2019 National Protection System recognises the CMDBCP as a human rights organization

In August 2019, the National System for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders officially recognised in written correspondence DGSP234-2019 that the CMDBCP is an organization engaged in activities of the legtimate defence of human rights. As such, a key branch of the state human rights aparatus recognised the CMDBCP as human rights actors, enabling the CMDBCP lawyers to submit the document as supporting evidence in the criminalization case to demonstrate the legitimate human rights activities for which the Guapinol environmental defenders are being prosecuted (CMDBCP and CCI, 2019: 19). Neither the Public Prosecutor nor the judge have taken this evidence into account at the time of writing (November 2021).