Colombia has once again earned a grim distinction: according to a new report from the international watchdog Global Witness, it is the deadliest country in the world for people who defend land and the environment, a title it has now held for four consecutive years. In 2025, at least 39 environmental leaders were killed there, bringing the four-year total to 226 documented murders.
Nearly half of last year’s victims were Indigenous people, while another 15 were small farmers. One of them, Edgar Tumiñá Gembuel, a member of an Indigenous Nasa community guard, was specifically honored in the report alongside other Indigenous defenders killed worldwide. Thirteen of the 39 killings took place in the southwestern department of Cauca, a region long plagued by armed conflict, and 35 were linked directly to disputes over land.
Globally, Global Witness recorded at least 124 killings of environmental defenders in 2025, pushing the cumulative total since it began tracking these cases in 2012 to 2,375 murders and disappearances. Latin America remains by far the most lethal region, accounting for 85% of these crimes. Brazil ranked second worldwide with 26 killings, more than double its 2024 figure, followed by Honduras and the Philippines with 12 each, Mexico with 10, and Guatemala with eight. Colombia and Brazil together accounted for over half of all such killings recorded last year.
Read the full investigation at El Tiempo for more details on the report’s findings.
Source: Colombia, el más peligroso para líderes ambientales: en 2025 asesinaron en el país a 39 líderes medioambientales (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: John Englart (Takver), BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse).