ABSTRACT
Human rights defenders did not originate with the UN Declaration in 1998. The Declaration on human rights defenders opened a changing paradigm of the subject that shifts away of a statist conception of human rights. Whistleblowers or environmental human rights defenders are human rights defenders that require a particular legal protection. The Escazú Agreement sets a binding reference to human rights defenders in environmental matters, and the state parties are responsible for their rights and protection. This is related to the environmental rule of law. At their origins, human rights defenders had to resist and struggle against totalitarianism. After globalization, they still cope with the highest risks. Human rights defenders have a status as individuals not for citizenship depending on sovereignty, but for their universal right to promote and protect human rights, what challenges constitutional and international law. Individualization goes hand in hand with social action. In this case, individuals and groups act when states fail to fulfil their obligations, or in order to force them to comply with their role as the prime guarantor of rights. This action and rights’ exercise are, however, axiologically individual—the collective exercise of these individual rights leads to collective action.
