What is not recorded does not exist
In Latin America, the majority of attacks against people who defend land and territory are not reflected in official records or in the information that guides public decision-making. These people as a result fall outside what is recognised and therefore,what is addressed.
For this reason, producing information from within the territories themselves is not only a matter of documentation: it is a way of making these realities visible and of challenging how they are understood and addressed.
In the context of COP4 of the Escazú Agreement—a key space for advancing the protection of environmental defenders in the region—and 2026 Earth Day, the Platform of Land and Territory Defenders is launching the Land Defenders Monitor, a regional tool that documents attacks against defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Access the Defenders Monitor
A tool to make visible what remains hidden
The Monitor has compiled 581 recorded cases of attacks between 2020 and 2025 across seven Latin American countries—Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Honduras—highlighting a sustained pattern of violence and the lack of records needed to fully understand the scale and severity of the situation.
Beyond quantifying cases, the tool makes it possible to identify patterns, highlight forms of intimidation, criminalisation, disappearances, and arbitrary detentions, and to analyse State responses—or the lack thereof. It also incorporates the protection and self-care strategies that communities themselves develop in the face of these contexts.
Among the most relevant findings, the Monitor highlights three key elements: the central role of water in territorial conflicts, tensions linked to the energy transition, and the fact that more than half of the cases affect Indigenous Peoples and ancestral territories.
A land and territory defender takes part in a mobilisation.
Escazú: data for protection and action
The launch of the Monitor comes at a key political moment for the region, within the framework of COP4 of the Escazú Agreement, where the Platform of Women and Men Defenders of Land and Territory is highlighting the need to strengthen the protection of defenders and to use data generated from the territories as a basis for decision-making and accountability.
In this context, the Monitor provides concrete evidence to inform these debates and contribute to the implementation of the Agreement. It is part of a broader set of regional processes aimed at strengthening the generation and strategic use of data from the territories, such as the Data School for land and environmental defenders.
The Platform will participate in COP4 with a delegation of 20 women defenders from eight countries in the region, who will bring these data and experiences built from the territories to influence decision-making spaces.
Among the issues they seek to highlight is the fact that in only 26% of the cases documented do defenders have any form of State protection, underscoring the remaining challenges in implementing the Escazú Agreement.
Contesting data is contesting power
In a region where many attacks remain underreported or invisible, having information produced from the territories makes it possible to strengthen advocacy, reveal patterns of violence, and demand responses. The Monitor is part of that commitment.
This process is developed in partnership with ALLIED, as part of a broader effort to strengthen data generation and collective action for the defence of land and territories. It is part of a dynamic in which data production connects across territorial, regional and global levels, and creating opportunities for these data to contribute to LANDex, a global land governance index.