegal armed groups and cartels whose interests align with extractive industries. In the Americas more broadly, those working on land rights, indigenous issues, and environmental justice risk murder, disappearance, and attack with little to no justice. Across the Asia-Pacific, land and environmental defenders are among the most affected by arbitrary arrests, judicial harassment, and physical violence. These are not isolated patterns, they are systemic, and they are precisely why the stories below matter.
Tolima, Colombia: Defending Territory, Defending Life
In the Tolima region of Colombia, the Comité Ambiental en Defensa de la Vida (CADV) has spent over a decade resisting extractive megaprojects that threaten the ecosystems on which Indigenous and campesino communities depend. For these communities, land and water are not abstract concepts, they are the foundation of cultural identity, food systems, and survival.
In 2025, new mining titles granted by Colombia’s National Mining Agency across multiple municipalities in Tolima reignited fears of large-scale extraction and escalated risks for environmental defenders. Members of CADV, who brings together Indigenous peoples, campesinos, young people, feminists, and urban environmental activists, found themselves once again facing criminalisation, harassment, and the threat of violence, simply for defending the rivers, soils, and ecosystems of their territory.
Their struggle is not isolated. Across Latin America, the defence of natural resources, water sources, forests, agricultural land, is one of the most dangerous forms of activism. Environmental human rights defenders in the region face some of the highest rates of violence and criminalisation in the world, precisely because what they protect is so valuable to those who seek to exploit it.
Masafer Yatta, Palestine: Land, Water, and the Fight Against Erasure
Thousands of miles away, in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank, Suheib and Mahmoud Abu Aram face a different but deeply connected reality. As land defenders from Masafer Yatta, they have dedicated themselves to protecting their community’s privately owned lands from settler encroachment and expropriation, part of an unjust and broader pattern of displacement affecting Palestinian communities across the region.
The connection to water is not incidental. In July 2025, settler Yinon Levy murdered human rights defender Awdah Hathaleen in cold blood, while Awdah was attempting to protect water infrastructure in the community of Umm Al Khair. The attack was not an anomaly. It was part of a systematic effort to sever communities from the land and resources that sustain them.
For Suheib and Mahmoud, resistance has come at a heavy cost. Arrested in January 2025 while trying to protect their community’s lands, they were held for over a week in Ofer Prison before being released and subsequently indicted on charges that video evidence directly contradicts. Theirs is a story repeated across Masafer Yatta: defenders criminalised for peacefully resisting the theft of land and the destruction of the resources their communities depend on to survive.
A Common Thread
From the rivers of Tolima to the hills of the South Hebron, the stories of these defenders share a common thread: communities rooted in their land, fighting to protect the natural resources, water among all, that makes life possible. And alongside them, a system of support that works quietly but persistently to ensure they are not alone.
Supporting human rights defenders means recognising that the fight for water, for land, for ecological survival, is inseparable from the fight for human dignity. On World Water Day, we stand with all those who defend it.
If you want to know more, we invite you to read OMCT’s paper “Water, Sanitation and the Prevention of Torture in Africa – Five Strategic Priorities for the African Union to Prevent Torture and protect human rights defenders in 2026“
