A record number of people faced judicial harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and physical violence in 2025 for speaking out against businesses, a new report found — and most cases were tied to the energy sector.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre documented nearly 800 incidents drawn from publicly available sources. Three-quarters targeted climate, land, or environmental defenders; and mining, fossil fuels, and agribusiness accounted for the highest number of cases. The single largest source of incidents was the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a project stretching across Uganda and Tanzania led by TotalEnergies, which has drawn condemnation from local communities over forced evictions, lack of compensation, poor working conditions, and environmental degradation. In some cases, individuals were arrested and detained for taking part in peaceful protests, according to the report.
Two mines tied to the clean energy transition, one in Indonesia and one in Panama, also ranked in the top five, suggesting renewables companies are “possibly repeating a lot of the same harms as fossil fuel companies,” Christen Dobson, one of the report’s lead authors, said, “because it’s still an extractivist model.”