Defending Life, Defending Land: Communities Call Out Mining’s Human Rights Abuses in the Lead-Up to COP30

MEDIA RELEASE | 13 November 2025

Defending Life, Defending Land: Communities Call Out Mining’s Human Rights Abuses in the Lead-Up to COP30

Belém, Brazil – As global leaders prepare to gather for COP30, communities from across the world are calling out the human rights crisis driven by mining. Yes to Life, No to Mining (YLNM) members from the Philippines, Ecuador, and Brazil are standing together to expose the violence, criminalisation, and impunity faced by those who defend their lands, waters, and ways of life.

From Latin America to Southeast Asia, mining has become synonymous with militarisation, forced displacement, and the silencing of Indigenous and local voices. According to Global Witness over 2,100 land and environmental defenders have been killed in the past decade – with mining the deadliest sector to oppose. Yet few companies have ever been held accountable.

Ana Celestial from Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment Philippines and YLNM member said:

“As deadly typhoons flood communities in the Philippines, we see how mining in our mountains has worsened every disaster. When forests are stripped and soil destroyed, floods sweep away lives and livelihoods, leaving the poorest to suffer most. From the Philippines to the world, mining has brought grief and dispossession. When we defend our lands and waters, we are defending life itself—but defenders are silenced while corporations walk free. At COP30, we call for accountability and the courage to choose life over profit, justice over impunity, and solidarity over silence.”

Carolina de Moura, Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Sociales y Ambientales, Brumadinho, Brazil and YLNM members stated:

“The crime in Brumadinho showed the world that mining companies operate with violence and impunity, while communities pay with their lives. From Brazil to the Philippines to Ecuador, we are united in saying: enough. To defend the defenders is to defend our right to live with dignity and to keep believing in the future.”

Jose Cueva, Environmental and Social Observatory of Northern Ecuador, (OMASNE) and the National Anti-Mining Front said:

“In the last few months, Ecuadorian President, Daniel Noboa has begun the wholesale decapitation of our civil society by politically persecuting dozens of Indigenous and Nature Rights defenders who’ve had success in protecting areas from mining and helping their rural farming communities to become more self-reliant and sustainable. His government is using military force—at times lethally—against peaceful protestors, weakening the public sector, freezing bank accounts, and treating defenders as terrorists and Constitutional Court judges as enemies of the people.“

Mining companies and complicit governments are violating the most basic of human rights – the right to life, to water, to self-determination. Communities who defend these rights are branded as criminals, while corporations that destroy rivers, forests, and livelihoods are protected by law.

YLNM’s Principles affirm that no community should ever be forced to sacrifice life for profit. Defending the defenders means defending democracy, justice, and the living Earth. Globally communities are demanding that governments and international bodies end impunity and enforce accountability for corporate violence.

We say yes to life and no to the system that kills those who protect it.

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For more information

Tom Takezoe
(EN, ES, PT, FR)
Mobile/WhatsApp +55 11 95199-1818
membership@yestolifenotomining.org

Nat Lowrey (EN)
Mobile/WhatsApp +61 421226200
info@yestolifenotomining.org

Yes to Life No to Mining at Events in Belém

YLNM delegates will participate in:

Rights of Nature Tribunal, 11 November

COP do Povo / The People’s COP, 12 November

Cupula dos Povos / The People’s Summit, 12–16 November

UNFCCC / COP30, 10-21 November

These gatherings mark a critical moment as part of COP30, as movements from around the world converge in the Amazon to reassert people’s and Nature’s rights in the face of climate and ecological collapse.