[STATEMENT] Defend Women Defending the Earth, End Militarization and Wars!

On International Working Women’s Day, March 8, the Asia Pacific Network for Environmental Defenders (APNED) honors the courage, leadership, and resilience of Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders (WEHRDs) across the Asia-Pacific region. Women have long been at the forefront of environmental protection–they have defended forests, waters, and ancestral lands while safeguarding their communities’ rights and livelihoods. 

Across the region, Indigenous women, rural organizers, and grassroots leaders continue to challenge destructive extractive projects and advocate for environmental justice despite enormous risks. Yet the work of WEHRDs is increasingly met with violence and repression. A global study of environmental conflicts documented 523 cases involving women environmental defenders. 81 of these women were murdered in retaliation for environmental activism. These attacks often occur in the presence of mining, agribusiness, and industrial projects in the Global South. These attacks come in the form of criminalization, displacement, harassment, and gender-based violence linked to environmental conflicts and militarized resource extraction. These patterns not only reveal how extractivism and militarization frequently reinforce each other, placing women defenders at heightened risk—it also highlights the concerning persistence of gender-based violence even for those who exist to protect the planet. 

Across the Asia-Pacific, militarization continues to endanger communities and silence environmental defense. In India, large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns such as Operation Kagar in Chhattisgarh have intensified militarization in Indigenous territories. Adivasi communities resisting mining and displacement are increasingly caught in violent crackdowns. In Myanmar, women environmental defenders working to protect biodiversity and community lands face severe threats under ongoing military rule. 

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, communities, particularly women, continue to suffer the long-term environmental, health, and social consequences of decades of nuclear testing conducted by foreign powers on Pacific lands and waters. This is why the fight for environmental protection and women’s right is extremely intertwined—as women partake crucial roles in our society that rely on the environment, when the environment is damaged, it is women who put themselves in the frontline to defend it. 

Escalating armed conflict globally further compounds these threats. In February 2026, a deadly airstrike destroyed a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, killing large numbers of children and prompting calls from the United Nations for an independent investigation and accountability for civilian casualties. The tragedy underscores how militarized conflicts disproportionately harm women and girls while devastating civilian communities and infrastructure. 

On this International Women’s Day, APNED expresses grave alarm over the worsening militarization and military aggression affecting communities across regions. Their courage demonstrates that the struggle for environmental protection is inseparable from the struggle for human rights, community survival, and gender justice. 

We call on governments and international institutions to end policies that enable militarization and resource plunder, and instead ensure the recognition, protection, and meaningful participation of WEHRDs in environmental decision-making. Protecting women defenders is essential to safeguarding both human rights and the future of our planet. 

Defend women! End environmental plunder, militarization, and wars!