At least 124 people defending land, forests, water and communities were killed in 2025, according to Global Witness’s annual report. Of the documented cases, 105 — about 85 per cent — occurred in Latin America, the deadliest region for environmental defenders every year since the organisation began publishing the tally in 2012.

Colombia remained, for a fourth consecutive year, the country with the most victims: 39. Brazil recorded 26, more than double the previous year. Together the two countries account for 52 per cent of the worldwide total. Honduras and the Philippines each had 12 cases, followed by Mexico (10) and Guatemala (8).

More than three-quarters of the victims were small-scale farmers, Indigenous people or Afro-descendants. Indigenous people appear in 44 of the 2025 killings. Land disputes were associated with 84 cases; mining, logging and agribusiness appear in the rest of the documented total. The organisation also links part of the violence to organised crime, especially where drug trafficking overlaps with illegal logging or artisanal mining.

The reported global number fell for a second year, but Global Witness warns that many attacks go unverified in areas of conflict, crime and weak institutions. Since monitoring began, the total reaches 2,375 killings and disappearances. The figures describe confirmed cases, not necessarily the full scale.

In Asia the report also stresses criminalisation and intimidation, not only murders. In Latin America, weak protection mechanisms — including schemes that were supposed to cover defenders — appear as a recurring theme. Two victims in Mexico were in such programmes; in Honduras five members of a peasant cooperative had measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The report is not a criminal indictment of a particular state. It is an inventory of cases the organisation could verify. For the reader the distinction matters: 85 per cent in Latin America describes the documentation, not a moral ranking of continents, and it does not replace local investigations.

Image: Amazon forest / Wikimedia Commons. Habitat, not an identified victim. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: At least 124 land and environmental defenders killed in 2025 | Global Witness; Associated Press.