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.

See full report here.

Additional key findings were:

• Attacks on defenders raising concerns about business occurred in relation to almost every corporate sector in every region of the world, with 42% of attacks taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean and 30% in Asia and the Pacific.
• Three quarters of attacks (75%) were against climate, land and/or environmental defenders.
• Fifty-three defenders speaking out about business-related harms were killed in 2025. Nearly a third (30%) of the defenders killed were Indigenous.
• The most common type of attack was judicial harassment, including criminalisation and SLAPPs –accounting for more than half of all attacks recorded (52%),
• Mining, fossil fuels and agribusiness – leading drivers of deforestation – continued to be the sectors connected with the highest number of attacks.
• Forty-six attacks were against defenders raising concerns about arms and weapons companies and their complicity in conflict and genocide – a significant increase from only two attacks recorded per year in 2023 and in 2024.
• The five projects and companies associated with the highest number of attacks in 2025 were:
  • The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda and Tanzania
  • The Grasberg Mine in Indonesia
  • Aerospace, defence and security company Leonardo in Italy
  • Cobre Panamá Mine in Panama
  • Agribusiness company Dinant in Honduras.
• In cases where the perpetrators of attacks on people raising concerns about business were identified, 86% were state actors – usually the police, judicial system or local authorities. Even when abuses are carried out by state actors, companies can still be connected to them, such as by urging authorities to disperse peaceful protests or amplifying misinformation that leads to criminalisation.
• The increasing overlap between security-driven governance and corporate influence, amplified by digital technologies used to restrict civic space, is intensifying limits on civic freedoms and heightening risks for defenders and communities worldwide.

BHRC invited TotalEnergies, TotalEnergies EP Uganda, EACOP, Uganda National Oil Company, Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Stanbic Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, First Quantum Minerals, Korea Mine Rehabilitation and Mineral Resources Corporation (KOMIR), Dinant, Leonardo, Freeport McMoRan, PT Freeport Indonesia, PT Mineral Industri Indonesia, Silvercorp Metals, Salazar Resources, Curimining, Dutch Development Bank (FMO), Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), Exxon Mobil, Energy Transfer, Gibson Dunn and TigerSwan to respond.

The responses from TotalEnergies, TotalEnergies EP Uganda, EACOP, Uganda National Oil Company, First Quantum Minerals, Korea Mine Rehabilitation and Mineral Resources Corporation (KOMIR), Dinant, Freeport McMoRan, PT Freeport Indonesia, Silvercorp Metals, Curimining, Dutch Development Bank (FMO) can be found below.

The other companies did not respond.