According to the most recent Front Line Defenders Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders at Risk, around the world 281 activists were targeted and killed in 2016. At least 136 of them were environmental rights activists. While extrajudicial killings like these attract immediate condemnation, corporate interests are using other, less obviously violent means to undermine the important work of these activists: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are used to intimidate, harass, and silence activists who are working to expose corporate injustices and human rights violations. As intended, such lawsuits have a clear chilling effect on activism, silencing critical voices and stifling accountability.

Interested in reading more on environmental issues? View this selection on Giving Compass.

The use of SLAPP suits in South Africa is becoming a trend. Whether the company wins or loses, CER shoulders major expenses in defending themselves against a lawsuit that they see as being without merit, constituting avoidance for accountability. Too often, when large companies like these are pressed to account for environmental damage and violations, they resort to SLAPP suits and point to their corporate social responsibility ventures to distract from the harm they are accused of perpetrating.

Different jurisdictions have responded differently to similar cases. The United States has outlawed these suits. As one judge presiding over a SLAPP suit observed:

The conceptual thread that binds [SLAPPs] is that they are suits without substantial merit that are brought by private interests to stop citizens from exercising their political rights or to punish them for having done so...The longer the litigation can be stretched out, the more litigation that can be churned, the greater the expense that is inflicted and the closer the SLAPP filer moves to success. The purpose of such gamesmanship ranges from simple retribution for past activism to discouraging future activism.

Advocates and activists may always be vulnerable when facing big businesses with deep pockets and seemingly bottomless profits, but they don’t have to be unprepared for the challenge.

Read the source article at Ford Foundation