Human rights defender's story: Bernardo Caal Xol, from Guatemala

'From the time we grow up, our grandparents teach us to love nature and the environment, to respect rivers, lakes and mountains, because, as children, they explain to us that all of it sacred.'
Bernardo Caal Xol is an Indigenous teacher, environmental human rights defender and member of Guatemala’s Mayan Q'eqchi community.
He told ISHR how his community’s deep attachment to their lands, hills and rivers inspired his own activism and argued for tougher controls of corporations’ environmental and human rights impacts.
Learn more about Bernardo and other human rights activists and defenders like him: ishr.ch/defender-stories/