“We’re in a war, I never thought at this time in a democratic South Africa that we would face these struggles. We are fighting for our Right to say NO. This land is our ancestral land; we cannot be moved….” – Nonhle Mbuthuma; Amadiba Crisis Committee, Xolobeni, South Africa
From the dense Equatorial forests of Congo, the lungs of Africa, to the oil wells of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, to the vastness of Namakwaland in South Africa and the flooded plains of Bargny, Senegal, and to Tanzania, where Indigenous peoples are being evicted from their ancestral territories for tourism – communities are saying NO to the exploitation of their lands and natural resources. Across Africa, local people are resisting land grabs and threats to their spiritual and cultural ways of life. Mbuthuma’s words resonate deeply – it is a war, and communities and women are fighting for their survival.
November 25 – December 10 marks the international 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. It’s a timely moment to spotlight those on the frontlines battling not just environmental destruction, but also the intersectional violence communities face in these conflict zones, particularly women and children.
Soaring demands for ‘green’ minerals fuels more violence
From the 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, a Honduran environmental human rights activist who was killed for her leadership in opposing the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, which threatened the sacred Gualcarque River and the Lenca people’s ancestral lands, to the 2020 brutal killing of Mam Fikile Ntshangase, who was gunned down in front of her grandchild in reprisal for her adamant fight to stop the expansion of the Tendele Coal Mine in her community of Somkhele, South Africa – the brave resistance of women across the Global South remains a clarion call for others to protect and amplify.
Berta and Mam Fikile represent a fraction of the countless killings, rapes, threats, and intimidation experienced by women and communities who dare to speak out in defence of their land and natural resources from large-scale extractive activities such as mining, large fisheries, and monoculture plantations.
Global Witness reports that at least 146 people were killed or disappeared in 2024 while defending land, water and forests, bringing the number of documented defender killings between 2012 to 2024 globally to 2,253. This stark record reflects the deadly cost that environmental and human rights defenders have paid. Women environmental activists and human rights defenders are on the frontlines of this war. In 2023, mining and the extractive industry were responsible for the deaths of 29 environmental and land defenders.
The sharp increase between 2023 and 2024 is largely attributed to the soaring demand for minerals to fuel the ‘green’ energy transition. This global appetite for critical minerals from Africa robs communities of their natural resources without their consent or fair compensation, while devastating their communal lands and territories. As more communities are impacted, they are forced to defend their rights and their land. Women and children are disproportionally more vulnerable to violence, displacement, and the growing impacts of the climate crisis.
Equatorial forests under threat
WoMin’s recent visit to the Mbandaka in the Equateur Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo revealed the human and societal costs of the growing demands for transitional minerals. The Equatorial forest forms part of the Congo Basin. Its rich peat swamp forest plays a vital role in regulating the global climate, absorbing billions of tons of carbon dioxide each year. Its ecological role is even more important today as we witness the decimation of the Amazon Basin by multinationals and government approving oil drilling off the Amazon coast, a rich, biodiverse zone and home to Indigenous communities.
Likewise, the Equateur Province has been earmarked for oil exploration. For many Indigenous Peoples and local communities, particularly women, the stakes are high and deeply personal. Communities rely on the lands and waters for their daily survival, livelihoods, cultural practices, and spiritual identity. The proposed explorations pose risks of polluting the land, eroding traditional and cultural ways of life, creating wildlife and human conflict, and community displacements.
Standing strong in the face of adversity and repression
The women from Equateur are mobilising and standing up to challenge extractive activities taking place in their community. For them, it is a fight for survival and preservation of nature, their livelihoods and cultural and spiritual practices. This however comes at a cost. The women spoke about the many dangers of standing up that include rape, threats of harm to those who challenge or question, and threats of marriages ending, as women are not expected to have a voice in the community. Despite the risks of reprisal, they remain unshakable. For the community and the women, standing up is not only an act of courage, but also one that is driven by a deeper sense of what is right. It is about survival, and for most, a do or die situation. They stand bravely on the shoulders of giants long gone and others who are continuing the fight.
WoMin remains committed to supporting Equateur women, and communities like them across the continent, to organise by offering practical support tools and resources to strategise, reflect and plan to prevent or minimise violence. Through our Violence Against Women work, we are supporting communities to be safer as they confront power but also recognise that threats and the violence they face, not only from actively resisting and confronting power but that which is also about being located in communities of capital interest to the extractive companies.
Our commitment is to ensure that Berta, Mam Fikile and the many other environmental rights activists across the globe whose lives were taken away prematurely are not in vain. During these 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, we remember them and other women’s courage and fierce determination to protect their lands and life. As the women in Equateur sing and dance to close off the meeting, hope is renewed that through concerted efforts, they can salvage the Congo Basin, so that the world can breathe, and their livelihoods and spiritual wellness can be restored.
