On November 14, at dawn, the Comando Jungla attacked Mapuche community Temucuicui. There were helicopters and tankettes surrounding the territory. As a result of the armed attack by the command, Camilo Catrillanca, a 25-year-old Mapuche man, grandson of Lonko Juan Segundo Catrillanca, of the Temucuicui traditional community and son of Marcelo Catrillanca, a renowned leader of the Mapuche people, was…
“It´s a sham” saying that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is solving the serious socioenvironmental effects of this industry, said Nigerian environmental activist Rita Uwaka. “There are more environmental abuses, human rights abuses in countries where most of these RSPO certified companies exist”, she added. The annual conference of the RSPO is taking place from Monday to Thursday…
“The fact that Berta Cáceres´ relatives and COPINH don´t have a legal representantive in this first trial is something extremely serious. This has been an arbitrary decision made by the Court, as a response of Cáceres´ family insisting on including the masterminds of the crime in this trial as well”, said Colombian lawyer Reinaldo Villalba, president of the “José Alvear…
The Agroecology promotion bill, drafted by organizations linked to food sovereignty, academics and groups focused on agroecological production for over 40 years, seems to have united all parties of the Uruguayan Senate, which passed the bill unanimously on Tuesday. All senators voted in favor of the bill that was the initiative, among others, of the Native Seeds Network, the Uruguayan…
On October 27-28, Friends of the Earth Spain, together with La Vía Campesina Europe and other agrarian, cattle farming, environmental and consumption groups celebrated “The Days of Action for Good Food” demanding changes in the food system based on policies that promote healthy food for the people and the planet. “We´ve been seeing for years that the European food system…
We lived an entirely atypical electoral process. Since the end of the military period, we have not had the political imprisonment of a leader, such as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was unjustly convicted and whose candidacy was contested by the Superior Electoral Court. A process in which forces that had so far operated in the in the undergrounds,…
In 2004, Uruguay was the first country that enshrined the access to drinking water as a human right and a common good, not a commodity, in its Constitution. The irrigation law passed by the Parliament in 2017 authorizes private companies to bottle and sell water, that is, against what is established in the National Constitution. On October 26, several civil…
On October 19, a Tegucigalpa court held a hearing to begin the trial over the murder of the Lenca people defender, Berta Cáceres, who was murdered on March 2nd, 2016, at her home in La Esperanza (Intibucá). The court announced the beginning of the oral and public trial, despite the lawyers of Berta Cáceres family´s call for the judges to…
The resolutions and conclusions of the Intergovernmental Working Group submitted by Luis Gallegos, permanent representative of Ecuador at the UN and chair of the negotiations, were approved, but the representatives of the European Union were the only ones there who did not agree with the conclusions. Now the chair will present a revised version of the binding instrument before June…
“As Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), we are here (at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva) because we are working with communities, and those communities are affected by transnationals corporations, so we need a Binding Treaty to hold accountable those transnationals which violated human rights”, said Kwami Kpondzo, from FOEI, in an interview with Real World Radio. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txedt5BnvZo&feature=youtu.be[/embed] Kwami,…
