Tag: #DefendTheDefenders

APNED renews calls for strong and inclusive action to uphold environmental rights in Southeast Asia, particularly in the context of the ongoing development of the ASEAN environmental rights framework. We call on the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and ASEAN Member States (AMS) to heed the demands of civil society embodied in the ASEAN People’s Declaration on Environmental Rights, to enhance protections for environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs), indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups, and ensure inclusive and meaningful civil society representation and participation in the ongoing process.

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) calls for governments in Asia to take the annual report of Global Witness into consideration and ensure protection for environmental human rights defenders in the region. In the past years, the attacks on environmental defenders have gone largely unrecognized by governments and most are also perpetrated by State actors.

Today, August 30th, on the International Day of the Disappeared, we remember our desaparecidos, and we call for justice and resurfacing of those who have been disappeared. Environmental human rights defenders, union leaders, student activists, and many other human rights defenders who strongly express dissent against oppressive regimes have been targeted by enforced disappearances, a severe means of political repression perpetuated by state forces.

Sign on to urgently call to immediately and safely surface Rowena Dasig, a dedicated Filipina youth leader and environmental advocate.

Sign on to the joint statement from Indonesian civil society to demand the end to the criminalization and militarization suffered by the land and environmental defenders of Buol Regency in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Sign on to stand in solidarity with Filipina youth environmental defenders Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, whose struggle for justice after their September 2023 abduction continues.

Sign on to stand with Mother Nature Cambodia and demand the immediate and unconditional release of the ten young environmental human rights defenders.

Sign on to condemn and call to overturn the ruling on the 13 Lumad indigenous peoples’ teachers and advocates whose solidarity mission with indigenous schools facing heavy militarization was criminalized and wrongfully charged as child abuse.

Write letters to unjustly detained Vietnamese environmental defender Mr. Dang Dinh Bach, and to your governments to support his requests for a humanitarian visit and an end to inhumane detention conditions. APNED stands in firm solidarity with Dang Dinh Bach and other unjustly detained environmental defenders, both in Vietnam and beyond.

Civil society organizations from the Himalaya request your support to save the Himalayas. Prompted by the increasing frequency, scale, and intensity of climate disasters such as landslides and glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in the Himalayan region and the recognition that such disasters compound with historical systemic problems of exploitation and governance failure to especially bring harm to the most vulnerable yet least responsible populations, the People of Himalaya campaign was formed.