Yuli Velasquez - Water Protector, Land Defender, Culture Preserver
“No one pays you to be a leader, you do it for vocation.
Women Human Rights Defenders
Women and minority rights activists around the world are working to create positive change in their communities. Women human rights defenders face many of the same challenges as their male counterparts. However, many face additional obstacles and threats because they challenge the status quo twice over – through their work and by challenging (by their very existence) accepted norms, traditions, perceptions and stereotypes about femininity, sexual orientation and the role and status of women in society. As a result, they are vulnerable to threats, stigma, rejection by family and community, and violence.
Maya K’iche’ defender Lucía Ixchíu on extractivism in Guatemala; notes the support of PBI in Berlin and Hamburg
Photo of Lucía Ixchíu from Latin America Bureau by Eliana Lafone.
Lucía Ixchíu describes herself as: “K’iche, tree of the Forest, anti-patriarchal, cultural manager, journalist and Indigenous storyteller, architect (Mayan in exile).”
Civil society orgs worldwide release new supplement to UN Declaration protecting human rights defenders
Following a year-long project involving consultations with human rights defenders, Peace Brigades International joined a coalition of human rights organizations to release the Declaration +25, a landmark document systematizing relevant developments in regional and international human rights law and standards of the last 25 years.
Courageous Commitment to LGBTQIA+ Rights
Courageous commitment to LGBTQIA+ rights / Compromiso valiente con los derechos LGBTQIA+
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Join us for a discussion with LGBTQIA+ human rights defenders from Guatemala, Honduras, and Indonesia on the current challenges they face and ways the international community might support their work & commitment.
PBI: Connecting Threatened Defenders With High-Level Officials
Christopher Castillo, General Coordinator of ARCAH, is leading the movement in Honduras against so-called Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs). These zones, which operate as independent territories, not subject to Honduran law, threaten to envelop vast swathes of Honduras; up to 35 percent of the country could be made into such zones.
PBI: Helping threatened activists make powerful friends
For several years, a small coalition of groups - including Peace Brigades International - had been planning to host Jani Silva, perhaps the most threatened woman in Colombia’s Amazon rainforest.
Jani has been an outspoken environmental defender for years, challenging the expansion of oil operations and other threats to the Amazon Pearl, a biodiverse rainforest region along the Colombia-Ecuador border. She has received innumerable death threats of different varieties, and seen several of her fellow defenders killed for their activism as recently as late 2023.
PBI-Honduras observes COPINH sit-in following conviction of three in the ‘Fraud on Gualcarque’ case
PBI-Honduras has posted: “The Corruption Sentencing Court has just convicted 3 of the 6 former public officials accused in the ‘Fraud on Gualcarque’ case. We are observing the @COPINHHONDURAS [Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations in Honduras] sit-in, which requested a conviction for the 6 accused people.”
Colombia: Comprehensive Law on the Rights of Women Searchers receives Senate approval
PBI-Colombia accompanies the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation as Comprehensive Law on the Rights of Women Searchers receives Senate approval
On April 4 (at 12:05 pm ET), PBI-Colombia posted: “#Rights For Women Seekers At this moment accompanying the @nydia_erika Foundation in the last Senate debate on the draft Law for the Protection of Women Searchers of the #Disappeared.”
PBI-accompanied groups mobilize to commemorate International Women's Day
On March 8, 2024, PBI-accompanied groups around the world mobilized to commemorate International Women’s Day, now in its 114th year. Women human rights defenders advocate and lobby for human rights within their community and are not only targeted for their activism, but also face gender-specific rights violations. At Peace Brigades International, we stand alongside these women, supporting them to continue their vital work even amidst repression and violence.