Gender-Based Violence in Eco-Martyr Assassinations: A Qualitative Study With Descriptive Statistics

Abstract

Climate change has resulted in a variety of worldwide humanitarian crises, but little attention has been given to the assassinations of environmental defenders. Eco-martyrs are people who have been murdered specifically due to their environmental conservation efforts. This study explores the different levels of gender-based violence used in the assassinations of eco-martyrs. A qualitative approach was used to analyze publicly reported narratives of these assassinations. The project was sparked by anecdotal observations by researchers who noticed that female leaders appeared to have more gruesome deaths than their male counterparts. This study attempted to verify those observations by determining if there was any scientific evidence to support that observation. Two categories of violence emerged from the analysis: impersonal and personal violence. Impersonal violence included largely professional-style handgun “hits” with quick departures by the killers from the scene. Personal violence encompassed any tactic in which the killer made physical contact with the victim’s body. Men and women did experience different forms of personal violence. Men were more likely to be beaten to death while women were more likely to be dismembered and mutilated. Sexual violence was a tactic exclusively used on women in this sample. Women were also threatened with violence, prior to their assassination, more often than male eco-martyrs. Gratuitous violence was defined as violence intended specifically to cause pain prior to death or to be so gruesome as to intimidate others. This type of violence occurred equally in both genders—approximately in a quarter of the cases.