Rich countries in the North are taking harsh and unclear disciplinary measures to suppress climate change protests, while criticizing authorities in the South for pursuing similar policies.
These are the conclusions of a report by the NGO Climate Rights International (CRI), which reveals the increasingly harsh treatment with which climate activists are being tried in Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Among the repressive measures used by rich countries, the report detects preventive detentions, situations of harassment and long prison sentences. A violation of the obligation of governments to protect fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, assembly and association.
The CRI report also highlights the criticism that these same governments usually level at developing country authorities for not respecting the right to peaceful protest. According to Brad Adams, CRI’s director, “governments too often take a tough stance on the right to peaceful protest in other countries, but when there is a type of protest in their own country that they don’t like, they prevent it by passing laws and deploying police.”
Authorities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe have responded to nonviolent climate change protests with mass arrests and draconian laws that carry long prison sentences. Some politicians and media outlets have described people who take part in such protests as vandals, saboteurs, or ecoterrorists.
Several human rights and environmental activists have expressed concern about these repressive measures and are calling on governments to protect the right to non-violent protest.
“These activists are trying to save the planet and, in doing so, save humanity,” Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper last year. “These are people we should be protecting, but governments and corporations see them as a threat to be neutralized; ultimately, it’s about power and economics.”
The worsening climate crisis has led to record global temperatures in 2024, leading to food shortages, economic hardship and mass displacement, not to mention deadly wildfires and floods.
According to the CRI report, instead of taking urgent action to rapidly reduce fossil fuels and avoid ecological collapse, many relatively wealthy countries have focused on stopping those who sound the alarm through protests and acts of civil disobedience.
“You don’t have to agree with the tactics of climate activists to understand the importance of defending your freedom of speech and your right to protest,” Adams said. “Governments should listen to climate protesters’ call for urgent action to address the climate crisis, instead of jailing them and undermining civil rights.”
The report’s authors cite several cases of developed countries boasting the right to protest in other countries while taking harsh, disciplinary measures to crack down on climate activists at home.
In July this year, for example, the UK government responded to a UN report on the rights to peaceful assembly and protest: “These rights are essential to the functioning of society, providing citizens with a platform to fight for positive change. However, this civic space is increasingly being challenged by governments and authoritarian actors who seek to silence dissent because they feel vulnerable to scrutiny and accountability.”
Some of the findings of the Climate Rights International report include: record prison sentences for nonviolent protests in several countries, including Germany, the UK and the US; pretrial detention of people suspected of planning peaceful protests; passing draconian laws to ban the vast majority of peaceful protests; and measures to prevent jurors from hearing during the trial why activists participated in peaceful protests, which critics say is an attack on the foundations of a fair trial.
The NGO Climate Rights International has called on democratic governments around the world to end authoritarian repression and protect citizens’ right to protest.
In Adams’ words, “Governments must view protesters and activists as allies in the fight against climate change, not as criminals. “The repression of peaceful protests is not only a violation of their fundamental rights, but it can be interpreted by authoritarian governments as a green light to persecute climate, environmental and human rights activists in their countries.”
