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Families of the murdered and disappeared face trauma, threats and obstacles in the search for their loved ones

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Elle Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, speaks at a “search the landfill” rally on Parliament Hill, September 18, 2023. Photo by Brent Patterson.

Three years ago, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois and Ashlee Shingoose were murdered in the city of Winnipeg.

The four Indigenous women were killed between March 15 and May 15, 2022. The killer reportedly placed their bodies in garbage bins that were then taken to two different landfills in the city, the Brady Road landfill and the Prairie Green landfill.

At that time, the Winnipeg Police Service said they believed the remains of Harris and Myran were transported to the Prairie Green landfill. Soon after, the police found the partial remains of Contois at the Brady Road landfill.

On March 26 of this year, the police identified Shingoose as the fourth victim and said her remains are likely at the Brady Road landfill.

Blockades and protests demand “search the landfill”

Back in December 2022, the Winnipeg Police Service announced that they would not search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of Harris and Myran.

Multiple actions by family members and the community followed, including on December 11, 2022 (a blockade at the Brady landfill and a smaller protest at the Prairie Green landfill), July 17, 2023 (a vigil on Parliament Hill in Ottawa), July 18, 2023 (Camp Marcedes was set up at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg), July 26, 2023 (a protest at the Winnipeg Police Service headquarters), August 4, 2023 (rallies across the country), and September 18, 2023 (more rallies across the country).

Video still: “Group blockades entrance to Winnipeg’s Brady Road landfill to call for immediate search”, December 11, 2022.

Then on October 4, 2023, Wab Kinew was elected the premier of the province of Manitoba promising that the landfills would be searched.

That search did not begin until December 2, 2024. By March 7, 2025, remains found nine days earlier were identified as belonging to Harris. By March 17, 2025, a second set of remains were identified as belonging to Myran.

After the remains of her mother were found, Elle Harris directed her comments to the authorities who had refused to search: “To every one of you that said ‘no’, to every one of you that didn’t believe in us, do better.” Myran’s sister Jorden added: “They didn’t deserve to sit in that landfill for as long as they did.”

A global problem

Peace Brigades International-Canada draws links with “las cuchas” (the mothers) who for decades have called for a search of those disappeared at a garbage dump in the city of Medellin, Colombia, as well as the thousand people in “aquafosas” (water graves) dumped in the estuary in Buenaventura, Colombia; the families who searched a garbage dump in Mexico City without the support or protection of the state; environmental defender Lesbia Janeth Urquia whose body was left in a garbage dump in Marcala, Honduras; the 42 murdered women left in a garbage dump in Nairobi, Kenya; and the tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared people in multiple countries (including the Indigenous children who died at residential schools and the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada) whose whereabouts continue to be unknown.

Photo: PBI-Mexico accompanies a search in Ciudad Juarez, March 2022.

State violence in Canada

Estimates suggest that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered in Canada between 1956 and 2016.

More than 10 years ago, Human Rights Watch reported that they heard disturbing allegations of rape and sexual assault by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers. Human Rights Watch has also stated: “Human Rights Watch researchers were struck by the fear expressed by women they interviewed. The women’s reactions were comparable to those Human Rights Watch has found in post-conflict or post-transition countries, where security forces have played an integral role in government abuses and enforcement of authoritarian policies.”

And more than 20 years ago, Amnesty International described a context in which Indigenous women are “over-policed” and “under-protected” in Canada.

Most recently, on February 18, 2025, Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham) commented: “My hope is that this [abuse of process] decision will signal to the RCMP that they can no longer violate their own laws, and they cannot act with impunity, C-IRG [Community-Industry Response Group] members will not be sentenced for breaking their own laws, much like when they murder our Indigenous men and women in their custody, when they go missing, and they do so with impunity.”

The beginnings of a critical comparative analysis

There are similarities and differences:

– in Colombia and Mexico, for instance, the families who search for their loved ones face death threats from organized crime and paramilitary groups that do not want the disappeared found, while in Canada families faced a court injunction and a police intervention for blocking more garbage being dumped on their loved ones;

– the state, army, police and intelligence services have varying degrees of involvement in the disappearances, and may be blocking the recovery of remains to varying degrees; in Canada, the families were more quickly criminalized, than supported; 

– racism, classism, misogyny can play a role both in the disappearances, as well as in the prioritization of the recovery of the remains of those who have been disappeared;

– economic interests (such as the dredging of the estuary to facilitate a deep-water shipping port in Buenaventura, Colombia) or costs (as in searching the landfills in Winnipeg, Canada) can play a role in the state not searching for the murdered and disappeared;

– the state intersects in different ways, for instance Colombia has passed a law protecting women searchers, Mexico does not provide protection to families searching for the missing, the Canadian province of Manitoba first spoke against searching the landfills, then provided the funding needed for the searches.

We continue to follow this.

PBI-Canada plans April and May webinars, looks ahead to a COP30 webinar with environmental defenders in November

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: On February 24, we held our first webinar of the year focused on the situation of human rights defenders in the Colombian port city of Buenaventura.

This year PBI-Canada has a schedule of confirmed and planned webinars that we hope you will find of interest, that will provide important context, and that will ultimately assist the protection needs of human rights defenders.

Immediately on the horizon:

Tuesday April 8: The militarization of Indigenous territories, borders and foreign policy has already put the lives of land defenders, migrants and communities around the world at risk. Join this webinar to hear a panel of authors and activists share critical perspectives on why more militarism is not the answer.

Sunday May 4: As 50+ international delegations and 280+ exhibitors prepare for the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa in late-May, we gather frontline defenders and allies to provide testimony on how “military goods” are used to repress human rights defenders in Honduras, Indonesia, Palestine and the Philippines.

We will be sharing registration links for these two webinars soon.

Our plans for the coming months

June: Peace Brigades International needs volunteers to accompany frontline defenders in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. This webinar will feature past volunteers and an accompanied defender to highlight this work and to encourage applications to volunteer with PBI teams in Latin America.

June: We will hear from frontline environmental defenders in the Amazonian region of Putumayo in Colombia whose lives are at-risk due to illegal armed actors/paramilitary groups and for their opposition to the environmental destruction that comes with the extraction of minerals and oil by transnational companies.

June or September: The United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations will be presenting a thematic report to the Human Rights Council on the use of artificial intelligence and the UN Guiding Principles. We will look at the new threats posed to defenders by AI.

September: This coming September 6 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Dudley George, an Indigenous land defender killed by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper during a re-occupation of Ipperwash provincial park. PBI visited the area four times in 1995/96. We look back at that time and assess the safety of defenders today.

Tuesday November 18: During the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil, we will bring together a UN Special Rapporteur and environmental defenders to talk about the risks and protection needs of those on the frontlines challenging the extractive industries that are accelerating the climate crisis.

Our commitment

Our commitment is to amplify the voices of human rights defenders, provide context to understand their struggles, and to document in short articles the physical accompaniments provided by PBI teams around the world.

Those articles, uploaded on an almost daily basis, can be read here. Apart from subscribing to our e-newsletter here, you can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, X and now Bluesky.

If you would like to help support this work, you can make an online donation through the CanadaHelps.org platform here.

The work of Peace Brigades International-Canada is carried out by one staff-person and the exceptional contributions of eleven volunteer Board members.

PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson.

Remembering Peace Brigades International co-founder Narayan Desai on the 10th anniversary of his passing

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Narayan Desai spinning thread, a symbol of the non-cooperation movement, during a public meeting in February 1992. Photo by Yann Forget.

Ten years ago this month, the Mumbai, India-based newspaper The Economic Times reported: “Noted Gandhian and former Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith [university], Narayan Desai, died at a private hospital in [in the city of] Surat.”

Image by mkgandhi.org.

At Peace Brigades International (PBI), we remember that Narayan was one of the five original signatories of a letter dated January 12, 1981, inviting people “to attend a conference to revive the idea of an international organization committed to unarmed third party intervention in conflict situations.”

That conference took place eight months later, starting on August 31, 1981, at the Quaker Peace Education Centre on Grindstone Island, about 110 kilometres south-west of Ottawa. It was the meeting that founded PBI.

His formative early years

Narayan Desai was born on December 24, 1924.

The Journal of South Asian Studies notes: “He spent the first decade of his life at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram under the watchful eyes of his father and the Mahatma instead of receiving a formal school education. The next decade was spent at Gandhi’s ashrams at Wardha and then nearby Sevagram.”

His father died on August 15,1942 when Narayan was 17 years old. He was being detained at that time in the Aga Khan Palace with Gandhi for their role in the “Quit India Movement” demanding an end to British rule in India, launched just days before at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee.

Narayan’s role in naming Peace Brigades International

PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark has written about the naming process that appears to have taken place on September 2, 1981. Clark notes: “During a coffee break, ‘Peace Brigades International’ was first voiced by Narayan, seized on by Charlie [Walker], and on reconvening accepted by everyone.”

Given Narayan’s involvement with the “Shanti Sena” movement, we can presume that this influenced his suggestion. The Sanskrit or Hindi words “Shanti Sena” can be translated as “Peace Army” or “Peace Brigade”. Narayan had also been a delegate at a conference in Lebanon in 1961/62 where the World Peace Brigade was founded.

“Shanti Sena”

The Global Nonviolent Action Database has explained: “After India’s independence [from the British Empire was won in August 1947] Gandhi had the idea of creating Shanti Sena … an army of nonviolent soldiers that could keep the peace [between Hindus and Muslims]. Gandhi planned a conference [that was to take place on February 8] 1948 at his Sevagram Ashram to discuss the organization of the Shanti Sena, but he was assassinated [on January 30, 1948, just days] before talks began.”

The Sevagram Ashram where Gandhi’s “peace brigade” conference was to take place is one of the ashrams where Narayan lived at that time.

The idea of a Shanti Sena was later revived in 1957. The Global Nonviolent Action Database further notes: “Under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Narayan Desai, the Shanti Sena became a group of about 6,000 Shanti Sainiks (peace soldiers) in the mid-1960s at the height of its membership.”

Narayan has noted that when Jayaprakash was the president of “Shanti Sena”, Narayan was the secretary of the organization. Jayaprakash was a Gandhian-Marxist revolutionary who was sentenced, at the age of 29, to a year’s imprisonment for his participation in 1932 in the civil disobedience movement against British rule.

The Institute for Total Revolution

The concept of “total revolution” has been attributed to Jayaprakash.

The War Resisters League notes that at some point after October 1979, less than two years before the founding of PBI in September 1981, Narayan established the Institute for Total Revolution (“Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya”).

A Desh Gujarat news article explained at the time of Narayan’s passing that: “The Institute imparts training in non-violence and Gandhian way of life.”

The Journal of Resistance Studies also provides this commentary about Narayan and the concept of “Total Revolution”: “This overt mixture of Marxist and Gandhian philosophies began to forge a new, people’s power approach to liberation theory (Girdner, 2013), and – as a core organizer in both the Boodhan land gift movement of the 1950s and a leader of the Shanti Sena Peace Army of the early 1960s – Narayan Desai became closely affiliated with these attempts at implementing revolutionary aspects of the nonviolent campaigns. The work of Shanti Sena, building a highly disciplined peace force to stand up against actual military opposition, was the leading Indian version of an idea being taken up globally at the time.”

Narayan’s call for “south-south dialogue”

The Journal of Resistance Studies has also noted: “Perhaps the most significant project Narayan embarked on as WRI [War Resisters International] Chair was a 1991 tour of eleven Latin America countries, sponsored by Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAZ).”

That article continues: “Organized as a bilateral, mutual exchange program, the three months of conversations exploded a number of myths that Desai had been prepared for, including that Latin Americans would not be interested in Gandhi or nonviolence per se… The need for greater South-South work came into even sharper perspective for him, as did the more substantial differences between the movements of the North and South.”

At that time (1991), Narayan commented: “A sort of violence which is not generally perceived in the west is the structural violence of the society. During the past years, many Latin American countries have seen political change from dictatorship to so called democracy – that political change has not satisfied most people and they want deeper change. And they associate that deeper change with Total Revolution…The exploitation, the colonization, the insults, their dignity being attacked is something that they thought was violence much more than the killing of a few people here or there… We in the South have so many things in common and yet know so little about each other…I always begin: ‘My objective is south-to-south dialogue’… and they say ‘That is exactly what we want.’”

Ten years after the passing of Narayan, we continue to be informed by his political life, his fundamental contributions to Peace Brigades International, and his subsequent theoretical thinking on nonviolence and social change.

Photo: Narayan Desai.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies the Council of Communities of Retalhuleu (CCR) on March 22, World Water Day

By
Brent Patterson
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On March 22, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“Today, on the #WorldWaterDay #PBI accompanies to the Council of Communities of Retalhuleu in their activities to vindicate their fight for vital liquid.”

The Oxford Human Rights Hub has explained: “Guatemala’s constitution has several provisions that provide for or implicate the right to clean and safe water. In April 2016 there was nationwide mobilization by rural and indigenous communities to demand a stop to the theft and contamination of water.”

Back in April 2016, Waging Nonviolence reported: “Across Guatemala, both rural communities and urban centers have mobilized to protest the systematic theft and privatization of water by transnational companies and the Guatemalan oligarchy. On April 22, nearly 15,000 gathered in Guatemala City to demand an end to this control over water.”

Photo by WNV/Jeff Abbott.

Water Law Framework Initiative 5070

The Oxford Human Rights Hub article also notes: “This [mobilization] led to a proposal for a new law (5070) which seeks to give the greatest possible power to communities to manage their water resources and to enforce the right of communities to be consulted on any agribusiness or mining project in their area.”

Lorna Ní Shúilleabháin of PBI-United Kingdom has previously written: “Civil society and grassroots organisations including the Council of Communities of Retalhuleu (CCR) have united to form Campaña Agua Para la Vida [Water for Life campaign] and have highlighted what should be included in the water legislation.”

She adds: “The water law framework initiative 5070 proposes a new law aimed at empowering communities to manage their water resources and ensuring their right to be consulted on any agribusiness or mining projects in their areas.”

Agribusiness and sugar exports

On April 1, 2024, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that Guatemala exported 85,900 metric tons (MT) of raw sugar to Canada in marketing year (MY) 2022/23 and 87,050 MT in MY 2021/2022. The USDA has previously reported that Guatemala exported 87,050 MT in MY 2022 (the same figure noted above), 113,650 MT in MY 2021 and also reported Guatemala exported 269,770 MT in MY 2020.

If we understand these reports to document 269,770 in 2020, 113,650 in 2021, 87,050 in 2022, and 85,900 in 2023, these four years represent 556,370 MT of sugar exported from Guatemala to Canada. When the 2024 numbers are released, perhaps in a few days, we will have the most recent five-year export data.

55 million cubic meters of water

Given the USDA has noted that sugar cane requires 100 cubic meters of water per ton, we could roughly estimate that these four years of 556,370 MT of exports to Canada required 55,637,000 cubic meters of water.

To put this in perspective, if an Olympic-size swimming pool holds approximately 2,500 cubic meters (or 2.5 million liters) of water, then 22,255 swimming pools of water were needed for these sugar exports to Canada.

The virtual water trade

The term “virtual water trade” can be understood as follows: When a country exports a water-intensive product (including sugar), that country effectively exports the water used to produce that product.

In February 2020, PBI-Guatemala interviewed Gerardo Paíz, an ecologist at the Madre Selva Collective, who commented: “It is estimated that by 2025 (within 5 years), there will be a deficit of about 200 million cubic meters of water in Guatemala.”

Accompaniment

Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Retalhuleu Community Council (CCR) since April 2020. In May 2023, a PBI-Canada delegation travelled to Guatemala and met with representatives of the CCR.

We continue to follow this.

Five points to consider with respect to human rights obligations and the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa, May 28-29

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: CANSEC last year.

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) organized CANSEC arms show will take place in Ottawa this coming May 28-29.

Through the lens of PBI-Canada’s work to protect the lives of human rights defenders (HRDs) who are threatened with violence and assassination, we provide this analysis that connects CANSEC with potential risks to HRDs.

Public funding and adherence to UN Guiding Principles

1- The Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada has posted that CADSI received $291,400.00 from Global Affairs Canada in 2024 and $208,600.00 from GAC in 2023. This appears to date back to at least to 2010 when they received $142,876.00 from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAITC).

Companies, including “defence and security” companies, have obligations under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Amnesty International has commented: “This means companies must assess and address human rights risks and abuses arising in all aspects of their business, including how clients such as national armies and police forces use their weaponry and related services.”

The Government of Canada says it has adopted these internationally respected guidelines and that it expects Canadian companies operating abroad to abide by them.

And yet Amnesty International has highlighted: “Major industry players including Airbus, BAE Systems and Raytheon [all of which are CADSI members] are not undertaking adequate human rights due diligence which could prevent their products from being used in potential human rights violations and war crimes.”

Transparency about countries that violate human rights

2- In September 2021, The Guardian reported: “[Along with Saudi Arabia, the] countries formally invited by the Department for International Trade (DIT) to the bi-annual DSEI (Defence and Security Equipment International) arms fair at London’s Excel that are considered to be a human rights concern were Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, and Iraq.”

The Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) has previously posted: “At CANSEC 2014, CCC led eight foreign delegations visiting from Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, Kuwait, Mexico, Peru, and Saudi Arabia.”

And the organizers of CANSEC posted in 2015 the delegations included: “Argentina; Bahrain; Chile; Denmark; Equatorial Guinea; Israel; Italy; Kuwait; Mexico; New Zealand; Oman; Peru; United States; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom.”

CADSI does not currently publicly disclose the list of the “50+ international delegations” that will be at CANSEC 2025. This information would be very helpful to facilitate the type of public debate The Guardian article generated.

The Canadian Commercial Corporation and accountability

3- In June 2017, the Philippines Embassy in Canada posted on Facebook: “The Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Canadian government corporation, invited and hosted the Philippine Delegation [at CANSEC].”

This invitation to the Philippines from the CCC came a year into the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte who has now been arrested on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity dating back to November 2011.

In May 2018, National Post journalist David Pugliese further reported: “The Canadian Commercial Corporation acknowledges it conducts no follow-up to ensure exported Canadian-built equipment isn’t being used to abuse human rights.”

If the Canadian Commercial Corporation did do that follow-up, they might note that Global Witness and the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment have documented that “the Philippine military [is] the single biggest perpetrator of lethal attacks [against environmental defenders] across the country.”

Global Witness chart of land and environmental defenders killed.

The Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act

4- Both the Project Ploughshares peace research institute and the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries have stated that Canadian military exports to the United States are at least $1 billion a year.

Esprit de Corps has also reported: “The U.S. is the main market for Canadian defence exports, according to CADSI. That is valued at over $4.5 billion annually.”

Last year, Project Ploughshares highlighted: “The Government of Canada does not regulate the majority of Canada’s military transfers to the United States.”

The “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act”, sponsored by US Representative Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. in 2021, proposed: “To suspend United States security assistance with Honduras until such time as human rights violations by Honduran security forces cease and their perpetrators are brought to justice.”

The legislation also states: “The Honduran military and police are widely established to be deeply corrupt and commit human rights abuses, including torture, rape, illegal detention, and murder, with impunity.”

Project Ploughshares has recommended that Canada should “begin a full reporting of the transfer of military goods, including parts and components, to the United States.”

Without this transparency, we cannot know if Canadian exports to the U.S. help construct the “security assistance” they send to Honduran security forces that the “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act” is seeking to suspend.

International laws and the criminalization of protest

5- In January 2024, three Canadian law professors commented: “The International Court of Justice has issued a ground-breaking decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to comply with six provisional measures to safeguard the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocidal violence. The court’s order is binding on Israel and formalizes the international legal obligations of other countries that are parties to the UN Genocide Convention.”

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Action Center for Corporate Accountability has documented this list of companies implicated in this violence and that arguably have obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and, as previously mentioned, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Five CANSEC 2025 sponsors – Google, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Cisco and Leonardo – are on the AFSC list.

It is unclear if the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have sought a legal opinion following the ICJ ruling with respect to their obligations given the States and companies present at CANSEC.

What is clear, however, is that the OPS and the OPP appear to have focused considerable resources on facilitating the entrance of the representatives of arms companies and international delegations (whatever their human rights records might be) to the CANSEC arms show while criminalizing those who assemble on public spaces outside the EY Centre to protest genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

We continue to follow this.

We further note the Shut Down CANSEC Instagram page.

PBI notes COP30 caravans, assemblies and calls for the protection of environmental defenders

By
Brent Patterson
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Image by France 24: “Brazil and Colombia were the two countries where the most environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, followed by the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras.”

Peace Brigades International (PBI) teams are monitoring the various initiatives being planned to highlight and amplify the voices of front line environmental defenders in the lead-up to and during the United Nations COP30 climate conference that will take place this coming November 10-21 in Belém do Pará, Brazil.

Environmental defenders continue to be killed

On November 6, 2021, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) tweeted that an image of Berta Caceres was projected onto a building in Glasgow, Scotland during COP26. Caceres was murdered in March 2016, just months after COP15 in Paris. Global Witness has documented on an annual basis the number of defenders killed and that “over 1,500 defenders have been murdered since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change on 12 December 2015.”

No “concrete protections” for environmental defenders

On March 24, Shauna Gillooly and Simón Escoffier from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile noted: “The UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) framework – established under Article 6 of the UNFCCC and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement [that was, as noted above, agreed to at COP21 in 2015] … recognises that education, awareness and participation are essential for achieving climate goals by fostering a society-wide response to the crisis.”

They then comment: “[Latin America] is the deadliest for climate activism, with alarming levels of murders of environmental defenders. Yet [the Action for Climate Empowerment framework] provides them with no legal or financial support or concrete protections or tools to hold governments and corporations accountable.”

Virtual Global Women’s Assembly, June 23-28

On March 8, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) announced they are organizing a virtual “Global Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond!” that will take place June 23-28.

The Global Women’s Assembly will include a session on June 27 titled: “Implementing the Escazu Agreement: Protecting Women Land Defenders and the Defense of Nature in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

The Call to Action from a previous Global Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice in the lead-up to COP26 stated: “We call on all governments to respect the right of freedom of expression and peaceful protest, and to immediately halt the criminalization of land defenders, whose efforts are central to a climate-just world.”

Lawlor calls on Brazil to make COP30 safe for defenders

On March 5, Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, stated: “There is a great opportunity with COP30 in Belém this year. The Climate COP has historically been a hostile and risky space for human rights defenders. I urge the Brazilian authorities to change that.”

Caravana de Cali a Belém

On February 27, Susana Muhamad launched “the ‘Caravana de Cali a Belém’ initiative to create broad citizen participation towards UN Climate Change Conference COP30 taking place in November 2025 in Belém do Pará (Brazil).”

Mesoamerican Caravan to begin October 12

On February 19, the Assembly of the Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT) issued this “pre-call” for a “Mesoamerican Caravan for Climate and Life” that is “to be held between October 12 and November 10, 2025”. The route of the caravan begins in Mexico, then crosses through Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Colombia before arriving in Brazil for the start of COP30.

Anti-COP and People’s Summit

And in December 2024, Bernardo Jurema, a Potsdam, Germany-based climate researcher, noted: “Alternative forums, like the ‘anti-COP’ and the People’s Summit gatherings, will likely draw attention to voices often marginalized in official negotiations, further intensifying the dialogue around justice and equity.”

In August 2024, a National Plenary was held in Brazil along with “the public launch of the Peoples’ Summit” and “discussions about the Summit’s role at COP30”. Their “manifesto” calls “upon organizations, networks, collectives, and social movements from various sectors to build the People’s Summit towards COP 30, capable of mobilizing public opinion, strengthening participatory and popular democracy, denouncing and blocking setbacks, as well as pressuring decision-makers in Brazil and around the world.”

We continue to be attentive to updates about these gatherings.

Peace Brigades International will also be announcing its plans shortly, including webinars highlighting the protection needs of environmental defenders.

PBI-Canada monitoring and amplifying PBI-Mexico’s accompaniment of organizations, defenders and communities

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo: On March 20, 2025, PBI-Mexico accompanied the People’s Front in Defence of Land and Water at  a protest in Mexico City calling for the closure of a landfill.

The Cuernavaca, Morelos-based Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project currently accompanies six organizations. They are:

1-The People’s Front in Defence of Land and Water (FPDTA) in Puebla and Morelos (Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra y el Agua (FPDTA) en Puebla y Morelos)

On February 3, 2025, the newspaper El Universal reported: “Between February 20 and 23, a robust agenda of activities was developed within the framework of the Global Day: Justice for Samir Flores Soberanes. This day was convened by the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala (FPDTA), the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) with a double purpose: to denounce impunity in the murder of the leader and social communicator Samir Flores after 6 years of judicial paralysis. and to call for the struggle for life and the construction of other possible worlds.”

The People’s Front can be found on Facebook here.

Our most recent article: PBI-Mexico accompanies activities in Amilcingo on the 6th anniversary of the murder of Indigenous Nahua defender Samir Flores Soberanes (February 21, 2025).

2-The CSO Space – Space of Civil Society Organizations for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Mexico City (Espacio OSC – Espacio de Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil para la Protección de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos y Periodistas en Ciudad de México)

On March 4, 2025, the CSO Space posted: “The organizations that make up the Espacio OSC express our deep indignation and energetic condemnation of the recent murders of human rights defender Cristino Castro Perea and journalist Kristian Uriel Martínez. …We call on the authorities to carry out an urgent review of the shortcomings presented in the framework of the collective protection plan and to urgently strengthen the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, as well as to improve coordination between the different states through a National Public Policy for Protection.”

The website for the CSO Space is here.

Our most recent article: PBI-Mexico accompanied Espacio OSC condemn the murders of defender Cristino Castro Perea and journalist Kristian Uriel Martínez (March 5, 2025).

3-The Human Rights Solidarity Network (RSDH) in Michoacán (Red Solidaria de Derechos Humanos (RSDH) en Michoacán)

On March 19, 2025, El Sol de Morelia reported: “A year after the forced disappearance of Chinicuila teacher José Gabriel Pelayo, which occurred on March 19, 2024, his daughter Yulissa Pelayo denounced the omission and lack of action to locate him by the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Coalcomán, the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). …In accompaniment of the Human Rights Solidarity Network (DH), [Pelayo’s daughter Yulissa] demanded that the authorities pay greater attention to the issue and that the founder of the Popular Council of Chinicuila be located alive.”

The Facebook page for the Network is here.

Our most recent article: PBI-Mexico accompanies the Human Rights Solidarity Network at the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office on Forced Disappearance (March 20, 2025).

4-The Special Commission for the Search for Persons in Oaxaca (Comisión Especial de Búsqueda de Personas Oaxaca)

There does not appear to be a digital platform for the Special Commission, but the Cerezo Committee has posted: “Delay, lack of coordination and governmental absences in the inspection diligence in the State of Oaxaca for the case of Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya… The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has accepted that it was indeed the Mexican State that was responsible for the forced disappearance of Gabriel and Edmundo and that for the first time in Mexico a Special Search Commission would be formed by court order and that these people, victims of forced disappearance, would really be searched.”

Our most recent article: PBI-Mexico accompanies reconnaissance activities in Oaxaca in the continuing search for EPR members Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez (July 20, 2024).

5-The Ejido El Bajío in Sonora (El ejido El Bajío en Sonora)

The Ejido has explained: “For more than 10 years we have been fighting against the Penmont mining company, owned by the fourth richest man in Mexico, Alberto Baillères González. …The Penmont mining company has carried out exploration and mining exploitation in the territories of the ejido, illegally, since the nineties. In 2009 and 2013, the ejidatarios filed a series of agrarian lawsuits against the mining company; in July 1013, former magistrate Manuel Loya Valverde issued 44 rulings in favor of the ejido, in which he ruled that the mining company must vacate the territory, must return the lands to the state prior to the mining exploitation and must compensate the ejidatarios for the payment of land rents.”

The website for the Ejido is here.

Our most recent article: PBI-UK notes win by farmers against LSE listed mining company in Mexico, the environmental defenders killed after denouncing abuses (January 31, 2025).

6-The Yoreme Alliance in Sonora (La Alianza Yoreme en Sonora)

The Alliance does not appear to have a digital platform, but on May 9, 2024, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) Mexico posted: “Today, the Yoreme Alliance, made up of the peoples of Bachoco, El Alto, Buaysiacobe, Cohuirimpo, and Masiacahui, is demonstrating at several public offices in Sonora and marching through its streets.” They further explained this was: “in protest of the ‘electoral piggery’ indigenous people have sprouted from business circles and party leaders to usurp rights that are denied to the Yoreme natives.”

Periodismo de lo possible has also explained: “Centuries of dispossession of territory and violence by the state, businessmen and local caciques [political bosses] were forcing the Yoreme population to abandon their roots and divide between villages. But through a long process in which they began to retake the thinking of the elders, the assemblies as a traditional form of government and the history of the ancestors, memory and trust between peoples were strengthened. Until in 2023, they united to assert their identity and defend their territory.”

And Myrna Valencia, a member of the Mayo-Yoreme tribe, has also stated: “The [Mayo] river, that is one of the most important elements of our identity as a tribe, and it is dry…we continue being treated as foreigners in our own territory, led to a way of thinking that undermines diversity.”

We look forward to learning more about this struggle and documenting, contextualizing and amplifying via this website and our social media channels.

Accompaniment

PBI-Canada will be monitoring the PBI-Mexico physical accompaniments of these organizations, defenders and communities.

For updates from PBI-Mexico, you can find them on the social media platforms Facebook, X, Instagram and on this website.

PBI-Colombia accompanies the one-year anniversary of the murder of two members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

By
Brent Patterson
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PBI-Colombia has posted on social media: “The commemoration of the founding of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community 28 years ago has begun. On this occasion, the Community is receiving a visit from the Austrian Embassy and the European Union Delegation. At their meeting, they issued a call to address the continued impunity following the murder of Nalleli and the young Edinson a year ago, and the lack of guarantees in the context of the recent intensification of threats against the community.”

The delegation of the European Union in Colombia also posted on social media: “A year ago, Nalleli and Edison from the San José de Apartadó Peace Community were murdered. Together with [the Embassy of Austria in Colombia], the European Union came to accompany the community in the commemoration and review the authorities’ commitments and their fulfillment. No to impunity #DefendLife”

Last year, the El Colombiano newspaper reported: “Nallely and Edinson were murdered on Tuesday, March 19 at noon, the news reached Apartadó around 6 p.m. and the bodies were collected 24 hours later.”

The threat of “paramilitarism in the northwest”

At that time, El Heraldo reported: “The woman and the child were killed with firearms, apparently by members of a criminal group from which the Community has reported threats.”

Infobae added: “The region where this crime was perpetrated is mainly operated by the paramilitary Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), also known as Clan del Golfo, the country’s largest criminal gang.”

On March 20, 2024, Colombian president Gustavo Petro posted: “Four hundred members of the community of Paz de San José de Apartadó were murdered, two days ago, the whole government was there in Apartadó and we met with members of the community in the Popular Assembly. On our return they assassinated two more community members. Dark forces want to reissue paramilitarism in the northwest of the country.”

Coal deposits and mining titles

Moira Birss, formerly of PBI-Colombia, has written in the NACLA report: “Part of what makes Apartadó and the Urabá region so attractive to armed groups (and the economic interests that often drive them) is the area’s strategic location near the Gulf of Urabá.”

She adds: “The area is also reported to contain significant coal deposits, for which the state issued an exploratory license more than 15 years ago.”

In the days after the murders of Nalleli and Edinson, Franklin Castañeda from the Ministry of the Interior visited Las Delicias. On the evening of March 27, 2024, Castañeda tweeted: “A field inspection will be carried out on the mining titles.”

We await that information.

“Mining kills the land”

On March 13, 2024, just six days before she was killed, Nalleli Sepúlveda painted on a wooden gate that the Peace Community rebuilt after it was destroyed a message that reads: “Mining kills the land. We have the right to protect nature.”

Photos by the Peace Community.

28th anniversary of the Peace Community

Yes! Magazine has reported: “On March 23, 1997, Brígida Gonzáles, 69, along with the others who decided to stay, founded the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. This ‘Peace Community’ declared itself neutral in the conflict, pledging not to get involved in any way and asked to be left in peace.”

Toronto-based Scott Pearce (in a blue t-shirt in this November 2019 photo) was a PBI-Colombia field volunteer who was present in the Peace Community when it was attacked by paramilitary forces in 2000. That story is told in this PBI-Canada article.

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó since 1999

Further reading: Hope appears in the peace community of San José de Apartadó: The Colombian government announces measures of protection and recognition of this municipality, with which Rivas cooperates, besieged by paramilitary and drug violence. (March 18, 2025)

PBI-Colombia accompanies the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation as implementation of Women Searchers Law faces delays

By
Brent Patterson
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Yanette Bautista: “As a collective, we want to turn our pain into rights. That is why we drafted a bill, to empower women who are searching for victims of enforced disappearance and to promote the rights of those women. The law came into force in 2024. However, our next task is to ensure that it is implemented and realized.”

PBI-Colombia has posted on social media: “In a meeting hosted by the @Norwegian Embassy in COL, and with the presence of @MinjusticiaCo, other embassies, and @PBIColombia, the @nydia_erika Foundation and Mothers for Life, shared the urgency of implementing the #Searchers Law, in dialogue with the same women searchers and builders of #Peace, who continue to face very serious violence, including sexual violence, in the search for their loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared. The accompaniment of the international community is key! @ONUHumanRights @ONUMujeresCol @PnudColombia @SwedeninCOL @EmbAlemaniaCOL @EUinColombia @GBertrand_UE @MinInterior”

The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) has also posted on social media:

“FNEB and Mothers for Life with the Norwegian Ambassador, Minister of Justice, UN Women, Embassies of the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Chile, the Netherlands, OHCHR, Amnesty International and PBI in a follow-up meeting on the implementation of the Women’s Searchers Rights Law received broad support as builders of territorial peace.

‘The struggle does not stop with the law’ said the Norwegian Ambassador, who was followed by his peers celebrating the continuity of the UN International Support Group, the importance of the participation of the searchers under Resolution 1325 in the Total Peace dialogues and for a Humanitarian Agreement for the disappeared.

Concern about the risks faced by women in the search for the disappeared, the urgency of measures on impunity and the opportunity to include the issue in the National Plan of Action on Human Rights were issues of vital importance at the Meeting.”

Blu Radio reports: “Lawyer Yanette Bautista, director and founder of the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation [explains that] the Law on the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers, also known as Law 2364, represents a significant advance in the fight for justice and reparation for women who are searching for their missing loved ones.”

Bautista says: “[This law] arises from the reality of violence against women for 40 years, in which behaviors such as sexual violence, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, extortion and others suffered by women in the search for the disappeared, particularly victims of forced disappearance, were not criminalized, investigated and punished.”

The Blu Radio article adds: “She stressed that women searchers face enormous risks when trying to find their disappeared, especially in territories dominated by armed groups and, therefore, the protection and support of the State ‘is essential in this process’.”

“Currently, [the law] is in a regulatory process that has presented several challenges. Although it was enacted in June 2024 and a deadline was set for its regulation, there are still articles that have not been implemented, according to the director [Bautista].”

Bautista further notes: “The law establishes that there will be a registry of women searchers so that they can have access to all the rights established by law, which are both civil and political rights, the right to life, liberty, integrity, as well as economic and social rights; access to housing, employment, everything that was never recognized for women.”

The full article is at ¿En qué va la ley de protección a mujeres buscadoras? Abogada Bautista habla de demoras (Blu Radio, March 19, 2025).

Video still from Blu Radio interview with Bautista.

The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB)

In 1982, then 27-year-old economist and sociologist Nydia Erika Bautista joined the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a social-democratic urban guerrilla movement that combined armed struggle with social work. The current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, was also a member of M-19 at that time.

On August 30, 1987, Bautista was disappeared near their family home in Bogota in a joint operation of Brigades III and XX of the National Army. This took place at the time of the first communion of her 12-year-old son Erik Arellana and her 10-year-old niece Andrea Torres, who witnessed the abduction.

It is now known that Nydia Erika was held for two days, subjected to torture and sexual violence, and then take to the municipality of Guayabetal, about 90 kilometres south of Bogota, where she was reportedly killed with a single shot to her head.

On September 12, 1987, her body was found on the Bogotá- Villavicencio highway in a state of decomposition that made identification impossible.

On July 26, 1990, authorities exhumed her body.

Yanette Bautista was 27-years-old when her older sister Nydia Erika was disappeared. Yanette has shared: “I found my sister three years after she was taken away and disappeared. I knew it was her. She was wearing the same clothes she had on the day she disappeared.”

The Bautista family had to leave Colombia in 1997 due to threats against them. The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) was established in 1999 while in exile in Germany.

Yanette has commented: “Our collective, Fundación Nydia Erika Bautista, is designed for women to help each other. There are no hierarchies. It is an exchange of knowledge. We provide legal support, document stories, and do advocacy. We have a leadership school to empower women seekers in different parts of the country. Our collective is mainly made up of women; Our research has revealed that 95% of those searching for loved ones are women, mothers, sisters, and wives.”

Yanette returned to Colombia in 2007.

In September 2014, senator and former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez falsely accused Yanette Bautista of being part of the National Liberation Army (ELN). At one point, the Capital Block of the Black Eagles (Águilas Negras) also declared the FNEB a military target.

In January 2015, Andrea Torres Bautista, who saw her aunt forcibly disappeared and who is now the legal coordinator for Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, said: “[The accompaniment of] my mother Yanette Bautista by Peace Brigades International [has been] much more effective than even the bodyguards provided by the Colombian State, for them to see you alongside us, accompanying us, and all the systems like the office daily rounds, the visits, we think that it provides a lot for us to keep doing our work.”

Photo: Andrea Torres Bautista.

Photo: Nydia Erika’s son Erik in 2017 on the 30th anniversary of his mother’s disappearance.

Yanette’s fight for justice has included advocating for a Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers.

Photo: October 19, 2022, the day the Bill was filed.

On April 4, 2024, Bill No. 242 was approved in the Senate.

Then on June 18, 2024, Law 2364 of 2024, the Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers, was ratified by President Gustavo Petro.

Peace Brigades International has been accompanying the “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) occasionally since 2007 and in full since 2016.

Video:  Yannette Bautista: “When the colleagues of the CINEP [the Center for Research and Popular Education] were killed we got out of the church and the PBI people were beside us. We bent down and we were crying and when we saw them crying we understood the pain had gone through all borders.”

PBI-Honduras visits the “Museum against Forgetting” with the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) has posted on Facebook:

“#Memory #truth #justice #COFADEH

During the internal tour, PBI visitors saw the building that was used as a detention space for large groups, according to survivors’ testimonies.

They also visited a small building where in March 1999, during an inspection and application of luminol ordered by the First Court of Francisco Morazán, at least 24 fragments of a projectile embedded in one of the walls were extracted and blood was found on the floor and ceiling.

Likewise, in the main house they saw the space that was used to keep the victims in captivity and the room that was used for interrogation under torture, with the objective of extracting information about the political activities of the victims.”

COFADEH then shared an article titled Peace Brigades International tour the Museum Against Oblivion by Online Defenders and noted:

“At least seven Peace Brigades International (PBI) volunteers toured the Museum Against Forgetting, located in Amarateca, Francisco Morazán [35 kilometres north of Tegucigalpa], a space for reflection on the violations of human dignity during the application of the national security doctrine in the 1980s.

PBI has been present in the country for 10 years, accompanying human rights defenders who are at risk due to their work in defense of human rights in the country.”

That article further notes:

“Seven volunteers arrived this day at the Museum Against Oblivion to learn about the crimes against humanity that were known here during the installation of the national security doctrine, orchestrated by the United States and executed by the Honduran Armed Forces.

The voluntary hospitalizations were attended by the general coordinator of COFADEH, Berta Oliva, and by the human rights ombudsman and lawyer in the area of Access to Justice of the Committee, Dora Oliva.

The place, which was baptized by the victims and relatives as the ‘house of terror’ was used by the Honduran Armed Forces as a clandestine prison, torture center and clandestine cemetery, during the application of the national security doctrine in the 80s.”

Remembering Canada in Honduras, 1980-92

Amnesty International has documented: “José Eduardo López was detained on Monday 10 August 1981 in San Pedro Sula [200 kilometres north of Amarateca] after being stopped by the police.  He was taken to the DNI [National Directorate of Investigations] station [where he was severely tortured]. [His wife Nora] was allowed to see him (for a few minutes) on Thursday 13 August.  The following day he was released after she announced she would go on hunger strike outside the DNI headquarters if he was not.”

Amnesty International has further noted that Lopez was subsequently forcibly disappeared on December 24, 1984.

They highlight: “In 1981 he was detained for five days and tortured. On his release he received death threats and in 1982 he fled to the United States where he applied [in Atlanta, Georgia] for refugee status in Canada. In 1984 [just months before he was disappeared] the Canadian authorities rejected his application stating that José Eduardo López had not demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution.”

Photo: José Eduardo López.

During the period that the house in Amarateca was being used to torture people, the prime ministers of Canada were Joe Clark (June 1979 to March 1980) and then Pierre Trudeau (March 1980 to June 1984), John Turner (June to September 1984) and Brian Mulroney (September 1984 to June 1993).

Toronto-based academic Tyler Shipley has written: “Between 1980 and 1992, the US spent some $1.6 billon in military and economic aid to Honduras, intended to establish the apparatus of repression, buttress the institutions of political power, and infiltrate and co-opt the civil society organizations that were best positioned to harness social unrest.”

In 1983, UPI reported: “Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told a group of about 700 college students [in Toronto] he could not do anything about U.S. foreign policy towards Central America [including Honduras]… Trudeau said that as a major world power the United States was trying to protect its own interests.”

In December 1987, Maclean’s magazine reported: “[Canadian Foreign Affairs minister Joe Clark] announced an additional $13 million in aid to Honduras, which has not yet dismantled its contra base camps or cut supply flights to the rebels [fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua].”

A fuller recounting of Canadian foreign policy towards Honduras during the 1980 to 1992 period is needed to preserve the political memory of that period in which the house visited by PBI-Honduras was used to torture people.

COFADEH

The Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) was founded in 1982 by twelve families of disappeared Hondurans, including Bertha Oliva de Nativí, whose husband Professor Tomás Nativí was disappeared in 1981.

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