Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres was born in 1971 in La Esperanza, in the western highlands of Honduras, to a Lenca family; her mother was a midwife, mayor and governor who took in refugees from El Salvador's war. In 1993 Berta and a small group of students founded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras, COPINH, which fought illegal logging and for Lenca land rights. She raised four children while doing so, and separated from their father, a co-founder.

In 2006 people in the community of Río Blanco found construction equipment on their land. It belonged to a project to dam the Gualcarque, a river the Lenca consider sacred and depend on for water and fishing, begun without the consultation required by an international treaty Honduras had signed. Cáceres organised a blockade of the access road that lasted more than a year. Protesters were shot at and one was killed by soldiers; she was charged with weapons possession and incitement, and had to move house repeatedly. In 2013 the Chinese contractor Sinohydro pulled out of the project.

In April 2015 she won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest award for grassroots environmentalism. She had reported the threats against her to the authorities many times. On the night of 2 March 2016, gunmen broke into her house and shot her dead.

Seven men, including a serving army officer and employees of the dam company, were convicted in 2018. In 2021 the company's former president was convicted as a co-conspirator in the killing.