Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor advocates for these activists worldwide, hundreds of whom are killed each year, including for simply wanting to protect their ancestral lands.

“In my view, human rights defenders breathe life into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, as you know, the UN was founded on,” she said in a recent interview with UN News in New York.

Ms. Lawlor sees a parallel between the landmark Declaration and the SDGs, which provide a blueprint for a more just and equitable future for all people and the planet.

The 17 Goals include ending poverty and hunger, ensuring access to quality education, protecting ecosystems and combating climate change. 

And with governments keen to achieve them by the 2030 deadline, “why not see human rights, and human rights defenders particularly, as allies that underpin the Sustainable Development Goals?” 

Listen to our interview with the UN Special Rapporteur:

A valuable contribution

Ms. Lawlor was at UN Headquarters to present her latest report to the General Assembly.  It shows how human rights defenders are indeed contributing to sustainable development and the global commitment to “leave no one behind”.

For example, as war rages in Sudan, women rights defenders are saving lives in the capital, Khartoum, in line with SDG 2 on ending hunger.

“Using their networks and their resources, they set up and they have fed 250,000 families in Khartoum in the last two years,” she said.  

Paying a terrible price

She also took part in an event organized by Ireland and the Dominican Republic focused on her report, where she was joined by two human rights defenders from Brazil and the United States who spoke about their work and the challenges they face, sometimes at immense personal loss.

Wellington “Wallito” Gabriel de Jesus dos Santos is from a quilombola community - a settlement of descendants of Africans who escaped slavery - located in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. 

They are fighting against racism and for the right to till their land, which is guaranteed under the Constitution, in the face of threats such as mining, large-scale eucalyptus plantations and landfills. 

Wallito, 24, became a community leader seven years ago after his father was murdered for his activism. His grandmother, another prominent leader, was killed last year.

“We traditional people are part of the frontline in the fight against the climate crisis that is shaking the world. We are also protecting life on land. In these efforts we are directly helping achieve the SDGs, but we pay a terrible price for doing so,” he said.

American Emily Donovan co-founded Clean Cape Fear, a grassroots community organization fighting contamination caused by PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) - “forever chemicals” found in hundreds of everyday products including cosmetics, carpets, food packaging and non-stick cookware.

She lives in a community in North Carolina where the company Chemours, formerly DuPont, had been dumping extreme levels of PFAS waste into the water supply for nearly 40 years.

“Communities like mine all over the country are tired of being PFAS sacrifice zones,” she said. “The polluters have been laying their ground game for decades, but that can end right now. They may have the money, but we have the people.” 

Silenced forever

Reflecting on the event, Ms. Lawlor upheld the importance of listening directly to human rights defenders and deplored the lack of accountability for violations against them and their communities. 

“There are over 300 human rights defenders killed every year in the context of land, environment and indigenous rights,” she said.

“And it's often in the context of business and human rights, and the negative impacts of companies on the environment, and the hired thugs or the corrupt security or people associated with the company.”

Human rights defenders have also been criminalized or thrown in prison.

“What always amuses me is the States get up and they say all this good stuff about how great they are and how they support human rights defenders, and blah, blah, blah,” she said.

“But the reality is on the ground, they are targeting human rights defenders. They are treating them unjustly. They are not abiding by the rule of law.”

Justice and hope

The Special Rapporteur is approaching the final year of her mandate, which expires in 2026. 

Among the things she hopes to see happen before then is greater action on behalf of human rights defenders who are facing lengthy jail times of 10 years or more, an issue that is dear to her heart. 

Ms. Lawlor also shone a light on some of the “absolutely extraordinary” work of human rights defenders across the globe.

For example, a group in Yemen called Mothers of Abductees has taken up cases of people who have been disappeared by both sides in the country’s decade-long conflict. 

“They have succeeded in reuniting some people who have been disappeared, and in other cases where the people are dead, at least letting the family know that they are dead and the families get a chance to grieve,” she said.

She also stressed the need to encourage younger generations to be active protectors and defenders of human rights so that this critical work always moves forward.

“In Bangladesh, there's a group of children who work with the local commissioner to stop forced child marriage. They have succeeded in stopping 13, as I understand,” she said, citing one example.

Human rights defenders are “our life blood” because they work for “the people on the edges of society who everybody forgets about and doesn't care about,” she said.

“And if no one is to be left behind as the Sustainable Development Goals say, we need to reach those people and we need to protect those who are reaching them.”

About UN Rapporteurs

Special Rapporteurs like Ms. Lawlor are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on specific country situations or thematic issues.

They are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Council, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system.

These experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not payment for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.