Lawlessness drives the destruction of the Amazon, and it’s a human rights crisis first and foremost.

Indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and other local communities have been risking their lives to try hold on to their land and protect the environment and their livelihoods.

Against them are well-funded and well-organized criminal networks involved in illegal logging, land grabs, and mining. They send out armed men to threaten and attack those who speak up to defend the forest.

We just published a new multimedia report that details the impact of criminal groups in one location: Terra Nossa in the state of Pará. The problems there are repeated in many areas.

The settlement was established for small-scale agriculture and sustainable collection of forest products. But the criminal networks won’t leave people in peace.

They’ve started fires within the settlement that have ravaged vegetation, crops, and the forest reserve where residents collect Brazil nuts, which they depend on to survive.

According to Federal Prosecutor Gabriel Dalla Favera de Oliveira, the criminals’ objective was not just clearing the land for cattle ranching or soy plantations, but to intimidate residents, destroy their livelihoods, and force them to leave.

Community members say that over the last five years, at least four people have been murdered for speaking up about environmental crimes committed in Terra Nossa or otherwise threatening the interests of criminal groups. A fifth man has been missing since 2018 and presumed dead.

Terra Nossa is a microcosm for the Amazon as a whole: lawlessness and human rights abuses are central to environmental degradation.

After years of mounting devastation, Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has pledged a fundamental shift in Brazil’s policies. His administration now needs to act.

He should mobilize the government at all levels and coordinate with prosecutors to fight the criminal networks responsible for environmental destruction and deadly violence.

In short: he needs to bring back rule of law to the Amazon.

On this day in 1945, Auschwitz was liberated, and every year on January 27, the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It’s always a day of deep reflection for me. I’ve been to the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau many times over the past 30 years – for seminars, for my own education, for bringing others to learn from it. Every visit crushes the soul.

I work on human horrors for a living, including genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. I’ve been to several memorialized killing sites around the world. There are plenty of other mass murders to remember, as well.

Yet there is something unique about Auschwitz-Birkenau. The all too modern and industrialized slaughter of it, the extensive documentation of it, and the scale of it…

Approximately one million people were murdered in Birkenau alone, more than 90% of them Jews. They were transported by rail from all over Europe to be killed in the gas chambers. And this was just one part of the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews.

I have no words for that. No one does. Not really.

We can say “never again” all we want, but only constant effort to defend universal human rights has a chance of making that ambition a reality.

This day, those visits… it’s a big part of why I do what I do.

(written by Emily Palomo)

Did you know that the Philippines is one of Asia’s most dangerous countries for environmental activists?  

Indigenous activists in the Philippines are often threatened through a practice known as “red-tagging.”  

Red-tagging is basically accusing people who resist government-backed projects – such as mining concessions and dams – of being terrorists or supporters of the communist insurgency. This makes them targets of harassment and denies them many protections of the law that normally apply to non-"red” suspects.

You’re no longer someone simply defending your land; the authorities have labelled you an enemy – and the “red” tag is used to justify human rights violations, deadly threats, and violent attacks. 

Far from hiding this despicable practice, the government promotes it internationally. The justice secretary defended red-tagging before the UN Human Rights Council, inexplicably calling it “part of democracy.” 

Indigenous communities deserve better from the government. They deserve respect and the right to their lands acknowledged.

(compiled by Alice Autin)

• UN refugee agency chief blasts Russia for giving Ukrainian children Russian passports and putting them up for adoption (The Guardian)
• Russia outlaws Meduza, one of the country’s best-known sources of independent reporting (Meduza) 
• Zimbabwe revokes 291 civil society organizations’ registration ahead of elections (HRW) 
• Spanish government convenes domestic violence experts to face wave of femicides (The Guardian) 

Our story last week on the Iranian regime’s killing spree was picked up by Al Jazeera, and broadened into a podcast with HRW expert Tara Sepehri Far.

How well have you been following this week’s human rights news? My colleague Emily Palomo has made a five-question quiz to test your knowledge.