Harassment, intimidation and undue interference have become part of the job for lawyers defending the rights of communities facing environmental harms. Global Insight looks at how they’re fighting back.

Environmental lawyers play a pivotal role in the struggle communities face in achieving climate justice. Beyond litigation, lawyers equip communities with the training and tools they need to seek redress, understand their rights and hold powerful actors to account.

However, a recent report by Lawyers for Lawyers describes ‘a global pattern of intimidation aimed at silencing environmental legal advocacy.’ The report found ‘widespread and growing threats’ from states and companies directed at legal practitioners in this area, including stigmatisation, physical attacks and systematic obstruction of access to information essential to mounting effective legal challenges.

In several countries, environmental lawyers are under-resourced and alarmingly low in numbers. This shortage is not accidental, says the report, but the consequence of the ‘chilling effect’ due to the increased risks that come with the job. ‘Without urgent action to protect these lawyers, both their clients’ right to access justice and the environment itself are at serious risk,’ Lawyers for Lawyers warns.

The chilling effect

Around the world, environmental defenders are coming under attack for challenging powerful interests. An estimated 146 were killed or disappeared in 2024, according to NGO Global Witness, which has tracked threats against those fighting for environmental justice for over a decade. Across Asia, the EU, the US and in the UK, Global Witness found that those who speak out against environmental harms are increasingly subject to a range of silencing tactics, including abductions, judicial harassment and restrictions on protests.

Lawyers taking on cases against state and corporate projects that threaten the environment and the human rights of communities aren’t spared.

In 2022, then-UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Diego García-Sayán, warned that ‘attacks on groups of lawyers defending certain causes have increased considerably in many countries in recent times.’ Among others, legal practitioners defending human rights and the environment ‘are the targets of threats and attacks, even attempts on their lives,’ he stated.

The following year, García-Sayán’s successor, Margaret Satterthwaite, said she was ‘extremely concerned about widespread and increasing efforts to target lawyers for their work’ and identified the issue as a ‘priority challenge’.

By way of example, in 2022, environmental and human rights lawyer Verónica Guerrero was killed in her car in Mexico. She’d been defending local communities against illegal dumping of waste in a nearby landfill. Her killing is widely understood to have been retaliation for her work.

Practitioners from Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo began to warn Lawyers for Lawyers of their experiences in 2022. Its report is the result of two years of research and 25 interviews with environmental lawyers across all continents between May 2022 and October 2024. Among those interviewed, 60 per cent said they had experienced physical attacks, including kidnapping and assassination attempts. Over a third expressed concerns about surveillance and searches of their homes and offices that could compromise privileged information.

In Uganda, a lawyer representing communities opposing the construction of an oil pipeline was beaten on his way to court and robbed of his laptop, phone and court files. Environmental lawyers from Brazil, Indonesia, Peru, Russia and Uganda reported that governments and private companies have previously threatened them with criminal prosecution. Half of those interviewed had directly or indirectly experienced harassment in the form of baseless prosecutions, arbitrary arrests and SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) lawsuits.

Eighty per cent said they had faced significant obstacles in obtaining the documents they needed to carry out effective litigation. In addition, environmental lawyers are increasingly stigmatised as working against the public interest. In Peru, Marco Chung Ramos, who takes on cases opposing allegedly illegal extractive activities, says the government has labelled him a ‘political terrorism’ suspect for peacefully protesting for environmental rights, which prevents him from travelling abroad.

These threats and attacks undermine the ability of lawyers to effectively represent their clients. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that lawyers defending communities facing environmental harms often operate in isolation in remote and dangerous places.

However, they also deter lawyers from entering the field out of fear of being targeted. In several countries, there are only a handful of practitioners that specialise in environmental law. As a result, lawyers such as John Menguito, Managing Trustee of the Philippine Earth Justice Center, are ‘inundated’ with cases. To address the shortfall and inspire a new generation of lawyers, Menguito has set up clinics in law schools across the Philippines to talk to students and practitioners about environmental law.

The archipelago is the most dangerous country in Asia for environmental defenders, according to Global Witness. Menguito describes having previously received a death threat on his phone from an anonymous sender. Today, he changes his route to work every day and never divulges his schedule. And yet, he has committed ‘to defend those who cannot speak for themselves.’

In spite of the growing risks, Lawyers for Lawyers found that states ‘systematically fail’ to address the threats of physical attacks and harassment. In some parts of the world, authorities don’t even investigate reports of threats or attacks.

Only 15 per cent of the lawyers interviewed from Brazil, Columbia and Mexico reported that their government had established mechanisms to protect the security of human rights and environmental defenders. These initiatives can range from panic buttons and bulletproof vehicles to safe houses and support for relocation.

Yet, states have a duty to ensure lawyers can exercise their profession without undue interference and to investigate and prosecute crimes committed against them. The UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, adopted in 1990, establish the independence of lawyers and define their role to ‘uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms’ and ensure access to justice for all.

These principles set out the duties of governments to ensure that lawyers ‘are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference.’ The text adds that, ‘where security of lawyers is threatened as a result of discharging their functions, they shall be adequately safeguarded by the authorities.’

Under these principles and international human rights law, Lawyers for Lawyers says states shouldn’t consider lawyers and their clients – and their causes – as one and the same. Further, states should take measures to ensure practitioners are able to perform their professional functions safely. Authorities also have a duty to ensure lawyers can access appropriate information to effectively represent their clients.

‘A major step in the right direction’

Some regions of the world are taking steps to address the issue. In response to mounting threats, in March the Council of Europe adopted the first-ever international treaty with the aim of protecting lawyers.

Under the Council’s Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, states must ensure that practitioners can carry out their professional duties without being the target of attack, threat, intimidation or improper interference. It requires parties to the Convention to conduct an investigation if the situation could amount to a criminal offence.

The Convention has been signed by 18 states and can be ratified by any country. At least eight countries, including six Council member states, must ratify the Convention for it to enter into force.

‘It is the first binding international instrument that sets specific obligations for states to protect the rights and independence of lawyers, and includes a mechanism to monitor how those obligations are implemented,’ says Sophie de Graaf, Executive Director of Lawyers for Lawyers. She describes it as ‘a major step in the right direction’ that could help set standards for international and regional bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights.

Elsewhere, in spring 2024 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in a landmark case that the Colombian government was responsible for the systematic persecution, harassment, stigmatisation and surveillance of human rights lawyers. It was the first time the Court recognised the responsibility of a state for violating the right to defend human rights.

Bar associations also have a role to play in safeguarding the rights of environmental lawyers. Lawyers for Lawyers calls on professional associations to have a designated contact for legal practitioners to report improper interreference or harassment and to contribute to raising awareness of the risks and challenges environmental lawyers face. ‘Visibility is a first step towards protection,’ says de Graaf.

The essential work of legal practitioners in this area often comes at a very high personal cost, says Eleonora Scala, a programme lawyer at the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI). This, she says, is why the IBAHRI believes bar associations must step up their support, including by putting in place real protection mechanisms and internal support systems. ‘Professional associations of lawyers have a vital role in protecting their members from improper restrictions and infringements, and we call on them to take a firm stance against attacks on environmental lawyers,’ adds Scala.

Emily Morison, a project lawyer with the IBA’s Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU), highlights that in 2024, the IBA released the second edition of its Business and Human Rights Guidance for Bar Associations. This provides a roadmap of activities that bar associations can undertake to help members understand and apply good corporate human rights practices, such as by engaging in the development of policy, legislation and industry standards. In 2023 meanwhile, the IBA released an updated guidance note on business and human rights for lawyers and law firms. This highlights the increasing relevance of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for the legal profession.

The IBA’s outreach on the issue also includes a webinar held at the end of September titled, ‘Environmental lawyers under threat: how can the legal community respond?’. The webinar is ‘one example of the ways in which the IBA and its committees raise awareness of key business human rights issues and broader threats to the safety and independence of lawyers around the globe,’ says Morison.

With civic space shrinking globally, meaningful action to protect the rights of environmental lawyers isn’t just fundamental to protect the human rights of individuals and ensure the functioning of the rule of law. It’s integral to delivering the environmental and climate justice we need to maintain a liveable planet.

Chloé Farand is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at Chloe.Farand@outlook.com

Header image credit: AdobeStock/Trevor