MesoAmerica Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras), a coalition of seven organizations published a report last week on the state of violence faced by female rights defenders in Central America and Mexico. They report 2,197 attacks in 2015-2016 alone, with more than 50% of these aggression being done at the hand of the police. This report also finds that land and environment defenders were subject to the greatest number of assaults, and that 10% of attackers were linked to companies and security agents.
The report contains case studies about the work of Lesbia Artola Teyul, who organizes her community in the megaproject-filled Alta Verapaz, Guatemala; and Berta Carceres, who was murdered in 2016 for standing up against the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. It’s time for the World Bank, IDB, and CABEI to address these problems.
You can read the report in Spanish here: http://im-defensoras.
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