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On 1 May 2020, human rights defender and leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) Arif Wazir, was shot by unidentified gunmen. The attack took place near his home in Wanna, South Waziristan in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. The human rights defender was rushed to hospital, but succumbed to his injuries the following day on 2 May 2020. Prior to the shooting, on 17 April 2020, Arif Wazir was arrested by police in Wanna on account of a speech he made during a visit to Afghanistan, which was considered ‘anti-national’.

On 12 July 2021, the Regional Trial Court of Davao del Norte dismissed the fabricated charge of murder filed against indigenous rights defender Windel Bolinget by the Tagum City Police.

On 21 January 2021, human rights defender Windel Bolinget presented himself before the National Bureau of Investigation in Baguio City following the filing of a fabricated murder case against him. The human rights defender is keen to prove his innocence and to access protection in a climate where extra-judicial killings of human rights defenders regularly take place

On 23 April 2020, the body of disappeared human rights defender and journalist Sajid Hussain was recovered from a river in Uppsala, Sweden. Sajid Hussain, a Pakistani journalist and Baloch rights activist, had sought refuge in Sweden as he was compelled to leave Pakistan in 2012 due to threats to his life. On 2 March 2020, the human rights defender went missing, after he was last seen boarding a train from Stockholm to Uppsala. His body was found nearly two months later.

On 4 March 2023, a Hong Kong government-designated national security judge at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court convicted woman human rights defender Chow Hang-tung and two other leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (the Hong Kong Alliance) for refusing to comply with the Hong Kong police’s

On 18 April 2023, human rights defender Arkadeep Goswami was threatened by two unidentified men at his residence in Kolkata, West Bengal and also via telephone. The two men visited his home on 18 April 2023 at around 3 PM when the human rights defender was not at home and questioned his parents about his whereabouts. They asked his mother to call Arkadeep Goswami and threatened him via phone to reveal his location.

On 14 December 2022, the High Court in Hong Kong ruled in favour of woman human rights defender and barrister Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤) in her appeal against her conviction and 15-month sentence for authoring articles in the media that “incited others to participate in an unauthorised assembly.” She was convicted and sentenced in January 2022 over her role in the 2021 Tian’anmen Massacre vigil in Hong Kong, which was banned by the police on COVID-19 grounds.

On 15 July 2022, the Bangladeshi Armed Police Battalion 16 conducted a raid at the house of Rohingya human rights defenders and journalists Saiful Arakani and Aziz Arakani in Nayapara Registered Camp. Unable to find them at the residence, the police physically assaulted and arrested the defenders’ father Sultan Ahmed and their brother-in-law Nur Bareq. While Sultan Ahmed was released by the police after four hours, Nur Bareq remains under detention for more than four days without being made to appear in court. He was also severely beaten and tortured in the custody of the police.

On 20 April 2021, officers from the Nicaraguan National Police detained, physically assaulted and threatened woman human rights defender Francys Valdivia Machado, her mother Francisca Machado and her friends Stephanie Martínez, Ana Rivera and Marcos Silva in the municipality of Estelí. The five were detained during a commemoration of the third anniversary of the murder of Franco Valdivia, Francys Valdivia Machado’s brother, during the national protests in 2018.

Approximately three weeks since he was last seen on, 5 March 2016, the whereabouts of human rights defender Mr Fidencio Gómez Sántiz remain unknown. He was last seen leaving his family in Ocosingo, Chiapas. The prominent local human rights organisations Comité Cerezo believes that  Fidencio Gómez Sántiz's disappearance may have been carried out with the participation or acquiescence of Mexican law enforcement agents in what would constitute an enforced disappearance.

On 25 September 2020, environmental rights defenders of the Khao Lao Yai-Pha Jun Dai forest conservation group were able to successfully reclaim land from a mining project in the Nongbua Lamphu Province. The project had long been impacting the health and environment of the community. This struggle against the mining project, that has lasted over two decades has come with numerous death threats and killings of members of the group. Most recently, since early August 2020, there have been increasing death threats against one of the group’s advisors, Lertsak Kumkongsak.