Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

On June 4th, the community of Copal AA La Esperanza invited NISGUA to participate in their annual Mother Earth Festival—a day to celebrate the soil, water and forest that sutain their livelihoods and to explicitly reject the corporate interests that exploit them.

One week after the Colombian elections, Community Peacemaker Teams met with local leadership in El Guayabo to collectively reflect on emerging risks, evaluate past strategies, and adapt their approach to defending their territory. Despite the exhausting challenges of ongoing resistance, the community drew strength from their shared experience, international support, and mutual care, reaffirming that their collective organization is what keeps hope and resilience alive.

In the weeks leading up to the 17th anniversary of the 2009 coup in Honduras, dozens of social movements and grassroots organizations are coordinating press conferences, collecting signatures, blocking roads, and demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court. All of these actions aim to denounce a series of laws that promote and prioritize large-scale private investment in the agribusiness, tourism, and energy sectors, which they claim are returning Honduras to the narco-dictatorship that followed the coup (2009-2022). The resistance of these movements is directly linked to the intensification of US intervention in Honduras.

A shocking government report has revealed a 38% surge in cancer deaths and toxic arsenic poisoning in Guatemalan communities surrounding a controversial silver mine. Yet, despite these damning health findings and overwhelming rejection by indigenous Xinka communities, corporate giants are aggressively pushing to restart operations.

Detainees in Newark's detention center, Delaney Hall, are subject to work grueling jobs for only 1 dollar a day, if they are even paid at all. Despite the many demands for change, the GEO group refuses to take any action to improve the work conditions in Delaney Hall. This mistreatment has led to a labor and hunger strike of 300 migrants within the detention center. With the strike in effect, the guards have imposed both physical and mental torture to those imprisoned. When these conditions were revealed to the public through a letter by the migrants, a group of protesters gathered around Delaney Hall; they are still continuing their efforts to have the workers' conditions improved.

President Trump's deportation demands throughout his second term in office have caused an 80 percent increase in deportation flights, leading to mass carbon dioxide emissions. ICE's flight operations have accelerated the already imminent climate crisis. In fact, there was an 88 percent increase in ICE flight emissions from 2024 to 2025. In addition to the harmful impact on the environment, ICE imposes dangerous tactics to the detainees on board; they are often chained or placed in body-restraint suits. After the suffering endured while in flight, ICE has been sending detainees to cities and countries that are dangerous and are known to pose a threat to them upon arrival. 

Though the original teachings of protecting the environment originate in the Bible, documents such as Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti continue to promote ecological justice today. Forces such as capitalism are disrupting peace and driving exploitation of natural resources. Conflicts over natural resources must be solved with moral, cultural, and pastoral responses in collaboration with legal and economic frameworks. Many prominent members of the Catholic Church, such as Juan Antonio López, have worked vigorously to protect the people and the environment from capitalistic systems that are destroying the peace and planet. Holistic work like that of Juan Antonio López makes people targets to those who hold immense power and wealth. Tragically, Juan Antonio López was murdered in Honduras on September 14, 2024, for his activism. His death proves that peace and justice must work hand in hand for the common good.