12, Oct 2018

14 Caribbean and Latin American countries recently signed the landmark Escazú Agreement that, according to an announcement from UN Environment, gives “environmental rights the same status as human rights”. The Agreement, which is officially called the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters, is the first environmental treaty for Caribbean and Latin America region, and is the first instance in which “a legal agreement includes an Article on environmental human rights defenders,” UN Environment said. As per the United Nations’ environment body, the agreement “enacts binding provisions for States to equip their citizens with information, judicial corrections and spaces for public participation in environmental matters concerning them.” The agreement may be read here. According to international NGO Global Witness, of the 207 land and environmental rights defenders it says were killed in 2017, “a vast majority of them hailed from Latin America, which remains the most dangerous region for defenders, accounting for 60% of those killed in 2017.”