Americas

Rating Overview

The past year in the Americas showed that significant civic space changes can be incremental, just as they can be precipitous and abrupt. In most cases, it is not a radical transformation that drives civic space to improve or worsen but a combination of practices, regulations and policies. Structural change, such as the adoption of a new constitution, is rare. Instead, fundamental rights to freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression are often preserved and protected through specific court decisions, progressive adoption of enabling regulation, efforts by political leaders to recognise the importance of civil society and dozens of other developments.

However, the new government changed course in relation to the social uprising, withdrawing some prosecutions of protesters and taking steps to provide reparations and access to justice for victims of repression. President Boric also signed and championed the ratification of the Escazú Agreement, a binding environmental treaty that includes provisions to improve the situation of HRDs. While much more could be done to ensure durable changes, these advances have put Chile on a more positive trajectory, recognised in its rating upgrade.

A similar scenario is seen in the USA, where the Biden administration has sought to improve on Trump’s relationship with the media and stressed the importance of democratic institutions. The government took steps to safeguard fundamental freedoms and civil society, with policies to strengthen police accountability, support workplace organising and protect humanitarian assistance worldwide. Yet while civic space in the USA has improved enough to drive a change of rating, trends that negatively affected the space for civil society and the media endure. The year saw lawmakers adopting further restrictions on protests and a slew of state-level bills limiting free speech in schools. Incidents of excessive force and arbitrary arrests of protesters remain recurrent, and those charged are subject to increasingly harsh penalties. The authorities also continue to criminalise whistleblowers.

Conversely, in Guatemala, there was a much clearer trend in the deterioration of civic space as the government moved to undermine the rule of law and reverse the anti-corruption efforts of recent years. The authorities have gradually chipped away at judicial independence and adopted restrictive legislation. Over the past three years, the government of President Alejandro Giammattei has systematically pursued abusive prosecutions of peace and justice advocates, judicial officials and journalists, in an effort to silence critics and those who have sought to tackle political corruption. HRDs have faced increasing attacks, while the institutional spaces for monitoring their situation and ensuring their protection have been weakened. Increasing authoritarianism is particularly concerning in light of the country’s general elections in June 2023, which could lead to a consolidation of this reduced civic space.

Civic Space Restrictions

In line with the global trend, there has been a sharp increase in cases of harassment in the Americas over the past year, making this the top violation recorded across the region. Attacks on journalists, the detention of protesters, intimidation and protest disruptions were also frequent. Women, Indigenous and environmental defenders were commonly involved in civic space incidents, often coming under fire from state and non-state actors.

Harassment

In Venezuela, a human rights lawyer moved her family out of the country after being faced with recurrent threats and surveillance for cooperating with UN human rights mechanisms. In El Salvador, HRDs and journalists were exposed to online harassment, often championed by the authorities, who used their social media accounts to stigmatise them. This behaviour by leaders, which has worsened under the current government’s exceptional measures against gang violence, encouraged waves of attacks, insults and threats from supporters. In some cases, outspoken government critics have also been hacked, subjected to surveillance and have had their privacy exposed online.

In Nicaragua, harassment was part of a complementary toolbox of tactics adopted by the authorities to silence civil society voices. Leaders and members of CSOs were personally targeted with harassment and criminalisation, and alongside this, thousands of organisations had their legal status cancelled using arbitrary procedures, forcing many to shut down their operations. Some groups had their offices and equipment seized.

Particularly when women are targeted, harassment can involve threats of sexual violence and sexist language. A journalist in Bolivia received anonymous rape and death threats over her reporting on femicides. The messages against her seemed to indicate that she may have been stalked for some time, which led the country’s Ombudsperson’s Office to call on security forces to provide her with urgent protection measures.

Attacks on journalists

Throughout 2022, physical attacks on journalists and media outlets took place in at least 17 countries of the Americas. It is the fifth year in a row that this violation has appeared among the top three for the region, displaying the persistence of a hostile environment for the media and the great personal risks journalists can face for doing their crucial work.

The CIVICUS Monitor documented cases of journalists being shot at by unidentified assailants and assaulted by police and protesters while covering demonstrations, and being attacked by politicians and their supporters, along with many other violent incidents. Offices of media outlets were attacked with explosives, firearms and arson attacks in several countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Peru.

Perpetrators remained unknown in many of the attacks, but in some cases those responsible were identified but not sanctioned. In Guatemala, a journalist was beaten and detained and had his equipment damaged by police officers when covering the repression of a protest. Investigators shelved his complaint against the officers who assaulted him. Meanwhile, charges against him, initially dismissed by a local court, were reinstated at the request of public prosecutors.

In extreme cases, violence resulted in killings, with 2022 becoming one of the region's most deadly years on record for press workers. The CIVICUS Monitor documented such cases in nine countries in the Americas. In Chile, Francisca Sandoval became the first journalist to be killed in the line of duty since the Pinochet dictatorship ended in 1990. Shooters opened fire on Workers’ Day protesters in Santiago, hitting her and two other journalists. In Honduras, Indigenous communicator Pablo Isabel Hernández Rivera was shot and killed. He had previously been subjected to threats and a smear campaign. The community radio station where he worked had also been sabotaged and threatened with closure.

In Mexico, the violence grew so extreme that journalists held multiple protests demanding justice for murdered colleagues and urgent measures to protect the safety of press workers. Haitian journalists also faced a spiral of violence while attempting to cover the country’s multidimensional crisis. They became targets of criminal gangs, with cases of kidnapping, drive-by shootings and ambushes, and have also been victims of police brutality in protests.

Detention of protesters

Across the region, the rising cost of living drove masses to the streets to demand living wages and public policies to contain price surges and support those living in poverty. Protesting remained an important tactic for people to call for change, from those protesting against environmentally damaging projects to women urging action against gender-based violence. However, security forces repeatedly resorted to detentions to disrupt protests. The CIVICUS Monitor recorded protests in at least 23 countries of the Americas, and in 13 of those, there were instances of detention of protesters. Detentions were documented in 40 per cent of all reports on protests in the region throughout 2022.

The cost of living crisis led thousands to protest in Panama, in the largest demonstrations seen in the country in recent years. After three weeks of protests, the police disclosed they had arrested 102 people, 80 of whom had hearings for obstruction of transit and disrupting peaceful coexistence. There were also multiple reports of protesters being dispersed by police using teargas and pellets. In Venezuela, unions held multiple protests against hyperinflation and the loss of purchasing power, calling for living wages. In some cases, protesters were detained and prevented from marching.

In Cuba, relatives of detained protesters and feminist advocates who were supporting them were arrested for protesting near a court. One of the activists detained later said she continued to face harassment and surveillance for her advocacy work.

Ecuadorian Indigenous peoples and other movements striking against the government’s social and economic policies were met with a crackdown in June 2022. In just 18 days, the civil society coalition Alianza DDHH registered 127 cases of human rights violations, including nine deaths, 318 people injured and at least 199 protesters detained. Among those arbitrarily arrested was Leonidas Iza, leader of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, who was accused by the authorities of paralysing public services. At the end of September, charges against him were thrown out in court.

In the line of fire

Violence against HRDs and journalists remains acute in the Americas. The region accounted for a disproportionate number of killings of HRDs recorded by the CIVICUS Monitor, with over 60 per cent of the total cases documented in 2022. Similarly, it was the region with the highest number of reports of killings of journalists. HRDs were killed in at least eight countries and journalists in at least nine.

Indigenous, environmental and land rights defenders were disproportionately affected by this violence. In Brazil, Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were ambushed and killed as they returned from a reporting trip in a remote part of the Amazon rainforest. They had been documenting Indigenous people’s efforts to resist predatory criminal activities in their territory. The 10-day search for them was driven initially by Indigenous organisations in the face of government negligence, something symptomatic of the attitude of the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro toward human rights, Indigenous peoples and independent media.

Sadly, Colombia saw a new record number of assassinations of HRDs and social leaders. According to the country’s Ombudsperson’s Office, nearly 200 of these advocates were killed in 2022. Frontline defenders and community leaders were particularly targeted. In Honduras, a trans activist who advocated for the rights of people with HIV was killed in a brazen attack in her home. Before she died, Thalía Rodríguez had underscored in an interview that she was one of the last Honduran trans activists of her generation still living.

In Mexico, at least five women defenders who searched for answers about missing people were killed. Press workers faced a particularly deadly year in the country, with four journalists assassinated in January 2022 alone. The authorities have failed to coordinate a comprehensive response to the violence. Mexico’s underfunded and understaffed protection mechanism lacks the capacity to ensure the safety of the hundreds who need it. 2022 ended with Mexico again topping the list of countries outside war zones with the most journalists killed during the year.

The reproduction of this shameful trend, year after year, displays the urgent need for governments across the region to adopt and improve measures to protect HRDs and journalists and to tackle the prevailing impunity for crimes committed against them.

Country of concern: Peru

Protests, particularly those in rural areas and led by Indigenous and campesino people, were met with excessive force by law enforcement agencies. Between 8 December 2022 and 27 January 2023, at least 57 people died, including six minors, and over 1,500 were injured. The majority of the deaths were alleged extrajudicial killings perpetrated by law enforcement officers. Civil society has recorded numerous other human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force, sexual violence and attacks on journalists. President Boluarte and other officials have failed to condemn abuses by police and armed forces and sometimes blamed protesters for ‘causing chaos’ and stigmatised them. Amid the turmoil, human rights organisations have been targeted and harassed by radicalised far-right groups.

The violent police response to these protests is shocking but not unprecedented. Just months earlier, a strike led by transport workers against rising fuel, fertiliser and food costs was also met with detentions and excessive force. In recent years, security forces have repeatedly used disproportionate force in response to protests, particularly those led by excluded populations away from the major cities. Rather than pursuing reforms to address police violence, in recent years Peruvian authorities have adopted a law shielding officers from prosecution for abuses.