Overdue Diligence: Why human rights defenders Still need a UK law on mandatory due diligence
The urgency has never been greater
“Profit cannot be put before life … the only way to guarantee that British companies abroad operate legally and free from violence is to hold them to account. If the UK government fails to take action, human rights defenders will continue to die.”
In 2024, Peace Brigades International (PBI) UK published The Case for Change, documenting how human rights defenders across Colombia, Honduras, Indonesia, and Mexico faced reprisals for opposing extractive and industrial projects tied to UK businesses and investors.
Updated evidence shows that despite partial legal victories by communities, the lack of mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence in the UK leaves defenders exposed to ongoing attacks and environmental harm. Overdue Diligence: Why human rights defenders still need a UK law on mandatory due diligence documents updates to five cases of brutal reprisals faced by human rights defenders protesting extractive and renewable energy projects with links to UK companies or investors, first featured in the 2024 report. Voluntary commitments have failed; the overarching picture remains one of unchecked corporate impunity.
What Has Changed? Key Case Updates
This report tracks developments across five core cases featured in our initial report, demonstrating why voluntary corporate social responsibility is not enough:
In Mexico a landmark ruling in 2025 awarded the Ejido El Bajío community over 13 billion pesos, equivalent to more than £555 million, corresponding to the value of the gold illegally extracted from ejido lands between 2005 and 2013. Despite this victory local groups maintain that no progress has been made toward enforcement of the ruling and communities continue to denounce intimidation, harassment and attempts to re-open the mine.
Devastation of ecosystems and state repression in Indonesia, where in 2025, 16 attacks against defenders linked to the Grasberg gold and copper mine were recorded, while the mine’s operating permit has been extended beyond 2041.
Environmental defender, Jani Silva, continues to face threats after campaigning against pollution allegedly linked to UK-listed Amerisur’s oil fields.
In Colombia, Afro-Colombian and Wayúu Indigenous communities continue to demand the return and restoration of ancestral territory linked to the Cerrejón coal mine, while civil society has lodged a complaint before the UK National Contact Point for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Local communities raise concerns regarding patterns emerging around Mexico's wider Interoceanic Corridor development, amidst questionable consultation processes and criminalisation of renewable energy project opponents in Mexico.
The Human Cost of Inaction
Our report comes amid a context of growing erosion of respect for human rights globally and a continuing lack of accountability for harms linked to business activities and finance. The Business & Human Rights Centre has documented 332 attacks on human rights defenders connected to UK companies between 2015 and 2026, including the murder of 30 activists. Increasingly, human rights violations are tied to land and resource extraction, with a documented 124 land and environmental defenders killed in 2025 alone for protecting their land and livelihoods according to Global Witness. Within this context, PBI provides protection to over two thousand human rights defenders globally per year; almost 60% of whom are working to protect land, environment or Indigenous rights, who are often at risk due to intersecting business interests.
The Solution: A UK Business, Human Rights and Environment Act
“We know this is the tip of the iceberg. Until there is a mandatory legal framework that addresses the ongoing failure of businesses and investors to identify or protect against human rights abuses and environmental harm in company operations and supply chains, these harms will continue.”
Decades of frameworks which require only voluntary action on business, human rights and the environment has persistently been a concern for human rights defenders, who experience real harm, but are faced with significant obstacles when seeking justice or remedy for harms linked to business activities and finance. The calls from communities and civil society on the need for mandatory legal frameworks has therefore remained consistent and hasn’t faltered.
The push for legally binding measures to hold UK companies to account is long over due, but now takes place against a dramatically shifted backdrop. Several governments including the UK, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Indonesia, South Korea, Switzerland and Thailand have introduced corporate accountability legislation or are currently undertaking studies, consultations or signalling their intention to introduce corporate accountability laws in the last 2 years. Civil society is also in the process of outlining proposals for such laws in countries such as Peru and Canada.
Adopting a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act in the UK therefore remains not only relevant, but urgent. To do so, the government should open public and accessible consultations on a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act, and develop a draft law which includes the principal elements set out in our 2024 report and this update. Human rights defenders and communities affected by business abuses should be heard in these deliberations. Parliament should get behind the Act, and parliamentarians should encourage the government to act sooner rather than later.
The report demonstrates that, if a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act were in place in the UK, it would have required lenders like HSBC to identify the heightened risks facing Indigenous communities, using their leverage to ensure meaningful free, prior and informed consent. It would contain strong, explicit safeguards for human rights defenders and their communities, which companies would be mandated to undertake in the case of Fresnillo’s Minera Penmont.
Human rights and environmental defenders are taking a stand to ensure business respect for human rights and the environment. It is time the UK government did so too. The case for change is still clear and is well overdue.
For more information about PBI UK’s policy advocacy, visit our resource hub here. For any queries you may have regarding the report please reach out to advocacy@peacebrigades.org.uk.
[1] We have endeavoured to include company responses to allegations in our report, where available. See the main body of the report for further details.
