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All over the world, women defend the rights of individuals and communities facing oppression, discrimination and violence. Their work is powerful, and controversial. And it often meets with bitter, and violent, opposition.

Most women human rights defenders (WHRDs) are well aware of the risks they face. Activists know, from painful experience, the price that many pay for putting their bodies, and their families, on the line.

As human rights defenders around the world put their lives on the line to challenge dictators, destructive multi-national corporations, religious conservatives, and oppressive regimes, there pervades a well-resourced and coordinated strategy of defamation, criminalisation and violence depl

As the 2016 Annual Report documents, at least 156 human rights defenders were killed or died in detention in 2015. More than half of those killings, 87, took place in Latin America, with Colombia alone accounting for 54 killings. Outside the Americas one of the starkest figures was the total of 31 targeted killings of HRDs in the Philippines.