On the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, activist Sandra Escobar tells us a story of pain and joy, as peoples in Honduras struggle against the expansion of oil palm plantations and build alternatives together. Approximately 198,000 hectares of Honduras are planted with oil palm crops, representing almost 2% of the country’s land. Annually, it produces 2.4 million…
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…
Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) launched on Friday a new study entitled “Internationalist Solidarity and the struggle against corporate power. Reflections on the Covid 19 pandemic and corporate violations of peoples’ rights and their human rights.” The study responded to the need to better explain “the meaning of peoples’ rights and the direct link with…
“We've been expecting this sentence for almost a year. This opens a very important stage in order to realise this guilty verdict against one of the killers of my mother, our comrade Berta Cáceres,” said Bertha Zúniga, the coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). The leader warned that the judicial decision could still…
The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) has launched their new annual report, entitled 'Conflicts in the Countryside - Brazil 2021'. Since 1985, the CPT has been recording the violence inflicted on peoples and communities in the Brazilian countryside, by landowners, mining and forestry companies, land speculators and businessmen. It also shows the negligence and complicity of the State. From 1985 to 2020,…
On 4 April 2022, thousands of Indigenous People from various communities across the current Brazilian territory came to the federal capital, Brasilia, to set up the 18th Free Land Camp (Terra Livre) by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). This mobilisation is still based on the original struggles as when it started in 2004: the right to land,…
“The participation of young people in COPINH has been strengthened, and new leaderships have been emerging. Every day we want to help the youth, so that they do not replicate the same flaws as so many social organisations”, stated Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, General Coordinator for COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras. This is six years…
Six water defenders are still in jail in Olanchito prison, in the Yoro department of Honduras, despite the recent ratification by the Supreme Court of Justice of an appeal for their release, submitted on 10 February 2022. They have been in pre-trial detention for 30 months, with no legal grounds. On 9 February, the defenders were condemned by the Trujillo…
"We need help around the world," said Patiente Etim from Mbarakum Community in a new Friends of the Earth Africa documentary on the impacts of industrial plantations on women. "The chemicals used by the plantation company affected my son-in-law's eyes. He was a sprayer with GOPDC/SIAT and through the exposure to the work hazard, the chemical affected his eyes. He…
