Navigating a global crossroads: Human rights defenders and business in 2025
Publisher: Business and Human Rights Centre
Date: 2026
Topics: Attacks on Defenders
In 2025, the Business and Human Rights Centre documented nearly 800 (790) attacks on defenders raising concerns about business. This is more than two attacks on average every day.
Key findings include:
- Attacks on defenders occurred in relation to almost every business sector in every region of the world, with 42% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 30% in Asia and the Pacific.
- Three quarters of attacks were against climate, land, and/or environmental defenders.
- Nearly one third of attacks (30%) were against Indigenous Peoples, despite comprising 6% of the world’s population.
- 53 defenders were killed in 2025; over 30% were Indigenous.
- The most common type of attack was judicial harassment (52%), including criminalization and SLAPPs.
- Mining, fossil fuels and agribusiness continued to be the sectors connected with the highest number of attacks.
- The projects and companies associated with the highest number of attacks in 2025 were the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda and Tanzania; Grasberg Mine in Indonesia; aerospace, defense and security company Leonardo in Italy; Cobre Panamá Mine in Panama; and agribusiness company Dinant in Honduras. (Responses from the companies involved with these projects are available here)
- The increasing overlap between security-driven governance and corporate influence, amplified by digital technologies used to restrict civic space, is intensifying limits on civic freedoms and heightening risks for defenders and communities worldwide.