Julia van Leuven had this information in German media company Deutsche Welle:

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor on Thursday presents her report on the situation of human rights defenders.

“Hundreds of Human Rights Defenders are being killed every year, and there is little sign that this is going to stop. We also know that many of these murders are signaled in advance with threats,” the Special Rapporteur told DW. Those threats can be direct or indirect, targeted at individuals or more general, according to the report. They “are often intended to intimidate, silence and stop human rights defenders from carrying out their work. There is no more direct attack on civil society space than the killing of human rights defenders,” the report reads.

According to the Special Rapporteur, the problem is “widespread.” Since 2015, a total of 1,323 human rights defenders have been killed and at least 281 were killed in 2019 alone, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found. The killings were committed in 64 countries worldwide, a third of UN member states.

Read the full article here.