• In 2024, we registered at least 7,495 attacks against 585 women human rights defenders and 93 organizations or groups in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. This is an increase of 11% in relation to the previous year, primarily due to an increase in the number of digital attacks documented in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

• Seven women defenders were killed in 2024, five in Mexico – Ángela Meraz León, searcher and president of Union and Strength for our Disappeared in Tecate, Baja California; Virginia and Adriana Ortiz García, searchers and members of the Movement for Triqui Unity and Struggle (MULT) in Oaxaca, and Danna Rodríguez and Valentina Sody, victims of transfemicide in Morelos – and two in El Salvador – Rosa Elvira Flores, member of the Salvadorean Women’s Movement (MSM) and Ana Luz Montano, community leader and member of Association for Community Development (ADESCO) in Tecoluca. Additionally, 11 women defenders suffered attempted femicides, 2 suffered attempted transfemicides, and 26 received death threats. 

• Nearly half of the assailants identified (42%) were actors linked to the State: public authorities, police and military agents, often acting to protect the interests of private power-holders.

Source: IM-Defensoras’ Registry of Attacks.

MAIN REGIONAL TRENDS: MILITARIZATION, REPRESSION, CRIMINALIZATION, FORCED DISPLACEMENT, DIGITAL VIOLENCE

The data collected in our registry system points to a series of trends within the national and regional contexts that allow us to anticipate risks and – in dialogue with other Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP) strategies – accompany and embody support among women defenders at risk in order to protect and care for our lives, those of our communities and our political projects. The main trends identified in the region in 2024 are:

• STATE VIOLENCE: MILITARIZATION AND POLICE REPRESSION

Throughout the region, we see an intensification of militarization and the use of heavy-handed strategies [“mano dura”] to repress human rights defenders. Authorities at different levels (local, state and national/federal) increase social control in order to protect economic and political interests, using mechanisms like the states of emergency in El Salvador and Honduras, or the inclusion of a “voluntary police” and “patriotic military reserve forces” in the Nicaraguan Constitution – effectively institutionalizing the use of parapolice forces. In Mexico, while the federal government maintains a policy of not repressing social protest, state and local governments continue to use security forces to repress mobilizations convened by different social movements. 

Thus, in 2024, we registered 170 cases involving use of police violence to repress protests, 58 cases of torture and 117 cases of cruel and inhumane treatment. The majority of these State-perpetrated attacks took place during citizen protests in Mexico, evictions and attempted evictions in Honduras, and the political imprisonment of women defenders in Nicaragua.  

• INSTRUMENTALIZING THE STATE APPARATUS TO CRIMINALIZE WOMEN DEFENDERS

The year 2024 reveals the continuation of practices that instrumentalize judicial power to smear and criminalize the defense of human rights. This is reflected in the 82 arbitrary arrests of women human rights defenders and 54 launches of legal proceedings and criminal or administrative trials that are not supported by facts or that are clearly based on false information.

Examples of this include the cases of Nolvia Obando, woman defender of land and territory, detained and criminalized since 2023 after being unjustly accused of land usurpation in Honduras; the unjust criminalization and imprisonment of Kenia Hernández, woman defender of Indigenous Amuzga rights in Mexico; the arbitrary detention and judicial process on charges of illicit organization against Verónica Delgado, who has been searching for her disappeared daughter in El Salvador; and the political imprisonment of Nancy Henríquez, Indigenous Miskita leader who continues to be held in isolation in a maximum security cell in Nicaragua, charged with the crimes of “undermining national integrity” and “spreading fake news”. As evidence of the alarming continuity of this trend, just in the first 5 months of 2025, we have registered 24 arbitrary detentions of women defenders in the region.

Connected to this, new laws and legal reforms were approved or implemented in 2024 that enable the criminalization of people and organizations that defend human rights, such as the Cybersecurity and Data Protection Law in El Salvador and the reforms to laws regarding cybercrime, organized crime, asset laundering and financial supervision in Nicaragua. In Mexico, there is a persistent practice of short-term arbitrary detentions carried out by state and local authorities during marches and demonstrations, revealing the use of the justice system to generate fear and inhibit protest and the defense of human rights. 

• THE NEVER-ENDING TRAGEDY OF FORCED DISPLACEMENTS

In 2024, we documented 120 cases of women human rights defenders who were forced to leave their homes and communities for their security due to the systematic attacks and violence that they faced. Forced displacement is the culmination of a mechanism of punishment that seeks to isolate women defenders from their networks of support and struggle, affecting them and their families, as well as their social movements and the community fabric. When they are forced to leave their territories, key organizational processes are interrupted, thus disarticulating or weakening the capacity for collective resistance and exposing communities to greater risks.

In Mexico, the violence perpetrated by organized crime continues to force many people, including human rights defenders, to flee their territories. In Honduras, forced evictions to defend the interests of oil and sugar companies and landowners have displaced entire communities. In El Salvador, the harassment and intimidation of voices critical of the government have forced women human rights defenders and independent journalists to flee the country. In Nicaragua, political persecution, exile and migratory repression have forced women human rights defenders and their loved ones into exile. 

• DIGITAL VIOLENCE AS A TOOL FOR POLITICAL CONTROL

In a global context where powerful political and economic leaders and groups reproduce anti-feminist, xenophobic and homo-lesbo-transphobic hate speech, digital attacks against Mesoamerican women defenders cannot be seen as isolated incidents; they must be understood as part of a structural strategy aimed at criminalizing and neutralizing activism, delegitimizing social struggles and weakening the organizational fabric of feminist and popular grassroots movements.

We registered 2,480 digital attacks in 2024, meaning that one in three attacks against women defenders and organizations registered in the region took place in the digital sphere. Nearly half of these attacks (49%) targeted collectives of women defenders, while 40% targeted women defenders personally and 11% targeted organizations.

The main forms of digital violence registered include the questioning of women defenders’ morality or leadership (462), defamation campaigns and spreading false information (403), viral hate (221), smear campaigns (138) and harassment (129). These attacks are foremost perpetrated by unknown online users (64%); other perpetrators include public authorities (11%), political parties (5%) and members of religious or fundamentalist groups (5%). In many instances, we found that the attacks may have been orchestrated or made viral by trolls financed by States or de facto powers to spread anti-rights narratives that position women defenders as internal enemies.

Digital violence is an extension of the repression that we have historically suffered, with profound impacts at the individual and collective level. It generates fear, self-censorship and displacement, as well as a deliberate erosion of the public legitimacy of women defenders. 

• EXPRESSIONS OF PATRIARCHY IN THE ATTACKS

By defending human rights and building feminist counter-hegemonic alternatives, we are challenging the patriarchal mandates that seek to silence the power of women and sex-gender dissidences. Our Mesoamerican registry shows that in 2024, at least one out of every three attacks against women defenders was marked by expressions of sexist violence (34%). These include misogynist expressions; hate speech or defamation; minimizing their reports about attacks or the risks they face; stigmatization or blame for neglecting or breaking with traditional gender roles (being a good mother, wife, caregiver); and sexual violence (threats, harassment, abuse, rape). One example is the verbal abuse we receive based on our appearance, sexual orientation, identity or gender expressions, such as “fat clown”, “mustached old lady”, “bitch”, “slut”, “dyke”, “fake woman” and “sex changed”. 

Furthermore, we identified that 36% of the attacks directed at women defenders personally also include attacks on people close to her, especially her family (primarily children, parents and partners). These attacks seek to weaken our close support networks, break us emotionally and generate feelings of guilt, impotence and desperation – all as attempts to silence our voices. 

• AND NEVERTHELESS, OUR STRUGGLES PERSIST, ADVANCE AND REINVENT THEMSELVES

Despite the hostile context that we face, our territories, communities and movements continue every day to construct realities that advance life, hope and profound transformations. We are inspired, for example, by the defense of territory and the alternatives for a life with dignity carried out by peoples and communities in Honduras; by our Nicaraguan feminist sisters who, despite absolute repression, reinvent ways to struggle for justice and rebuild the social fabric within the country; by the collectives that struggle for the sexual and reproductive rights and liberties of women and sexual dissidences in El Salvador; by the feminist networks of care that become stronger to confront violence in Mexico. The diasporas of women defenders from all over Mesoamerica who have been forced to move are organizing themselves and continue resisting from different territories. 

A LOOK AT THE COUNTRIES 

• EL SALVADOR: AUTHORITARIANISM, OBSTRUCTING PROTESTS AND DIGITAL VIOLENCE

In El Salvador, we have witnessed the deepening of authoritarianism marked by a continuation of the state of emergency imposed since March 2022 – in the context of which numerous arbitrary acts and human rights infringements have been perpetrated – and the re-election of Nayib Bukele in February 2024, despite the Salvadorean Constitution prohibiting consecutive presidential terms. This was followed by a constitutional reform in January 2025 enabling the same legislature to approve and ratify constitutional amendments, thus weakening democratic checks and balances, and the May 2025 approval of  the “Foreign Agents” law that legalizes the mechanisms to cancel and silence human rights organizations whose work makes the government uncomfortable, imposing tax burdens and financial controls and audits on human rights organizations, thus creating serious obstacles to their work and opening new legal avenues for their criminalization. 

In 2024, we documented 628 attacks on women defenders and organizations or groups that defend human rights in El Salvador, a 200% increase compared to the attacks documented the previous year (2023). The majority of these attacks (57%) were directed at groups of women defenders during collective actions. One of many examples is the police surveillance and harassment registered during the 18 May march convened by the Salvadorean LGBTI Federation to commemorate International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. We also documented intimidation and smear campaigns against those who participated in the “White March”, a demonstration in defense of public education and healthcare convened in response to State budget cuts, and the repression against defenders of land and territory who protested the repression and silencing of community leaders in Santa Marta and opposed the recent legalization of metal mining that was approved on 23 December 2024.

In a scenario marked by constant State surveillance in the digital sphere, 57% of the attacks against women human rights defenders documented in El Salvador in 2024 were perpetrated through digital means. The majority of these attacks seek to stigmatize human rights defense: 83 attacks were connected to spreading hate speech; 47 relate to incidents ridiculing women defenders and their organizations; 34 are cases of cyberbullying; 38 are digital harassment; 28 relate to spreading false or manipulated information; and 23 sought to challenge or question women defenders’ morality or ethics. While many of the attacks come from unknow online users, we identified the possible use of trolls funded by the State or anti-rights groups as being behind these attacks. Additionally, we noted how high-ranking public officials and communications media aligned with the State use public speeches and social media to smear, defame and criminalize those who defend human rights, reinforcing a hostile climate of reprisals against women defenders.

Finally, we registered the use of criminalization of women defenders and their family members as a State strategy to harass women defenders and journalists. One example of this is the hours-long arbitrary detention of the mother of woman defender Gladys Ardón in April 2024, which was a clear act of intimidation against the woman defender due to her work as president of the organization Esperanza SV. The recent detention of Ruth Eleonora López, lawyer from the organization CRISTOSAL in May 2025 shows how this strategy continues to be used.

• HONDURAS: MILITARIZATION AND EXTRACTIVIST DISPOSSESSION

The state of emergency in Honduras has not served to reduce crime rates, but it has been useful in enabling the constant harassment and surveillance of women human rights defenders and legitimizing arbitrary acts, illegal detentions and excessive use of force against people perpetrated by police and military agents. In addition, the policies of territorial dispossession and extractivism persist. 

In 2024, we documented 2,735 attacks against at least 96 women defenders and 18 organizations and groups defending human rights in Honduras. As highlighted by the National Network of Women Defenders in Honduras in its Report on the Situation of Honduran Women Defenders 2024, a large percentage of registered attacks (82%) were collective attacks including evictions; attacks during mobilizations, open assemblies, women’s gatherings and press conferences; and smear campaigns through social media, communications media and institutional spokespeople. 

Women defenders of land, territory, environment and natural resources were the targets of 81% of all attacks documented in Honduras in 2024. The high percentage of attacks on this group of women defenders is a constant trend in our registry in this country. In this line, we identify the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), the Civic Council of Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods in Tocoa among the organizations with the highest number of registered attacks, due to their being on the frontlines confronting extractive megaprojects and because the main focus of their struggles is the defense of land, territory and natural resources. 

In recent years, we have witnessed an intensification of land conflicts after the creation of the Commission for Agrarian Security, which – far from addressing the problems that peasant communities face – has legitimized mass evictions and has instrumentalized the law to criminalize those who struggle for the land and to favor the interests of extractivist companies and landowners. The evictions and the attempts to conduct them lead to the criminalization of women defenders and leave the communities in a constant state of fear and harassment, with serious psychosocial impacts from the police and military presence and the violence that may be perpetrated. As a result of this situation, we registered 42 internal forced displacements of Honduran women defenders in 2024. 

Regarding the perpetrators of these attacks, 40% are actors linked to the State: police forces (19%), public authorities (18%) and armed forces (3%). In 2024, the State was responsible for 96 attacks involving the use of repressive violence, including direct shootings against sister defenders and their families, such as the violence perpetrated in Choluteca, Aguan, Triunfo de la Cruz and Nueva Armenia. In 25% of the attacks, the perpetrators are unknown persons, including unknown online users. Also relevant is the fact that private security agents were identified as perpetrators in 7% of the attacks. This is linked to the reality that the extractive industry and national companies often hire private security companies – most of them owned by members of the army – that have become a highly dangerous armed force, especially when they act with police support, as often happens in violent evictions against communities defending their land and territory. 

• MEXICO: REPRESSION OF FEMINIST PROTEST AND LETHAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN JOURNALISTS AND SEARCHERS

The presence and territorial control of organized crime in a large part of the country continues to be a reality that creates a situation of violence affecting all aspects of social life, overwhelming the capacity of institutions and revealing the high levels of complicity between public authorities and criminal groups and other de facto powerholders.

In 2024, we documented 1,622 attacks against at least 286 women defenders and 21 organizations and collectives defending human rights in Mexico. The states with the highest number of registered attacks were Mexico City, Zacatecas, Oaxaca, Puebla and Guanajuato. The majority of these attacks targeted women who defend the right to information and freedom of expression (37%); women’s right to a life free from violence (21%); and the right to truth, justice and reparations (15%). Regarding the perpetrators, we found that 47% were State actors primarily from the municipal and state levels: state (11%) and municipal (5%) public authorities; state (11%) and municipal (6%) police. Federal authorities account for 10% of assailants and the armed forces for 4%. One in every four perpetrators (25%) are unknown persons, among these are unknown online users. The nature of organized crime’s actions – characterized by anonymity, transnational influence, high lethality and the enormous risk involved in reporting attacks – makes it difficult to clearly identify them as perpetrators; however, we were able to document actors linked to organized crime as the perpetrators of 5% of attacks.

Half of the attacks registered in the country (51%) took place during collective actions. Just in the context of 8 March, during demonstrations to commemorate International Women’s Day, we documented 295 attacks in different states throughout Mexico, standing out among these are the attacks registered in Zacatecas, Puebla, San Luis de Potosi and Michoacan.

Women defenders who are searching for their loved ones face a worrying context of risk and attacks in Mexico. Given the State’s failure to conduct searches for disappeared persons with due diligence, these women defenders have taken up the search, experiencing not only the profound pain due to the disappearance of their loved ones but also numerous forms of violence that threaten their lives and integrity. The main forms of attack that we registered in 2024 in Mexico against women defenders of truth, justice and reparations – along with their organizations and collectives – include restrictions and attacks for gathering, obtaining or possessing information; harassment; and surveillance. These attacks seek to stop their searches, growing in severity until they become attempted killings, killings and forced disappearances. In 2024, we documented the killing of three women defenders who are searchers: Ángela Meraz in Baja California, and Virginia and Adriana Ortiz García in Oaxaca. We also documented the forced disappearance of another two sister defenders: Lucero Romo, member of Young Searchers of Sonora, and Lorenza Cano, from Salamanca United Searching for the Disappeared in the state of Guanajuato. The attacks against the women defenders who are searchers reflect a structural and persistent problem, in which the collusion of organized crime with corrupt authorities has created a regime of terror and control in numerous territories throughout the country.

Meanwhile, the data in our Mexico registry reveals the continuation of attacks against women journalists, communicators and defenders of the freedom of expression who cover feminist protests or denounce corruption and human rights violations. In 2024, the main types of attack against these women defenders included restrictions to communicate and/or receive information (151); harassment (59); threats (45); and physical, verbal or psychological violence (112). For example, on 5 September, communicator Estefanía Galicia was arbitrarily detained while covering a protest in front of Xochimilco City Hall against the criminalization of woman defender of land, water and public spaces, Hortensia Telésforo. That same day, Elizabeth Diaz Molina, an audiovisual journalist, was victim of physical and sexual assault and attacks on her property. Both women were beneficiaries of protection measures granted by the Mexico City Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.

• NICARAGUA: TOTALITARIAN STATE, MIGRATORY REPRESSION AND FORCED DISPLACEMENT

In 2024, we registered 2,510 attacks against 166 women defenders and 34 human rights organizations in Nicaragua. This is an increase of 50% in relation to the previous year. The majority of these attacks were perpetrated against those who defend women’s right to political participation (48%); victims and family members of victims or people who accompany the search for truth, justice and reparations (11%); women defenders of the right to information and freedom of expression (8%); and women who defend women’s right to a life free from violence (8%). 

Generally, throughout 2024 we observed the consolidation of a dynastic totalitarian State that seeks to eliminate all dissent through the sustained imposition of a regime of terror and surveillance and the co-opting and instrumentalization of institutions (judicial, legislative and police). In this line, the political context in 2024 and early 2025 has been marked by constitutional and criminal law reforms that legalize repressive practices used by the State to criminalize human rights defenders and organizations. To date, there are 7 known women political prisoners, 4 of whom are women human rights defenders: Nancy Henríquez, Evelyn Guillén, Lesbia Gutiérrez and Fabiola Tercero; the latter has been forcibly disappeared for more than 10 months, with no official record of her situation. Prison conditions have had severe impacts on the physical and mental health of the women prisoners, as well as devastating consequences for their families, who face severe harassment, economic hardship and prolonged emotional separation.

In 2024, we documented 41 cases of forced displacement of women defenders and activists, both inside (7) and outside (34) Nicaragua. Additionally, we registered 23 family members of women defenders and activists who were also forced to leave their homes. Displacement has heartbreaking impacts on the life projects of women defenders and their families. Additionally, the situation exposes women to different expressions of violence and legal, social, economic and health difficulties in integrating in the destination country. We have registered 308 forced displacement of women activists and defenders since the beginning of the sociopolitical crisis in 2018.

Another important form of attack registered are acts of migratory repression. In 2024, we registered 67 incidents of migratory repression against women activists, women human rights defenders and their family members; 64 targeted women defenders and activists directly and 3 targeted their family members. This type of attack is based on the arbitrary use of a range of legal and coercive mechanisms to prevent women defenders from continuing their rights defense work within the national territory, including interrogations and threats to prevent women defenders from entering the country for fear of repercussions against them and their families; expulsion or barring them from entering the country; stripping them of their nationality and statelessness. 

Furthermore, in connection with the large number of women activists and defenders who are exiled or expelled from the country, we observed the continuation of attacks against them through the rise of digital violence that is usually full of misogyny and hate speech, with attempts to discredit women defenders through mocking, threats, stigmatization and constant harassment. As such, 60% of digital attacks registered in Nicaragua show specific forms of violence that appeal to gender mandates. In some cases, attacks replicate the discourse of sectors of the ultra-conservative right that seek to maintain the patriarchal order, with terms like “feminazi”, “abortionist”, “lefty trash”, “femicrazies”, among others. Many of these attacks are perpetrated by unknown online users and are directed at feminist defenders who – from exile – continue to denounce the authoritarianism of the Ortega-Murillo regime.

 

This data hurt us because they directly affect our lives, the lives of our sister defenders and our loved ones. However, far from paralyzing us like the de facto powerholders seek, they reinforce our urgency to resist and accompany through the Feminist Holistic Protection framework all women defenders who continue to struggle to defend life.