Total of 48 campaigners killed in 2024 as land and communities under threat.
A new report from Global Witness once again shows Colombia to be the most dangerous country in the world for environmental and land defenders, with a third of the deaths and disappearances registered worldwide happening in the South American country.
Across the globe there were 146 killings and long-term disappearances of land and environmental defenders in 2024, according to a report issued in September called Roots of Resistance, although this figure was likely “an underestimate” according to the human rights organization.
“Year after year, land and environmental defenders – those protecting our forests, rivers, and lands across the world – continue to be met with unspeakable violence,” said report author Laura Furones. “They are being hunted, harassed, and killed – not for breaking laws, but for defending life itself.
Victims were often community leaders attacked after speaking out to defend their right to land and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, stated the report.
Many were opposing industries like mining, logging or agribusiness. Others were challenging environmental destruction and organized crime, and in the case of Colombia, often the spread of coca leaf plantations, the main ingredient for cocaine.
The global cocaine market reached a historic peak in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) latest World Drug Report, published in June, with Colombia, the world’s top exporter, increasing its potential yield by 50% from 2022 to 2023.
Living under threat
But even while recording less deaths than previous years – the 2024 toll of 48 murders was down from 79 in 2023 – the country was still “the world’s deadliest” for land defenders. Guatemala, Mexico and Brazil were the next most dangerous countries with 51 murders between them.
According to its data many Colombian victims were small-scale farmers from campesino, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in biodiverse regions such as Putumayo, Nariño and Cauca, zones where weak state presence had spawned criminal gangs dedicated to illegal enterprises.
The report also highlighted stories from land defenders currently living under threat such as Jani Silva, a founder of Perla Amazonica a Zona de Reserva Campesina (peasant reserve) in Putumayo, on Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador.
The reserve is a template for harmonious coexistence of 600 families with small-scale farms in 22,000 hectares of rich Amazon biodiversity, but its leaders such as Silva have come into the crosshairs of armed groups running the cocaine trade in Putumayo.
“Illegal roadblocks have sprung up, enforced curfews have kept us hostage, and violence has become rife – particularly against any social leaders who dare to speak out,” said Silva, who has been living with state-provided armed bodyguards for 11 years.
“I have been relentlessly threatened, intimidated and followed. So much so that I have been forced to temporarily relocate numerous times, including after learning of a plot to assassinate me,” she told Global Witness.
Imperfect protection
The human rights group welcomed the state provision of armed guards as an “important tool” to protect land defenders, along with bulletproof vests, phones, vehicles and security cameras, as well as emergency relocation of threatened persons such as Silva.
But these measures were “far from infallible”, said the report, pointing out that while Colombia had some of the most extensive protection mechanisms in the world – in 2025 the state protected more than 15,000 at-risk people with a fleet of 5,200 vehicles — the country was home to the highest number of documented murders and disappearances of defenders globally since 2012.
The murder of community leader Ludivia Galíndez in Florencia, Caquetá last year highlighted the weaknesses in the protection system. She was shot dead through the security door of her house despite the presence of two armed bodyguards, according to press reports.
In another case a vulnerable community leader who was also a demobilized former guerrilla, and his two bodyguards, were all killed by armed men in Huila.
Expanding presence
Meanwhile the rampant increase in illegal activities across the country has put even more defenders under threat straining Colombia’s National Protection Unit (NPU) which only covered 31% of requests for help in 2024.
According to Silva, the Perla Amazonica reserve is also under threat from foreign fossil fuel giants seeking licences to drill oil from the reserve, which so far, the community has resisted – at a cost.
“Speaking out has made me the target of multiple assassination attempts,” Silva stated in the Global Witness report. “And threats continue – the most recent only a few months ago, when I received an anonymous phone call threatening to blow up the van that the NPU gave our community as part of our collective measures”.
Many threats against leaders and defenders in Putumayo originated from the Comandos de La Frontera, according to an in-depth investigation by journalism collective Amazon Underworld in Putumayo this year, called In the Shadows of the State.
The powerful gang created by former FARC guerrillas was dedicated to cocaine and controlling illegal mining and logging in the Amazon and counted 1,200 heavily armed fighters in its ranks and was nominally engaged in a peace process with the Colombian government even while expanding its presence into neighbouring Ecuador.
Resisting illegal mining
As well as taxing and extorting rural communities in Putumayo and forcing them at times into a form of modern slavery such as building roads in the jungle, the Comandos de La Frontera target any communities or leaders that show any resistance to their violent form of social control.
“Retaliation for protecting the community’s right to self-determination has included violent threats, forced displacement of leaders, restrictions on their territorial guards, and even the killing of leaders who oppose extractive activities like illegal mining and logging,” said the Amazon Underworld report.
“One leader’s relative was murdered for resisting illegal resource extraction, and others have been driven from their homes.”
For Jani Silva, defending Perla Amazonica has taken a huge personal toll living partly in hiding in the city far from the Amazon region she has dedicated to defending.
“Being away from my community has made everything harder. Challenging corporations and illicit actors is hard enough. Having to do that far from my community while consistently watching my back is emotionally draining,” she writes movingly in the Global Witness report.
“I miss the tranquillity, the fresh air, being surrounded by nature.”