In 2025, the Business and Human Rights Centre documented nearly 800 attacks (790) against defenders in 80 countries raising concerns about business. This is more than two attacks on average every day and more than we’ve tracked in a single year since 2020. Nearly one third of attacks (30%) were against Indigenous Peoples, who comprise just 6% of the world’s population.

The struggles that defined 2025 – from climate justice and land rights to anti-genocide mobilisations and Indigenous sovereignty – have shown how deeply interconnected these issues are. Our analysis highlights a growing convergence between securitisation – the process by which issues are framed as existential threats to national security – and corporate capture, reinforced by the use of digital technologies to restrict civic space. This evolving landscape is driving an erosion of civic freedoms and increasing risks for people around the world.

Irresponsible business activities lie at the centre of many of these dynamics. When companies fail to exercise robust human rights due diligence and adopt commitments to zero tolerance for attacks on defenders, they increase their legal, financial and reputational risks, fall short on fulfilling their responsibility to respect human rights, and may contribute to repressive environments.

Identifying risks and fulfilling this responsibility must begin with listening to defenders: those who identify harms early, share viable alternatives, and point the way toward business practices that respect rights, ensure shared prosperity, and support more just and sustainable economies. Defenders are leaders in advancing a just energy transition – one that centres rights, shared prosperity and sustainability – to tackle the climate crisis. Fast-tracking business projects without meaningfully consulting with rightsholders is a key driver of attacks on defenders and risks destroying the public trust needed to sustain the health of our democracies and realise a just energy transition.

In 2025, people across the globe took action to advance a just energy transition, demand democratic and accountable governance, and protest genocide and the role of the private sector in perpetuating related harms. They bravely spoke out in the face of democratic backsliding, risks of retaliation, and increasing restrictions on their rights to free expression, association and assembly.

The 790 attacks documented in 2025 were against Indigenous Peoples, youth, women defenders, journalists, climate and environmental defenders, and many others raising concerns about risks and harms by business actors – affecting individuals, their families, communities, and public participation in society more broadly.

The attacks documented by BHRC are based on publicly available information and thus represent only a partial picture of the true scale of attacks. Many attacks are never shared publicly due to security concerns and the severity of civic space restrictions, including freedom of the press. Governments are also largely failing in their duty to monitor attacks.

The most dangerous regions for defenders raising concerns about business were Latin America and the Caribbean (329) and Asia and the Pacific (234). The countries where we recorded the highest number of attacks against people speaking out about business-related risks and harms in 2025 were Brazil (68), the Philippines (53), Honduras (45), Mexico (41), Uganda (40), Indonesia (38), Argentina (34), India (32), Ecuador (31) and Panama (27).

Companies connected with the highest number of attacks

However, even when state agents are the direct perpetrators, companies can still be connected with attacks, such as by requesting police or state security protests disperse peaceful protests or worker strikes or spreading misinformation about defenders which can be used in smear campaigns or criminalisation.

In addition, all companies have the responsibility to engage in safe and meaningful consultation with defenders early and throughout their due diligence process. This is a key step in preventing attacks and conflict. In addition, engaging in consultation with defenders is a critical step to reducing risks to companies and investors. When companies do not engage in meaningful stakeholder engagement with affected communities and defenders, they will be unaware of the full range of risks associated with their operations, value chains and business relationships. People will raise concerns about those risks through protest and other avenues, increasing the risk of conflict, as well as reputational risks and financial loss.

This is particularly evident in the context of the energy transition: where companies engaged in renewable energy deployment or transition minerals mining do not centre human rights and robust stakeholder engagement, they risk increasing conflict, losing public trust and derailing the just energy transition. Forty-two of the attacks recorded in 2025 were against defenders raising concerns about at least one of the nearly 300 mines examined by our Transition Minerals Tracker. In addition, two of the top five projects or companies associated with the highest number of attacks in 2025 were mines extracting copper, which is used in wind turbines, solar panels, electrical grid infrastructure, and electric vehicle charging stations and motors.

Urgent action is essential to address the climate crisis, but the transition will not be fast or sustainable if it violates rights in the process. Companies can avoid delays and loss of public buy-in by ensuring respect for human rights, including the rights of defenders, and prioritising shared prosperity of local communities in transition mineral and renewable energy projects.

We are currently experiencing an alarming convergence of securitised governance, corporate capture, deterioration of the international rules-based order, and widespread impunity for serious harms, both by states and business actors. While these dynamics are not new, their growing alignment, speed and scale are reshaping the environment in which civil society operates. Together, they are accelerating the erosion of democracy and civic freedoms and heightening risks for defenders and the communities they support worldwide.

For business, this is not a peripheral issue: shrinking civic space limits companies and investors’ access to information about human rights and environmental risks and harms, increasing their operational, financial, legal and reputational risks. Business and civil society both benefit from respect for civic freedoms, accountable governance and rule of law. Contexts with open civic space are more likely to be stable, predictable operating environments for business.

Security for whom? Security narratives, corporate power and civic space

In addition, security narratives are being used to fast-track extractive projects, such as transition minerals mining, resulting in human rights and environmental harms. When economic projects are framed as matters of national security, opposition to them is more easily criminalised.

A related dynamic is emerging in conflict-affected contexts, where companies provide products, services or partnerships that enable state and non-state actors to engage in repression and violence, both domestically and across borders.

Our data shows multiple instances of attacks on activists and journalists highlighting corporate complicity in conflict and genocide. A prominent example was the US sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, for exposing alleged business complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Protesters at arms fairs targeting companies selling weapons to Israel were detained in the United States, Turkey, Switzerland and France, whilst activists in New Zealand faced violence for protesting the militarisation of aerospace technology and its uses against civilian populations. A journalist in Canada was forcefully restrained and arrested by police for covering protests against the CANSEC arms show, targeting companies linked to weapons sales to Israel and the war in Gaza. In addition, 60 protesters were allegedly attacked with tear gas, batons and police dogs in Denmark, while three protesters were detained in Finland for condemning shipping company Maersk’s alleged transportation of military equipment to Israel. In December 2025, BHRC invited Maersk to respond to these allegations; it responded and said that the company fully respects the democratic right to peacefully protest.

Paradoxically, the rapid escalation of security narratives weakens the very security it claims to protect. Silencing defenders conceals abuses and allows harmful business practices to continue unchecked, fuelling conflict, instability and long-term economic risk. A comprehensive security approach, articulated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, involves recognising defenders as essential actors in safeguarding human rights, sustainable development and social cohesion, and ensuring business activity does not contribute to narratives or practices that put those defenders in danger.

Corporate capture, lobbying and the erosion of accountability

Corporate influence over political decision-making is reshaping regulatory environments and weakening human rights protections at both national and international levels. Through lobbying, privileged access to policymakers and sustained pressure during legislative negotiations, corporations are able to dilute safeguards designed to prevent and remedy business-related human rights harms and ensure meaningful engagement with defenders and affected communities, including mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence laws.

According to SOMO, these business actors, including ExxonMobil, pushed to scrap mandatory climate transition plans, remove the harmonized civil liability provision, and limit companies’ proactive due diligence obligations to their direct suppliers (tier 1). While risk-based due diligence on harms across the full supply chain – beyond tier 1 – eventually remained in place, sustained pressure contributed to the adoption of CSDDD amendments in February 2026 that rolled back some of its protections and complicated access to remedy for affected communities, while reducing legal certainty for companies. In particular, the Omnibus amendments drastically limited the scope of companies covered by the law. BHRC invited ExxonMobil to respond; it did not.

The CSDDD’s stakeholder engagement requirements were also weakened by narrowing the stages of due diligence when engagement must occur, increasing the risk of inappropriate box-ticking approaches as effective practice in line with the law may still require engagement at further stages depending on context. Furthermore, the Omnibus version no longer explicitly mentions civil society organisations (and NHRIs) in the stakeholder definition. This misses an opportunity to more expressly clarify that these and related actors, especially defenders, play key intersecting roles in meaningful engagement under the CSDDD as “legitimate representatives”, “experts”, or “directly affected” individuals and communities – as is still included in different articles and recitals. Despite significant weakening, the CSDDD remains a critical achievement and provides a new tool for affected communities to pursue corporate accountability.

Some civil society groups have also documented a deliberate, systematic attempt by large technology companies to weaken human rights protections and undermine democracy, including in the European Union, United States, Brazil, Kenya and India. This hurts responsible business, democracy, the full enjoyment of civic freedoms and respect for the rule of law are central to sustainable economic growth.

As regulatory safeguards are diluted and enforcement delayed, defenders are left operating in environments where corporate misconduct is harder to challenge. Corporate capture also shapes public narratives about business projects, contributing to justifying the silencing of dissent. This not only increases the risk of reprisals, surveillance and criminalisation, but also erodes public support for legitimacy of defenders’ work. Corporate influence over government policy contributes to a climate in which speaking out against business-related harm becomes more dangerous, while avenues for accountability become more limited.

The weaponisation of tech against civic space

Technology is increasingly weaponised to undermine democracy, shrink civic space and silence defenders. Global Witness, IM Defensoras and others have documented the misuse of digital tools by state and non-state actors to intimidate, discredit and criminalise those who challenge abuse and injustice.

These forms of digital attacks often disproportionately target women and gender diverse human rights defenders and include harassment, gendered hate speech, targeted surveillance, doxxing, and image and video-based abuse. According to a survey by UN Women in December 2025, 70% of women human rights defenders, activists and journalists who responded said they had experienced online violence in the course of their work. More than 40% said they faced offline attacks linked to this digital abuse, including physical or sexual assault, stalking, verbal harassment, and “swatting,” a tactic to get authorities to go to a location by making a false claim of violence happening inside.

At the same time, surveillance technologies and predictive policing tools are being deployed under the guise of security and efficiency. Activists are frequently misidentified as security risks due to biased models or data that is deliberately skewed or manipulated. Amnesty International’s investigation into the repression of Gen Z–led protests in Kenya documents how authorities weaponised social media monitoring, digital surveillance and online harassment to identify protesters, spread disinformation and justify arrests, demonstrating how digital tools are now central to protest suppression rather than exceptional measures. In Zimbabwe, Huawei and CloudWalk were accused of selling facial recognition surveillance technology, facilitating extensive monitoring of journalists. From spyware and mass data collection to algorithmic risk profiling, these systems enable authorities to pre-emptively target activists and normalise constant monitoring. In December 2025, BHRC invited Huawei and CloudWalk to respond; they did not. As these examples make clear, businesses play a central role in the weaponisation of technology against civic space. Companies develop, sell and maintain the systems used to monitor, profile and suppress activists, journalists, trade unionists and community leaders. Even where technologies are marketed for legitimate security or public order purposes, weak safeguards, opaque contracts and insufficient human rights due diligence enable its misuse.

These trends undermine democratic participation by eroding trust, chilling dissent, and concentrating power among Big Tech companies and authoritarian leaders – weakening civic space and limiting space for debate, and ultimately harming people and business.

In the face of increasing authoritarianism, repression of civic space and disregard for the rule of law, people in every country in the world are mobilising and fighting for their rights. This builds upon many years of community organising, non-violent protest and civil disobedience that have resulted in significant shared wins for humanity and our planet.

Civil disobedience is a protected form of protest under international human rights law that involves deliberate lawbreaking in a public and non-violent way concerning a matter of public interest. As the climate crisis worsens and channels for raising concerns about environmental risks close, some people are engaging in acts of civil disobedience to prevent further harm, including occupation of public spaces and disruption of business activities. Instead of understanding these actions as identifying legitimate human rights and environmental risks and addressing the root issues, state and business actors are meeting these forms of protest with increasing repression and attacks.

As UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention has said, “The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing, and that scientists have been documenting for decades, cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalised for it. The only legitimate response to peaceful environmental activism and civil disobedience at this point is that the authorities, the media, and the public realise how essential it is for us all to listen to what environmental defenders have to say.” Michel Forst later published the Guidelines on the Right to Peaceful Environmental Protest and Civil Disobedience to assist states in ensuring that peaceful environmental protesters are not penalised, persecuted or harassed for their involvement.

The following are just two examples highlighting the power of sustained collective resistance and resilience in the face of corporate abuse of power.

A world where business respects human rights and contributes to advancing environmental sustainability is possible. The most important action business can take to prevent attacks on defenders and minimise their own risks is to not violate rights in the first place. Many people – defenders, human rights and sustainability staff in companies, responsible investors and some government officials – are working to realise this vision. In the video below, defenders share their perspectives, including what gives them hope for creating a world where business respects human rights.

There is clear guidance for companies, investors and governments on how we get there – see our detailed recommendations here.