In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent. Marwan Makhoul This 10 December is undoubtedly marked by the endless human and collective rights violations against the people in Gaza and the West Bank, where there is an ongoing genocide and…
“I feel that the Continental School, and maybe other schools that have been carried out across the continent, are going to empower women, especially peasant women, who do a lot.” This was a reflection by Susan Owiti about the initiatives conducted by peasant women who have, in 2024, held for the first time a coordinated series of Continental Schools of…
An encounter of social movements and organisations calling for a new multilateralism at the service of the peoples and the planet began on Thursday in New York, United States, ahead of the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future to be held in that same city on 22 and 23 September. The encounter*, which will be held until Saturday at…
Jaron Browne is the director of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) in the United States. He attended the meeting “Weaving Emancipatory Proposals” in May 2024 in Guatemala, where he granted an interview discussing prison abolition, a struggle emerging from anti-racist organizations. Jaron, a trans person, underscored how important feminism and organized LGBT+ people are for the abolition struggle. While…
What is the relationship between climate change and agrarian struggles? As world leaders, and fossil fuel lobbyists, convene for climate negotiations at COP28 (the Conference of the Parties) in Dubai, we talk with Kirtana Chandrasekaran from Friends of the Earth International (India/Scotland) and Emilinah Namaganda of Utrecht University (Uganda/Netherlands) about their work on the political economy of global climate responses.…
The annual UN climate talks took place in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh this year, from 6 to 20 November. This was the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as “COP27”. In a press release issued at the end of the talks, Friends of the Earth International celebrated…
Togo is one of the smallest countries in Africa and home to 8.6 million people. Since the shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, increasingly extreme weather and recent food price rises, the state of food security in Togo has greatly deteriorated. In 2022, 1 in 5 people in the country don’t have access to or can’t afford enough healthy, nutritious food. Yet…
Before the Green Revolution came to Sri Lanka in the 1960s, with the imposition of modernised machinery, high yielding varieties, increased use of fertilisers and other agrochemical inputs, the country had an ecologically sustainable agricultural system. Farmers used mixed farming techniques and cultivated in a manner that protected the natural environment and human health. They maintained soil fertility through the…
On 23 August, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) together with social movements and organisations from the region held a public event in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to discuss the urgent need to agree an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and human rights. The goal is to gain the support of democratic governments…
The EU-Mercosur trade deal, agreed in 2019 but yet to be ratified, is set to benefit European agrochemical companies whilst having dire consequences for nature, local communities and Indigenous communities in South America. It will lead to a steep increase in exports of crop to Europe and import of dangerous agrochemicals to the southern cone, particularly Brazil. This is why…
