Targeted violence against social activists: data, patterns, and cases

International workshop

Recent years have seen an incipient debate about the targeted violence against social activists, with a focus on the killing of human rights defenders, environmental activists, local community leaders, and representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) broadly speaking. Whereas violence against civilians in (civil) war contexts is an established field of study, research on this type of violence – which is being observed mainly outside of conventional armed conflict settings (in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Honduras or the Philippines) – is much less developed and rather fragmented. Existing country-specific studies hardly refer to each other. In recent years, scholars, in particular from the field of political geography/political ecology, have started to use existing datasets (provided mainly by NGOs) for comparative analyses as well. Against this background, this international workshop aims at taking stock of what we know – and don’t know – about the spatial patterns, the temporal dynamics, the causes as well as the consequences of the targeted killing of social activists. In order to do so, it brings together knowledge on different regional and country contexts, critically reviews the quality of the data that exists, and identifies preliminary findings, research gaps and avenues for future research. Overarching questions that will be dealt with during the workshop include:

• What are the features and boundaries of the phenomenon at hand? What type of violence are we talking about? How do assassinations relate to other forms of violence against social activists, and how does violence against social activists relate to violence against other types of actors?
• What does our data (not) grasp and how reliably does it do so? How can we built upon and improve existing data (sets)?
• What do we know about the trends, patterns, and causes of the assassination of social activists? To what extent does this type of violence indicate a transformation of political violence? Are we witnessing a general increase in this type of violence?
• What are the consequences of the assassinations of social activists? Do they undermine, or rather increase, solidarity and trust within social movements, local communities, and associations? How do they impact relations vis-à-vis the state? What do we know about measures and strategies of protection?

Organization: Juan Albarracín & Jonas Wolff, with Franziska Kasten

Participation upon prior registration only. For registration, please send an email to Franziska Kasten: kasten@soz.uni-frankfurt.de. Registration Deadline: 30 June 2024.