by Adam Bentley
During the course of my Human Rights, the Development and Community Resilience we have analyzed several cases in which violence has been inflicted upon local indigenous populations for protesting the degradation of their environment and land. One of these cases was the Social and Economic Rights Action Center and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (SERAC) v. Nigeria brought before the African Commission on Human & Peoples Rights. 1 In this case Nigerian security forces have “attacked, burned and destroyed several Ogoni villages and homes under the pretext of dislodging officials and supporters of the Movement of the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP).2 In this class, we also watched a video that documented the murders of environmental activists around the globe. Horrified by the sheer disregard of human life and their environment, I was inspired to conduct research on the tactical violence inflicted upon indigenous populations and environmental activists seeking to preserve the environment, to analyze exactly how prevalent this issue is, what locations this violence is most concentrated in, and most importantly where do these armed forces come from?