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Nini Cárdenas

HRD, President
Communal Action Board of Carmen de Chucurí Municipality

Nini Cárdenas is an environmental human rights defender, the president of the Communal Action Board of Carmen de Chucurí municipality, and a member of national environmental platforms such Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking and Movimiento Nacional Ambiental. Nini Cárdenas has spent many years defending the land and rights of peasant communities in the Magdalena Medio region against extractive companies implementing illegal projects. Despite being subject to multiple threats and the target of surveillance and physical attacks, Nini Cárdenas has courageously continued her work as a human rights defender in the absence of state protection.

HRDs in Colombia work in a violent and unsafe environment. They are subjected to threats, intimidation, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, physical assaults, torture, killings, illegal searches of their homes and offices and stigmatisation as a result of their activities in defence of human rights.