America (general)

La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International, Focus on the Global South, the World Rainforest Movement and more than than 120 organizations from around the world sent a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, in Rome, on the occasion of March 21st, the UN International Day of Forest. The letter demands that the FAO change its present definition of forests.

Around the world ‘development’ is robbing tribal people of their land, self-sufficiency and pride and leaving them with nothing. “There you go” is a short, satirical film, from Survival International, that tells the story of how tribal peoples are being destroyed in the name of ‘development’. For further information see http://www.survivalinternational.org/

Only available in Spanish.

Photo: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/ The criminalization of social protest upheld by local communities is a worldwide phenomenon. In Latin America, the Latin American Observatory of Mining Conflicts (OCMAL), a network comprising social organizations, has issued the following declaration denouncing the violent repression of opposition against the mining companies in the region:

 

Photo: By Pablo Cingolani. A Yuqui indigenous girl from the Bolivian Amazon. The Yuqui were a people living in isolation until they were contacted by missionaries between 1967 and 1991. Now they are a people in a situation of extreme vulnerability, precisely as a result of this forced contact.

Image: Approximate location of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact. Source: Pueblos Indígenas en aislamiento voluntario y contacto inicial, IWGIA – IPES – 2012. 

Only available in Spanish. 

"Expansion of palm oil in the Brazilian Amazon: an analysis of impacts on family farm in north-eastern Pará" Reporter Brazil – Organization for Communication and Social Projects’s Biofuel Watch Center Download here:  http://reporterbrasil.org.br/documentos/pamoil.pdf

In June 2013, delegates from Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Venezuela and Guatemala joined together in Monterrico, Guatemala for the 6th Meeting of the Board of Directors of Redmanglar Internacional for the Defence of Marine Coastal Territories and Community Life.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, March 8, the Red de Mujeres Defensoras de los Derechos Sociales y Ambientales (Latin American Network of Women Defenders of Social and Environmental Rights) – made up of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay who represent a wide range of organizations, institutions, collectives and local groups, including environmental and research organizations, women from both the countryside and the city, professional women and others with a basic level of education – has published