The order was issued on July 9 by Judge Elton Pupo Nogueira, member of the Minas Gerais Justice Tribunal. While the amount to be paid by the company has not been defined yet, the court has blocked Vale´s assets for 3 billion dollars and commissioned an independent technical investigation to assess socioenvironmental impacts and technical assistance for the people affected…
After many months of debate and with a strong support from the public opinion, the Liberian government passed the Land Rights Act in September, 2018, which officially recognizes the rights of local communities over their productive lands, without the need of long entitlement proceedings. With this huge step, Liberia could promote deep land and forest reforms in Central and Western…
As the National Biosafety System and the National Seeds Institute (INASE) of Uruguay announced they will carry out a public consultation to authorize transgenic wheat event HB4-PAT for research and cultivation assays, environmental organizations such as REDES - Friends of the Earth Uruguay and the National Native Seed Network expressed in a statement issued on July 11 their rejection to…
The communications team of the 8th Continental Congress of the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC-La Vía Campesina) interviewed Rafael Santiesteban, head of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), present at the Congress. The event took place on June 28 in El Laguito, in Havana, Cuba. Santiesteban reflected about the importance of the first law on Agrarian Reform…
This week there was a new round of negotiations and in light of the potentially imminent conclusion of negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, social movements and organizations gathered in the Continental Day for Democracy and against Neoliberalism expressed their rejection to the agreement and demanded an immediate end to the negotiations. To analyze…
The country´s top court rejected the challenge to the law filed by mining corporations with the support of the government of San Juan Province, which demanded the Glacier Protection Law passed in 2010 to be repealed and to be considered unconstitutional. In Argentina there are 322 mining projects, 44 of which are nearby or on bodies of ice. By declaring…
Saturnino 'Jun' M. Borras Jr. is a Filipino political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. He was part of the core organizing team that established the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina. Jun has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements. This is how…
The lives of human rights defenders in Africa are seriously threatened. For example, in Cameroon, on 26 May, human rights defender Elvis Brown Luma Mukuna received a death threat via a call from an unknown number. Ten days earlier, two men had forcibly entered Elvis’s house, abducted his younger brother and tortured him for more than two hours. Faced with…
At the end of May, Juan Orlando Hernández´ administration announced several reforms aiming to privatize services, through the passing of the Law of Restructuring and Transformation of the National Education and Healthcare System. So people took to the streets once against in Tegucigalpa against the threat of massive dismissals of doctors and teachers and to denounce the general state of…
Boom and Bust in the Waterberg is the title of a report published by environmental justice organization groundWork in March. It documents the history of coal megaprojects that have reshaped this remote corner of the country. It also addresses the impacts of coal megaprojects and warns about how a third boom is expected in Waterberg, which is considered South Africa´s…
