[STATEMENT] End Militarism: An unaddressed threat to Environmental Defenders and Human Rights
December 10, 2025
As we commemorate this year’s International Human Rights Day, the Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders calls on everyone to take notice and act against militarism as one of the grave threats we environmental defenders continue to face. All too often, when environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) face reprisals, it comes from the state’s own forces protecting the interests of extractive business groups like mining, agribusiness, logging, and many similar ventures. EHRDs not only face intimidation, harassment, and surveillance but also face killings and abductions.
State forces are involved or are the primary perpetrators in around half of the recorded killings in the region, according to Global Witness’s latest report on killings of land and environmental defenders. In the Philippines, four out of the eight killings recorded were perpetrated by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Governments in the region have further empowered state forces to act against environmental defenders by tagging them as anti-development or by labeling them as terrorists. This practice has victimized environmental defenders in India, where just recently, state forces arrested and detained protesters raising concerns about clean air due to alleged ties to rebel groups.
Military occupation and the military industrial complex have also contributed to the furthering of the climate crisis through massive emissions and the destruction of forests and unique ecosystems through bombings and war exercises. According to the International Union of Scientists, the total greenhouse emissions of the global military industry would rank it 4th in the world as a unit, between India and Russia. Militaries and their connected industries further degrade everyone’s enjoyment of the right to a healthy environment.
These problems remain unaddressed in formal international platforms, and in some cases, wholly unrecognized. The recent COP30 paid no heed to civil society actors that clamored for the inclusion of militarism and militarization as key threats to the environment and to us as environmental defenders.
Recent steps taken in the region to strengthen environmental rights, like the ASEAN Declaration on a Safe, Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment, will continue to fall short if we do not address the problem of states continuing to sponsor aggressive extraction of natural resources and enabling or perpetrating attacks against EHRDs.
We call on our fellow environmental defenders to support our call to states to end this pattern of militaristic response towards EHRDs, to pressure them to pursue genuine inclusion and justice, and to ensure protections, whether it be through the enactment of binding protection mechanisms at the national, regional, and international levels. International organizations must also strengthen support mechanisms for EHRDs that are under attack by states, and help ensure the attainment of a truly enabling environment for environmental defenders.
References:
https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/roots-of-resistance/
https://www.iuscientists.org/militarism-and-climate-crises/