and her driver Anderson Gomes in 2018. He and the two other suspects, former military police officers Ronnie Lessa and Élcio de Queiroz, remained under arrest and were facing charges. the killing of her son, known as “Binho do Quilombo”. Mãe Bernadete had made several complaints about being threatened and was included in the protection programme. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS RIGHT TO A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT Brazil failed to protect human rights defenders. According to Justiça Global, on average three defenders have been murdered in Brazil every month over the past four years. The Programme for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, established by decree in 2007, was still not supported by legislation and lacked differentiated approaches to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual diversity, and territory. Sixteen states lacked their own programmes, compromising the efficacy of the protection measures. According to the Ministry of Human Rights, out of the 269 cases under analysis in August, 30% involved the persecution of Indigenous defenders and 44% Black defenders. Two precautionary measures for the protection of human rights defenders were granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: one regarding the Pataxó Indigenous People in Bahia state and the other for the Boa Hora III Quilombola territory in Maranhão state. More than a year after the murders of environmental activists Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, the Federal Justice decided to try the defendants for murder and concealing a corpse. The Federal Police alleged that Rubens Villar Coelho, known as “Colômbia”, had ordered the murders, but the investigation had not been concluded by the end of the year. The murder of Raimundo Nonato, an activist from the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement killed by three hooded men in 2022, remained unsolved. In August, Yalorixá Maria Bernadete Pacífico (“Mãe Bernadete”), the 72-year-old leader of the Pitanga dos Palmares Quilombo in Simões Filho city, Bahia, was killed. Since 2017, she had been fighting for justice for Brazil had still not ratified the Escazú Agreement. Extreme weather events caused deaths, destruction of property and displacement, disproportionately affecting Black people, who were more likely to live in high-risk areas with no prevention or protection measures. The National Civil Defence mapped approximately 14,000 areas with very high risk of geological disaster, potentially affecting the homes of 4 million people. Government responses did not properly address these risks and the rights to housing, water, security and life of thousands of people were severely compromised. On 16 February, on the coast of São Paulo state, heavy rainfall caused the deaths of 49 people, left 23 injured, rendered 2,251 homeless and displaced 1,815. Water, electricity and telephone services were affected. In June, heavy rains affected 31,000 families in Maranhão state, leaving six people dead, 1,920 homeless and 3,923 displaced. In the state of Acre, around 32,000 people were affected; in Pará state, at least 1,800 people were forced to leave their homes; and in the city of Manaus, 172 families lost their homes. In September, the third cyclone of 2023 left 21 people dead and thousands homeless in Rio Grande do Sul state. Dozens of municipalities were flooded, power was cut off and homes were swept away. According to Climate Action Tracker, the government’s policies regarding adaptation and mitigation were “highly insufficient”, and all responses lacked planning and federal coordination. Areas of the state of Amazonas recorded their lowest rainfall in the last 40 years causing extreme drought. According to official data, deforestation in the Amazon, one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, decreased to the lowest rate in the last five years, but was still The State of the World’s Human Rights 107