Patricia Gualinga

A climate activist and defender of the human rights of women, Patricia Gualinga has spent several decades in the struggle against human rights abuse and land grabbing in the Amazon. She is a leader of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Equatorian Amazon and, among the people who are combatting oil extraction and deforestation, is one of the most widely recognised internationally. In 2012, she was a representative in one of the most important lawsuits against the Ecuadorian government, which was found guilty of human rights abuse by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2022, she was awarded the Olof Palme Prize in recognition of her long struggle defending nature and the lives of Indigenous peoples. She has also received other awards, among them the Brote Award for Activism, from the Canary Islands International Environmental Film Festival (FICMEC). She is currently president of the TIAM (“other gaze, rebirth, continuity of life to construct a future”) Foundation, which works in the areas of capacity building, research, advisory functions, and environmental and human rights litigation, and is also a member of REPAM (Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network). Like other activists of Indigenous communities, Gualinga has been attacked as well as receiving death threats.