"We documented nearly 10,000 attacks against women defenders of land and territory in Mesoamerica since 2012", 16 April 2025

...On 22 April, commemorating Earth Day, the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) publishes the supplement The land belongs to those who work it and defend it. 10+ years of attacks against women defenders of land, territory and natural resources (2012-2024). This document provides a specific analysis of the attacks against sister defenders of land, territory and natural resources registered in the report Data that Hurt Us, Networks that Save Us. 10+ Years of Attacks against Women Human Rights Defenders in Mesoamerica (2012-2023), going deeper into the cases and updating them with preliminary data from 2024.

Through our registry system, between 2012 and 2024, we documented 9,629 attacks against women defenders and organizations that defend land, territory and natural resources in Mesoamerica. In this same period, at least 35 of these women defenders were killed in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. This places women defenders of land and territory as one of the collectives with the highest number of documented attacks, accounting for 22.3% of the 43,186 attacks registered against women defenders in the region since 2012. It is important to note that we do not have data from Guatemala for the period 2023-2024...

Another important point highlighted in the report is that the historic victories of our struggles and our communities in the defense of territory and the commons can be rolled back at any moment, based on the will of the government in power. Such is the case of metal mining in El Salvador, which was banned in 2017 and was recently, in December 2024, once again made legal...