“Making space for peace”: Peace Brigades International-Canada annual review 2025
Photo: PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson with PBI-Mexico accompanied Espacio OSC defenders during an advocacy intervention in Ottawa, September 2025.
Throughout 2025, PBI-Canada worked to communicate the struggles of accompanied defenders, organizations and communities; advocate for specific measures to address the aggressions they face; both research and act on business and human rights concerns that impact defenders; and to be on-the-ground in communities to bring international attention to front line defenders in Canada.
Our communications work included almost daily contextualized articles about accompaniments amplified via our website, social media channels and e-newsletters. We also organized five webinars, including one about COP30 with Indigenous West Papuan environmental defenders, one with Indigenous front line defenders in Honduras and Guatemala, and another about the human rights impacts related to the export-import terminal in Buenaventura, Colombia.
Photo: Webinar about Buenaventura, Colombia, February 2025.
Our advocacy work included bringing defenders from Mexico to Ottawa for meetings with government officials and Members of Parliament from all parties, just days after the Prime Minister visited Mexico and announced a Canada-Mexico Action Plan, to call for a strengthening of the Protection Mechanism for human rights defenders and journalists.
Photo: Advocacy meeting with Member of Parliament Elizabeth May, September 2025.
Our research work included making the links between the production of “military goods”, the export of weapons and components to the United States, and the need to end the use of those components in human rights violations and aggressions against human rights defenders.
Photo: PBI-Canada continues its long-standing relationship with Quakers that dates back to the founding of PBI in 1981, including on issues of arms exports, May 2025.
And our on-the-ground work included being present in Smithers, British Columbia for the sentencing hearing of three Indigenous land and environmental defenders criminalized for their resistance to the construction of a fracked gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory.
Photo: PBI-Canada Board member Ailish Morgan-Welden watches Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’ speak before the sentencing hearing, Smithers, British Columbia, October 2025.
Our work in these four areas brought media coverage including Radio Canada International (about the Protection Mechanism in Mexico), the CBC (about the sentencing hearing in Smithers), the Ottawa Citizen (about military exports and human rights violations), Rabble (about oil companies and threats against human rights defenders in Colombia) and The Tyee (about the emerging risks to land defenders from increased critical mineral mining for weapons production).
Photo: RCI coverage of advocacy tour in Ottawa, September 2025.
Beyond this we also began to document PBI accompaniments of worker movements in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico; did our first “remote observation” to bolster the safety of a bus with community activists travelling from Mexico through Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia en route to the COP30 climate conference in Brazil; soft-launched a new PBI-Research Unit based in Ottawa; monitored and analyzed key moments that impact human rights defenders, including the G7 summit in Kananaskis, the negotiations in Geneva on a Binding Treaty on business and human rights, and the tabling of Budget 2025 in the House of Commons; connected with the Philippines solidarity movement in Canada as PBI prepares to launch a new South East Asia accompaniment project; and worked to shape a transformative PBI-Turtle Island accompaniment project.
Photo: PBI-Canada helped bring together PBI-Colombia accompanied defender Jani Silva and Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, June 2025.
With your support we would like to continue this work in 2026 with a particular focus on strengthening the Protection Mechanism in Mexico (with a field visit in February to coincide with an official Canadian trade delegation there), supporting the protection needs of Gitanyow land defenders as the construction of the PRGT pipeline begins on their territory in northern British Columbia; and collaborating with PBI entities in Guatemala and Spain on a new initiative to address the protection needs of land and environmental defenders in the context of the acceleration of the mining of the critical minerals needed as hundreds of billions of dollars are diverted to military budgets globally.
Photo: PBI-Canada Board member Javier Garate participated in the PBI-USA national gathering to help connect PBI’s work in North America and abroad, May 2025.
This work is done on a limited budget with one PBI-Canada staff person in Ottawa and an eleven member volunteer Board of Directors based in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia who work in collaboration with the PBI International Office in Brussels, ninety-eight staff in twenty countries, and seventy trained protection volunteers on the ground in four countries (Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico). Together we provided protective accompaniment to more than 3,900 defenders this year.
Photo: PBI-Canada participated in the PBI global tri-annual General Assembly along with PBI-UK, PBI-Switzerland, PBI-Colombia and many others in Lisbon, Portugal in November 2024 that produced the Global Strategic Plan that will inform our work in 2025 to 2030.
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Photo: PBI-Canada Board members Ed Bianchi and Ailish Morgan-Welden with PBI-Mexico accompanied defenders visiting Ottawa, September 2025.
