Celsa Valdovinos and her husband Felipe Arreaga founders of OMESP giving out seeds to members of the community. © Peace Brigades International
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of £30,000 in 2007/08.
With funding from The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation over the past year, Peace Brigades International (PBI) has offered protection and support to environmental human rights defenders at risk including ecologists, environmental campaigners, organizations struggling for land rights and indigenous groups. Since 1981, PBI has pioneered a technique called 'international accompaniment' for protecting human rights defenders threatened with violence because of their work. Over the past 27 years, PBI has used this technique to protect the lives of hundreds of activists across nine different countries. With support from The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, PBI has been able to send international volunteer observers to the field to offer protection and support to environmental human rights defenders at risk in Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia and Nepal.
PBI has witnessed an increase in threats faced by environmental human rights defenders including threats of violence, harassment and the use of arrest warrants, detention and other forms of criminalisation for their work which is often in opposition to commercial and state interests. PBI has allowed human rights defenders to fight for justice on key emblematic cases and funding from The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation has allowed, for example, PBI to offer protection to leading environmental organizations such as the Organization of Women Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlan (OMESP) in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.
PBI’s protective presence on the ground can only be effective if there is advocacy and awareness raising at the international level. Related to this aim, PBI is holding its first ever conference to raise awareness of threats faced by environmental human rights defenders called Giving Voice to the Earth The Environment and its Defenders under Threat: deforestation, megaprojects and human rights in Latin America, Africa and Asia on June 26 in central London which will highlight the work of environmental human rights defenders.
Visit the Peace Brigades International website.