Hague expressed “sincere regret” that the abuses had taken place and told parliament the government would pay a total of 30.8 million dollar to 5,228 clients represented by a British law firm.

A lawyer for the victims said on Wednesday the settlement had been agreed without disclosing the sum.

“(The negotiations) have included everybody with sufficient evidence of torture. And that number is about 5,200,” Kenyan lawyer Paul Muite said.

Negotiations began after a London court ruled in October that three elderly Kenyans, who suffered castration, rape and beatings while in detention during a crackdown by British forces and their Kenyan allies in the 1950s, could sue Britain.

The torture took place during the so-called Kenyan Emergency of 1952-1960, when fighters from the Mau Mau movement attacked British targets, causing panic among white settlers.

Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste, reporting from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, said Britain would also pay for a special memorial to be erected at the site where the abuses took place.

He said that since the case was settled out of court, it would not set a legal precedent for future claims of compensation for abuses during colonial rule. But he added that it could set a “moral precedent” for other victims to step up.

‘Pain and grievance’

The 30.8 million dollars in compensation would work out at 5,891 dollars per claimant in a country where average national income per capita is 821 dollars.

The foreign office said in last month’s statement that “there should be a debate about the past”.

“It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history,” the statement said.

“We understand the pain and grievance felt by those, on all sides, who were involved in the divisive and bloody events of the Emergency period in Kenya.”

In a test case, claimants Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara last year told Britain’s High Court how they were subjected to torture and sexual mutilation.

Lawyers said that Nzili was castrated, Nyingi severely beaten and Mara subjected to appalling sexual abuse in detention camps during the Mau Mau rebellion.

A fourth claimant, Susan Ngondi, has died since legal proceedings began.

The Mau Mau nationalist movement originated in the 1950s among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. Its loyalists advocated violent resistance to British domination of the country.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has estimated 90,000 Kenyans were killed or maimed and 160,000 detained during the uprising.

‘Triumph’

London tried for three years to block the Mau Mau veterans’ legal action in the courts, drawing condemnation from the elderly torture victims who accused Kenya’s former colonial master of using legal technicalities to fight the case.

Caroline Elkins, a Harvard history professor who acted as an expert witness in the case launched in 2009, said the settlement would be the first of its kind for the former British Empire.

“(It) should be seen as a triumph,” Elkins told Reuters during a visit to Nairobi for the British announcement.

Elkins wrote the book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya which served as the basis for the Mau Mau case.

Britain had first said that responsibility for events during the Mau Mau uprising passed to Kenya upon its independence in 1963, an argument which London courts rejected.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Children fishing in Havana Bay at dusk. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

On a piece of paper, Jennifer Rivas draws a beach, with little girls carrying bags of trash and signs that say “Let’s take care of the environment.” The 10-year-old is part of an educational programme, Friends of the Bay, that involves 322 schools in the Cuban capital.

The initiative, created in 2005 by the State Working Group for the Clean-Up, Conservation and Development of Havana Bay (GTE-BH), brings together thousands of students from different grades in environmental “circles of interest,” where they learn to take care of the bay.

“Environmental education, especially among the new generations, is a cross-cutting focus of all clean-up and monitoring actions,” Johana Socarrás, GTE-BH director of environmental education and community work, told IPS.

Nationwide, Havana Bay is the bay that requires the most investment annually for environmental clean-up.

In 2011, the national statistics office reported that nearly 68 percent of financing for cleaning up harbours and bays of national interest went to Havana Bay, which in the 1980s was included on a United Nations list of the most heavily polluted bays in the world.

Between 1998, when it was founded, and 2012, the GTE-BH reduced pollution levels in Havana Bay by 58 percent, according to sources with the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry. In 1998, the bay’s dissolved oxygen levels were down to zero, making marine life impossible.

In parallel with clean-up work and the reduction of sources of pollution, the GTE-BH also set out to raise environmental awareness among the new generations in the 10 Havana municipalities that surround the bay and its 85-kilometre basin.

“They are the future businesspeople, workers and technicians. If they receive environmental education from an early age, then when they are men and women, many will act responsibly with respect to the environment,” Socarrás said.

Volunteers are teaching children and adolescents about protecting the environment and maintaining the clean-up work achieved by the group — which is also responsible for monitoring the bay’s waters and industrial waste, environmental legislation, and reforestation in the area.

At schools located in the basin’s surroundings, younger students work with scale models, drawings, plays and poetry, while older students get involved in research projects, visit sites that are sources of pollution, and clean up affected areas.

Yusneibi Guibert, a primary school teacher in the Havana municipality of Regla and a member of Friends of the Bay, took her students to observe the coastal health of their community, which is on the bay’s shoreline.

“There was a small dump site, and we cleaned up cans and other rubble. We didn’t continue because we didn’t have more resources. We also went to the Ñico López oil refinery (near the bay) to see how they prevent air and water pollution,” she told IPS.

According to the GTE-BH, due to the activities of this refinery and the transport of fuel through the port of Havana, an environmental accident occurs at least once annually, involving oil spills in the bay, which is pocket-shaped and has a narrow entry.

In addition, 106 sources of pollution dump waste into the bay, which is 5.2 square kilometres and has an average depth of nine metres. Along with its seawall and seaside avenue, the Malecón, the bay is the centre of life in the capital, home to 2.2 million of the country’s 11.2 million people.

On June 5, World Environment Day, the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry informed the local media that 57.6 percent of national entities with dangerous waste and unused, expired chemical products were implementing management plans at the close of 2012.

In Diez de Octubre, Havana’s most densely-populated area, specialist Álvaro J. Pérez is working with more than 100 schools associated with the environmental education programme. “Doing projects with boys and girls multiplies actions. They learn and involve their families and the community,” he told IPS.

Children have been identified as a group with a large capacity for environmental activism in Cuba.

“Children and the elderly have an incredible potential,” Alba Camejo, coordinator of the environmental communication project Árbol de Vida (Tree of Life), told IPS. “Many things are being done through initiatives that come spontaneously from the community, aside from what is done through institutions,” she said.

Sian Pérez, 11, learned in his environmental circle of interest that the bay’s waters need to be protected. “That way, fish and human beings are not affected,” said the student from the Leonardo Valdés school in Regla.

“I used to know a little about it, but now I know more about how to take care of it (the bay) and not throw garbage into the ocean. I also learned that we should tell other people not to pollute, so that the pelicans will always be in our bay,” he told IPS.

“That’s how I would always like to see the bay — clean and pretty,” said Jennifer Rivas, as she looked at her finished drawing.

The science club at Raúl Cepero Bonilla secondary school took a trip to the Luyanó River, which empties into the bay and carries almost 90 percent of waste that comes from tributaries.

Thanks to their trip, the club promoted the construction of septic tanks among hog breeders located on the riverbanks, to prevent the dumping of manure into the water.

In the town of Guanabacoa, schools that are not located within the bay’s basin also joined the project, according to Rosa Tuñón, a school health advisor who oversees environmental work in education.

“The knowledge and understanding that we share are useful for all environments,” she told IPS. “We have seen progress among students in terms of their environmental knowledge thanks to the programme. Clean-up work is done, and students and parents are encouraged to participate in festivals and contests about ecology,” she explained.

Different projects have been carried out in Havana Bay with international financing, from sources such as the Global Environment Facility and Japan’s International Cooperation Agency.

Leonardo and his mothers Yohana Llanes (right) and Támara Amaral, at one of the May 2013 anti-homophobia events in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Many lesbians and gays in Cuba find different ways of achieving their dream of becoming mothers and fathers and forming families. But this is complicated in a country where neither civil unions nor adoption by non-heterosexual persons are legally recognised.

“It is very hard…and even frustrating that I have no legal rights over my boy. I am not his biological father, but I’ve held him in my arms since his birth. There is nothing legal to define or protect our relationship,” said Junior del Toro, holding three-year-old Adrián on his lap.

Del Toro, a state company employee in Havana, and his partner decided to have a son “as an important part of family happiness” after 15 years of being in a relationship, he said. “We talked to different people until a woman friend of ours selflessly agreed to be part of helping us to have a child,” he said in an interview with IPS.

“My partner is the biological father and the mother shares in the child-raising with us. But I am the one who is most affected by the issue of rights, including in everyday life. For example, if the baby has to go to hospital and I am alone in dealing with the situation, I have no legal authority to decide anything about his illness,” he said, with visible distress.

Del Toro’s story is just one of many among the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, which has been waiting for years for the legislature to discuss draft reforms of the 1975 Family Code, which would recognise same-sex unions, for example.

This is the most recurrent demand among LGBT people in Cuba and would be the first step in giving recognition to other sexual rights, according to the state-run National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), which has been carrying out a systematic campaign to win respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity.

Every May since 2008 marks the high point of that drive: the Cuban Campaign against Homophobia. The schedule of activities is organised around May 17th, the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, and includes educational, academic and — for the first time this year — sports activities.

The Sixth National Campaign, which lasted throughout May, focused on the family, “because it is the space, along with the workplace, where the rights of LGBT persons are most violated,” according to CENESEX legal consultants. In the discussions that were part of the month’s events, one of the topics was this population group’s right to form families.

The question of non-heterosexuals adopting children “is a concern, although it is not one of the central concerns” brought to the attention of CENESEX experts, said Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer who oversees the institution’s legal consultation services.

However, Cuban activists are adding more demands as they wait for same-sex civil unions to be legalised and observe the progress that has been made on LGBT rights in other Latin American countries.

Argentina, Uruguay and the Mexican capital allow the adoption of children by same-sex married couples. But in the Caribbean, where homosexuality is punishable in a number of nations, only Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles recognise overseas adoptions.

In a May 12, 2012 joint statement, the Men for Diversity (HxD) organisation and CENESEX urged the Raúl Castro government to allow “all possibilities of union between same-sex couples, including marriage, as well as adoption and reproduction for homosexual persons.”

Dr. Alberto Roque, an activist who founded HxD, advocates the extension of assisted reproduction services to single women and lesbian couples in Cuba. “In these cases, the techniques for assisted reproduction used have a low degree of technological complexity, because it is not a case of infertile persons,” he said in a post on his blog, HOMOsapiens.

Lesbian groups such as Oremi in Havana; Las Isabelas in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba; Fénix in Cienfuegos; and Atenea, which was created this year in the central city of Ciego de Ávila, are discussing matters related to lesbian maternity and seeking mechanisms for raising awareness about the subject among the general public.

“Some women look for a man who is interested in being a father or a donor and they self-inseminate using crude methods, sometimes even endangering their health,” said psychologist Norma Guillard. “We should all have the right to have children, either our own or adopted,” she told IPS.

However, the issue of legalising adoption by homosexual couples is a controversial, taboo subject in Cuba, where “public displays of homosexuality” were penalised until the 1990s.

“I agree with homosexuals getting married, but not with them adopting children, who always suffer the trauma of social rejection. For me, the emotional stability of a child is more important than the right of an adult,” said Rosario F. in a post on the Café 108 interactive section of the IPS Cuba web site.

Activist Camilo García posted that “there is still a very deep-rooted prejudice that homosexual people are not capable of bringing up children as well as heterosexuals. People continue to view them as ‘sick,’ and believe they might pass on their ‘sickness’ to children,” he said.

“Most of us came from heterosexual families. If it was logical that homosexuality was something that you could catch or learn at home, we would have been like our parents. This argument is not viable, and it must be fought,” transvestite Riuber Alarcón told IPS.

A study by the Autonomous University of Yucatán in Mexico, published in 2011 by an online psychology magazine, Iztacala, found in a survey of 100 respondents between the ages of 18 and 63 that “this generation of young people displays more positive attitudes and beliefs toward adoption by same-sex couples.”

In Cuba, experts say that more studies are needed regarding same-sex couples and their families.

“No More Forced Disappearances; They Took Them Alive, We Want Them Back Alive!” say victims’ families who presented their cases to the Permanent People's Tribunal in Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The last time Enrique Rangel heard his brother Héctor’s voice was on the night of Nov. 10, 2009, when he called and said “they’re coming, they already stopped me and asked for money, and I already paid, but they’re coming.”

“We never heard from him again,” Enrique Rangel said, in one of the 13 testimonies heard by a jury of nine in Mexico City during a May 28-29 pre-hearing on “Forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Mexico: a permanent state policy.”

The pre-hearing was part of the work of the Mexico chapter, launched in 2011, of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT), an international public opinion tribunal that has examined human rights violations and crimes against humanity since 1979 and hands down non-binding judgments.

The jury of each thematic pre-hearing will deliver its conclusions to a grand general hearing to be held in 2014, and a verdict will then be issued on the conduct of the Mexican state.

Héctor Rangel disappeared in the city of Monclova, in the northern state of Coahuila. “When we went there the police told us that some officers had arrested him, that he had paid a fine and that they had taken him off to be searched,” Enrique Rangel told IPS.

“But paying a fine at midnight? It seems very odd. Then they told us we’d better go away,” said Rangel, who lives in the central Mexican city of Querétaro.

Since 2007, as the military campaign against drug trafficking intensified in Mexico, the number of forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions has steadily climbed.

In this Latin American country, forced disappearances have traditionally been blamed on the public security forces and paramilitary groups.

But human rights activists say organised criminal groups are increasingly involved in the practice, sometimes acting in collusion with the police or military.

In December 2006, only days after he took office, conservative former president Felipe Calderón deployed the armed forces to combat the illegal drug trade, a strategy that has had fatal results.

During his six-year term, more than 100,000 homicides were committed, over 26,000 people disappeared and another 250,000 were displaced, according to official reports and NGOs.

The violence has continued since the arrival in office of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto. Between December and the end of April there were 8,000 violent deaths, according to journalists’ tallies.

Common threads in all of the accounts heard by the PPT were the problem of impunity and the desire for justice.

Domingo Pérez, a Chol Indian who testified before the PPT, is tireless in his search for his sister Minerva Pérez, who was a 19-year-old student when she disappeared on Jun. 20, 1996, in the municipality of Tila in the southern state of Chiapas.

“Witnesses say she disappeared at a checkpoint. We reported her disappearance and an investigation was ordered. But the authorities have not taken up the matter. This is a violation of our rights, we want to live in peace but the government thwarts our wishes,” Pérez told IPS.

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre (FRAYBA) learned from witness statements that Minerva Pérez was held for three days by the Paz y Justicia paramilitary group. During that time she was beaten and raped, and afterward all trace of her was lost in the Chiapas jungle.

At the time the armed forces were fighting the leftwing Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) that took up arms on Jan. 1, 1994 in Chiapas, one of Mexico’s poorest states.

FRAYBA documented 37 forced disappearances and 85 killings committed between 1995 and 2000, most of them by three paramilitary groups which according to reports were supported by the army and the state government.

On Mar. 20, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) admitted eight cases – six extrajudicial executions and two forced disappearances, in Chiapas – presented by civil society organisations against the Mexican state.

“The cases are well grounded. The situation is muddied by the strategy of blaming the disappearances and executions on organised crime. Now it will be harder to prove the relationship between paramilitary groups and the state,” Clemencia Correa, an academic and one of the members of the PPT jury, told IPS.

The PPT deals with matters like collective violence, impunity, lack of access to justice, migration, femicide and other gender-based violence, threats to native maize and food sovereignty, as well as environmental destruction.

Victims’ relatives continue to fight for effective investigation of their cases.

“We ask for clarification of where (our loved ones) are, and if they committed a crime, that they be tried. We want an effective inquiry to catch those responsible and put them on trial,” Nadin Reyes, the daughter of Edmundo Reyes, who disappeared together with Gabriel Cruz on May 25, 2007, told IPS. They both belonged to the leftwing insurgent Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).

Based on an investigation by the National Human Rights Commission, their relatives believe that they were both captured in a combined state and federal police and military operation at a hotel in the southern city of Oaxaca.

Like the titles of Swedish author Mari Jungstedt’s trilogy of novels, they are: Unspoken. Unseen. Unknown.

“It’s a politically motivated case, because of his involvement in the EPR. We made the same journey all the families have had to make, to several agencies to ask for solidarity and demand a response from the authorities,” said Reyes.

On Monday May 27 the Mexican government announced the creation of a Disappeared Persons Search Unit. But victims’ families complained that only 12 agents were assigned to it.

“We have the log books of the police officers who arrested my brother, and their names. We gave them to the authorities and they still haven’t been able to arrest them,” complained Rangel, whose brother sold clothing.

In 2010, victims’ relatives formed United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila, which became United Forces for Our Disappeared in Mexico (FUNDEM) because of the magnitude of the human rights tragedy. FUNDEM has documented more than 300 disappearances.

Indigenous activists Ángel Durán from Bolivia and Bernardette Angus from Australia share their experiences in conservation at the WIN conference in Darwin. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

“Are you a park ranger?” IPS asked. “No, I am one of the owners of the territory,” Ángel Durán responded in a firm voice. The Bolivian indigenous leader is in this northern Australian city along with 1,200 other native delegates from over 50 countries for the World Indigenous Network (WIN) conference.

Durán, who was born in and lives on a collectively-owned native territory, is attending the conference in representation of eight native groups from Bolivia’s Amazon region that total more than 20,000 people.

Although he is not on the programme as an official speaker and can only communicate in Spanish, this is not stopping him from sharing his knowledge and experiences with other indigenous leaders walking from one auditorium to another at WIN headquarters in Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory.

The meeting, supported by the Australian government, runs May 26-29, with presentations of successful projects for the preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity, the sustainable use of protected natural areas, and the development and food security of indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other countries like Canada or Australia itself.

On Monday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples James Anaya stressed the importance of governments recognising international instruments that protect the basic rights of native people.

Melissa George from Australia told IPS that the conference was a major contribution by the Australian government and a form of recognition that indigenous people were the first to use their knowledge to protect the territory.

George, who belongs to the Wulgurukaba aboriginal tribe, added however that there was still much to be done.

The activist has dedicated 20 years – nearly half her life – to developing projects for administering natural resources in aboriginal territories. She is now co-chair of the WIN National Advisory Group.

The international network of indigenous and local community land and sea managers recently became an official part of the United Nations after the government of Australia handed over its management to the Equator Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The initiative brings together the United Nations, governments, civil society, businesses and grassroots organisations to advance local sustainable development solutions and support the work of indigenous people around the world by means of capacity-building.

Eileen de Ravin, manager of the Equator Initiative, told IPS that this concerted effort opens up enormous possibilities for people from a South American country like Bolivia to learn directly what is happening in Canada or Australia.

“Our goal is to influence the governments to get them to respect and listen to these valuable experiences and solutions,” de Ravin said.

The Equator Initiative awards a prize every two years, recognising 25 outstanding local sustainable development projects. In the past decade, 152 indigenous community organisations, of 2,500 that have been nominated, have won the prize.

One of the presentations at the WIN conference was on the conservation of protected areas by indigenous and local communities in Canada, Australia, Sweden and Brazil by means of indigenous forest rangers, park rangers or environmental agents.

“The name doesn’t matter, the objective is the same: to make use of traditional knowledge to protect nature and culture from the different threats,” Brazilian activist Osvaldo Barassi with the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) told IPS.

ACT’s annual indigenous park ranger training programme provides conservation and land monitoring capacity-building to native communities, including the use of tools like GPS tracking technology.

Since 2005, the Brazilian organisation has trained 190 people from 30 native ethnic groups in forest management and conservation, which has enabled the communities to develop projects to monitor illegal logging in order to protect the local flora and fauna.

But in spite of the contribution made by the indigenous forest rangers trained by ACT, they receive no payment from the government for their work.

That is in contrast to Australia’s indigenous land stewardship programme, which has created Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) in more than 50 locales on traditional aboriginal lands over the last 15 years, covering a total of 43 million hectares.

Bernardette Angus, a park ranger from Western Australia, told IPS that it is indigenous people who have been caring for the plants and animals and protecting the land and the sea since a long time ago, and who are teaching young people to continue doing so when the current generation is gone.

In Bolivia, the federation of indigenous peoples from north of La Paz, led by Durán, are seeking to go one step further in their conservation efforts, and have asked the government of Evo Morales – the country’s first-ever native president – to legally recognise the “guardians” of community-owned indigenous land to enable them to levy penalties on those who invade their land and make illegal use of their natural resources.

Durán, who belongs to the Leko de Apolo indigenous community, said no government plan aimed at protecting biodiversity could leave out the communities. “Not even scientific knowledge can compare to the ancestral know-how of the local people. We take care (of nature) because it is our way of life,” he told IPS.

But while Barassi recognised the importance of indigenous knowledge, he warned that it was not always a guarantee in and of itself of the successful management of natural resources. For that, capacity-building is key, the ACT activist stated.

Participants at the conference agreed on the need to join forces to maximise results in the face of threats from illegal activities, large-scale private investment projects, or the effects of climate change.

“I never imagined that the forests could disappear, but it is happening,” said Joao Evangelista, a Brazilian park ranger who was unable to travel to Darwin, but sent a videotaped message presented by Barassi to an audience keen on cutting the distances between them.

“That’s why capacity-building is important; it’s a form of liberation for us, and of preparing ourselves to confront outside threats,” he said.

HIJOS, the acronym for “Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence”, is an Argentine rights group founded in 1995 when children of people “disappeared” by that country’s 1976-1983 military regime came together to hold escraches or outings of human rights violators.

Argentine victims of forced disappearance. Credit: ha+/CC BY 2.0

An estimated 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship’s systematic suppression of dissent. In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Videla, who died on May 17, may be physically no more, the 25-year-old Parodi told the audience in her acceptance speech, but Argentina is still trying to correct the historical wrongs of the regime he led for most of its seven years in power.

Parodi was with her colleague Marcos Kary in Gwangju to share the human rights experiences of Argentina and South Korea.

The Gwangju Prize is awarded by the May 18 Memorial Foundation in South Korea, which like HIJOS was established by the families of those subjected to the brutal excesses of a dictatorship. Protests against the rule of South Korean military commander and strongman Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1988) had culminated in the May 18-27, 1980 uprising in Gwangju, also known as 518, an allusion to the date the bloody crackdown began.

In spring 1980 there was a wave of demonstrations across South Korea. In Gwangju, in the southwest, the military responded with brute force, firing indiscriminately into crowds. Even passersby were killed. The final death toll is still uncertain, but up to 2,000 people may have died.

The uprising is seen as a pivotal moment in the struggle for South Korean democracy.

The May 18 Memorial Foundation was established in 1994, and the Gwangju Prize was created in 2000. Xanana Gusmao, who fought for the freedom of East Timor in Southeast Asia and was elected as its first president when it became a new country in 2002, was the first recipient of the prize.

The award has since gone to other leaders in South Asia, notably Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon for democracy in Myanmar/Burma, in 2004; Manipur’s Irom Sharmila, fighting the excesses of the military in northeastern India, in 2007; and Dr Binayak Sen, a civil rights activist working for the rights of tribal populations in India, in 2011.

For the first time, however, the prize has gone this year to an organisation so many miles and whole continents away from the parent country. HIJOS was chosen for its dedication to get justice for victims of human rights abuses during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Parodi and Kary, both students who work for and represent HIJOS, are not the children of any of those who fell prey to the atrocities of the regime, but are willing to carry on the job that the daughters and sons of the victims began nearly two decades ago.

Like other human rights groups in their country, their aim is to help restore truth and bring justice to Argentine society. The organisation has helped collect evidence, arranged legal assistance for those wishing to prosecute human rights violators, and offered psychological support.

Videla’s sentencing was a part of this effort. Tried and sentenced to life for human rights abuses soon after democracy was restored, he only served a few years in prison before he was released under a broad presidential pardon from Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

But the sustained efforts of organisations like HIJOS ensured that this impunity would not be permanent.

In the mid-2000s, the Argentine Supreme Court struck down the presidential pardon for the former members of the junta, as well as the two late 1980s amnesty laws, ruling that they were unconstitutional.

“In the period that no trials took place,” Parodi told IPS, “we undertook social action by identifying the perpetrators of atrocities and distributing leaflets to their neighbours indicating that the people next door were responsible for the brutal abuses that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The human rights trials resumed after the pardons and amnesty laws were thrown out. In the central city of Córdoba, where Parodi and Kary work, there have already been four trials involving 400 victims and 43 accused, said Parodi. And a fifth trial began in December 2012 and will last another two years, the two activists told IPS.

However, helping to bring the perpetrators to court is not the end of HIJOS’s job, Parodi said, adding that there is still a lot to be done for human rights in their country.

“Human rights continue to be suppressed in Argentina,” Kary told IPS. “The military may no longer be in power, but the police continue to wield power, and their mindset has never really changed. Torture in jails continues.”

Meanwhile, the Gwangju Prize – and its 50,000 dollar cash award – has given the organisation an opportunity to share its human rights experience with rights groups and democratic movements in Asia. It is the first international recognition that HIJOS has received, and one it hopes to build on in its fight for human rights.

The people of Cunduacán and Huimanguillo, which have a combined population of 300,000, will present a class action lawsuit against Pemex in June.

Oil rigs and pumps. Credit: Bigstock

“There have been several harmful effects; we have carried out tests on soils, sediments and water and we are about to receive the results,” Marisa Jacott, the head of Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders), an environmental NGO, told IPS.

Fronteras Comunes and the Asociación Ecológica Santo Tomás (Santo Tomás Ecological Association) are providing legal advice to the local population, mainly small farmers and fisherfolk, who have incurred great losses due to oil spills and gas explosions.

Mexico’s 2011 Class Action Law allows individuals and the federal consumer protection agency to sue state and private companies. However, the law does not provide for reparations.

The oil industry has been active in Tabasco since the early 1950s, and expanded there from the 1970s onwards with the construction of petrochemical plants, pipeline networks and storage facilities, sparking an economic boom.

But the boom did not result in benefits for the local communities. Instead, the oil industry displaced traditional activities like banana farming and cattle ranching.

The oil industry is active in 13 of Tabasco’s 17 municipalities, producing 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) – of a national total of 2.5 million bpd – according to the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP).

“There is environmental pollution and crop destruction, and there are soils that have lost their fertility. This means that harvests are not as abundant as they were before,” Lorena Sánchez, head of the Tabasco Human Rights Committee (CODEHUTAB), an NGO that has received complaints from local people about these problems, told IPS.

“It has affected people’s diets and caused respiratory health problems as well as blood and skin diseases,” she said.

Since 2011, CODEHUTAB has brought four lawsuits to the federal environmental protection agency, PROFEPA, that have resulted in fines for Pemex, but not in reparations for victims in local communities.

The most recent case, this year, was related to seven gas flares burning in the municipality of Paraíso, where CODEHUTAB took blood samples from 50 children between the ages of seven and 15. Ten percent of the samples had chromosome alterations, linked by the epidemiologists to oil industry activity.

PROFEPA estimates there are an average of 20 crude spills a year in Tabasco. Between 2008 and 2012, the environment ministry recorded 102 sites contaminated by environmental emergencies in the country caused by Pemex, including three in Tabasco.

In addition to Tabasco, the eastern and southeastern states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo and Puebla and the highways connecting them to Mexico City are regarded as vulnerable to oil industry activity.

The oil industry in this region produces pollution with heavy metals, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitric oxide, volatile aromatic compounds like benzene, hydrogen sulphide, salts, ammonia, cadmium and acids, all of which are harmful to the environment and human health, the NGOs complain.

Manuel Pinkus-Rendón and Alicia Contreras, academic researchers at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, concluded in a study published last year that “the social and environmental fabric of Tabasco reflects a regional development potential considerably below that which existed over 60 years ago, as a result of environmental degradation.”

For their study “Impacto socioambiental de la industria petrolera en Tabasco: el caso de Chontalpa” (Social and environmental impact of the oil industry in Tabasco: The case of Chontalpa), the authors interviewed 200 residents of four towns in the municipality of Cárdenas, 65 percent of whom expressed negative views about oil industry activity, especially because of the pollution and destruction it causes.

“It is a case that has not been addressed. We want the judges to have the fewest possible reasons to reject it,” said Jacott, of Fronteras Comunes.

In April, the local residents presented a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights. In 2004 they had filed a legal complaint against Pemex in the attorney general’s office, but it went nowhere.

The environmental organisations and local residents have spent two years building their case. The next step will be legal action over damage suffered in the adjacent state of Veracruz, another major oil-producing region.

“We want them to take the required preventive measures. All Pemex does is supposedly carry out remediation of the damage, but it does not invest in maintaining the pipelines and guarding the area,” CODEHUTAB’s Sánchez complained.

The organisations are asking for an assessment of the state of ecosystems in Tabasco, and the dissemination of Pemex’s policies and guidelines for preventing leaks, addressing environmental contingencies and cleaning up polluted sites.

They are also calling for the gradual replacement of fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, as well as regular measurements of the main atmospheric pollutants in affected areas.

H&M, a major European apparel chain, signed the agreement Monday, and Benetton, which was under fire from activists after their clothing was found in the ruins of the Rana Plaza factory which collapsed in late April, signed on Tuesday.

The ruins of the eight-story Rana Plaza factory. Credit: Rijans/CC BY-SA 2.0

The nearly month-long search for victims in the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse ended Monday, after the death toll had reached 1,127.

“H&M’s decision to sign the accord is crucial,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labour rights watchdog group based in Washington, said in a press release.

“They are the single largest producer of apparel in Bangladesh, ahead even of Walmart. This accord now has tremendous momentum.”

Other European companies that signed the accord, known as the Bangladesh Building and Fire Safety Agreement, included Inditex, C&A, Primark and Tesco. By Tuesday evening, the only U.S. company to agree to the accord was PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, which signed last year.

According to the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), an advocacy organisation, the new agreement covers all major areas needed to ensure its effectiveness: “independent safety inspections with public reports, mandatory factory building renovations, the obligation by brands and retailers to underwrite the cost of repairs, and a vital role for workers and their unions”.

The pact also calls for participating companies to pay up to 500,000 dollars a year toward building maintenance and safety in Bangladeshi factories, to bring them up to a specified standard. According to Liana Foxvog, ILRF communications director, the associated costs would translate into about ten cents per garment.

The agreement between several major European companies has also been significant in that it now focuses a spotlight on the relative inaction of their U.S. counterparts – and narrows and intensifies the pressure from labour groups on U.S. companies to sign the pact.

“The fact of European brands signing on is very important for the Bangladesh garment industry,” Foxvog told IPS. “It’s time for U.S. companies to sign on as well.”

Labour groups are particularly focused on Walmart and Gap, two of the largest and most influential companies that source from factories in Bangladesh. Foxvog said that “If Gap changes its mind, we expect that more U.S. companies will sign on.”

Gap, which was close to signing the agreement last year before starting its own non-binding, voluntary agreement with factories in Bangladesh in October 2012, said Monday that the company was concerned about possible “legal liability” issues that could arise.

The company said Tuesday that it was “six sentences away” from signing the accord and would accept if those proposed sentences, which lessen its liability concerns, were accepted.

But critics say such arguments have little substance behind them.

“They’re nonsense,” WRC’s Nova told IPS. “Ask Gap wherein the legal liability lies; ask them to point to the language in the agreement that creates legal liability for them – they can’t do it. What Gap wants is an agreement that can’t be enforced. The stuff about legal liabilities is a ruse.”

Foxvog expressed similar sentiments.

“Gap is saying it doesn’t want to be held accountable for the working conditions (in the factories) and other commitments of the safety agreement,” she said.

Company-led change

Still, labour rights groups are growing increasingly optimistic, as companies seem to be facing increasing pressure to conform to multi-stakeholder agreements, and the Bangladeshi government has shown signs of committing to stronger labour standards.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s cabinet lifted restrictions on forming unions, reversing a 2006 law that required employees to obtain permission from an employer before organising.

And the previous day, the government set up a new minimum wage board that will include factory owners and workers, and government officials, and will recommend pay raises. However, the decision to implement these new standards will still need to be approved by the cabinet.

But for broader change, advocates argue that the active participation of multinational companies is key to bringing about permanent change in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Proponents are now hoping that the announcement by the 10 European companies – with more, perhaps, to come – could now create a transatlantic ripple effect.

“This is a really tremendous advance to have … global brands and retailers make a binding commitment to worker safety,” Judy Gearhart, executive director of the ILRF, said in a statement. “Now we need major U.S. brands and retailers such as Walmart, Gap, and JC Penney to join in the same agreement.”

Walmart has said its own safety plan meets or exceeds the building and fire safety code’s standards, but added that it would continue to discuss the plan.

Howard Riefs, spokesman for Sears, also a large producer in Bangladesh, said late Tuesday that while the company is still in discussions over the plan, it is not yet ready to sign on. JCPenney and The Children’s Place are also reportedly still evaluating the plan.

Last week, the ILRF and United Students against Sweatshops, an advocacy group, launched a new website, designed to ramp up pressure on Gap to sign the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement.

“I find it hard to believe that Gap is irresponsible enough to continue on this course of action (of avoidance) any longer,” Nova told IPS.

Damián Valencia (second right) and other members of the young people's network against machismo. Credit: Courtesy of Cascos Rosa

At the age of 20, Damián Valencia speaks knowledgeably about every aspect of gender equality. He is a member of Cascos Rosa, a young people’s initiative working for cultural change against machismo and violence against women in Ecuador.

“We seek and promote gender equality and equal rights and opportunities for men and women,” said Valencia, one of the founders of the network of young people – originally all men – united against machismo, whose members call themselves Cascos Rosa (Pink Helmets).

The group was formed in 2010 by teenagers and young adults who had received awareness raising training on gender equality, violence and ways of expressing masculinity from the Ecuadorean chapter of Acción Ciudadana por la Democracia y el Desarrollo (ACDemocracia – Citizens’ Action for Democracy and Development) and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Valencia said that gender equity “is such a huge problem that it affects everyone.” He acknowledged that “an improvement can be seen” in the country, but added that “even so, we are still living in a patriarchal society.”

Belonging to Cascos Rosa has had a major impact on his life, he said. At home there was “a machista scheme of things” in which the men “did not wash clothes or do the ironing, did not cook or wash dishes, and expected everything to be done for them.

“Now we all share the same jobs at home, no one is above anyone else, and we have the same rights and opportunities,” he said.

The network promotes a new mentality for combating gender violence and the consumption of prostitution and pornography.

Their pink helmets and T-shirts “break the stereotype that only women wear pink; that boy babies are dressed in blue and girls in pink,” said Valencia, the network’s spokesman.

Cascos Rosa originally had 33 members who emerged from the first workshops held in educational centres, and now has 140. So far 900 teenagers and young people have received training. At first, only young men were included, but as of this year women have joined the ranks.

The network members replicate their knowledge by giving talks in schools and conducting awareness raising activities at gatherings that draw young people, like music festivals. The work of the Cascos Rosa has spread from Quito to four other municipalities in the northern province of Pichincha, where the local government supports the project.

They wear pink T-shirts at their talks, meetings and other activities, in order to create an impact and practise what they preach.

Carolina Félix, who runs workshops for the network, told IPS that it is an ongoing effort, because deep-seated change is not achieved in a 12-hour training session. “That is not enough to modify behaviours and attitudes, let alone reality,” she said. But she added that the workshops do spark reflection, interest, questions and new practices among young people.

“We do not impose a way of thinking. We encourage the construction of a society based on equality, human rights and equity. The goal is to create spaces where men do not have power over women, where they express their emotions, and where women also understand that we have rights, freedoms and responsibilities, just as men do,” Félix said.

The aim, as well as shaping character and educating youngsters, is to encourage leadership traits and to make each young person a multiplier agent of their knowledge and experience, at home as well as at educational centres.

What happened in Valencia’s home shows that this can be done. In this middle-class family of three children, where the parents are shopkeepers, “everyone has changed, especially my father, who now washes the dishes and sometimes does the ironing. My mother is happier and calmer because her burden is lighter,” Valencia said.

“A definite change is taking place,” said Félix, describing the impact on the new generation taking up the baton for gender equity. “They are not afraid of showing themselves as they are, and neither do they say, ‘poor women, such victims!’ because it is an issue both men and women have to work on.”

Violence: the tip of the iceberg

The Transition Commission set up by the government to determine the public institutions that will guarantee equality between women and men recognises the need to “promote cultural transformations” to eradicate inequality and discrimination.

The priority, according to Alexandra Ocles, who chairs the commission, is to transform “cultural patterns involving values, customs, practices, the social imaginary, habits, sexist stereotypes, representations and symbols to do with sexual diversity and the traditional roles that society assigns to women and men.”

Gender violence is one of the most serious problems, according to the National Survey on Family Relationships and Gender-Based Violence against Women, the first of its kind to be carried out in this country of 14.5 million people.

The survey, carried out in 2011, found that 60.6 percent of the women interviewed had suffered some type of gender violence: physical, psychological, sexual or financial.

Psychological or emotional violence was the most frequently cited, by 53.9 percent of the respondents, followed by physical violence (38 percent), financial or property violence – the removal or retention of property or economic resources belonging to the victim – (35.3 percent) and sexual violence (25.7 percent).

“Ninety percent of married or cohabiting women (in the sample) who had experienced violence were not separated from their partners. Some 52.5 percent of them said that couples must overcome their difficulties and stay together, and 46.5 percent said their problems were not so serious,” says the study, carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).

The debate on gender-based violence emerged into the public arena in the late 1980s. The first special police units providing services for women and families were introduced in 1994, and one year later the law on violence against women and the family came into force.

In 2007, the National Plan for the Eradication of Gender-Based Violence against children, adolescents and women was launched, which includes in its aims “changing discriminatory social and cultural patterns.” The constitution approved in 2008 mandated the integration of a gender perspective into all public projects and established institutional guarantees for women’s human rights.

In recent years there have been advances, including provision of comprehensive services in the justice system, campaigns against machismo and gender violence, and a strategy to mainstream a gender perspective in higher education.

Progress has also been made in women’s participation in the different branches of government: the proportion of women in the judiciary climbed from six percent in 2006 to 43 percent in 2011; in the executive branch their participation rose from 14 to 33 percent in the same period; and in the legislature the share increased from 25 to 34 percent.

Left-leaning President Rafael Correa has declared that achieving gender equity is one of the priorities of his government.

The plaintiffs are bringing the class action lawsuit under a 2011 reform of the Mexican constitution that allows a large number of people with a common interest in a matter to sue as a group.

The civil lawsuit encompasses “damages to people living in the area or who own residential and commercial property along the coast, and people indirectly affected” by the spill, lawyer Óscar Preciado, with the law firm Rincón Mayorga Román Illanes Soto y Compañía, told IPS.

Sea turtles are among the larger animal species whose reproduction was hurt by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

“Without a doubt, this will set an important precedent. Class action lawsuits have been brought, but in questions relating to consumer, rather than environmental, rights,” said the lawyer, whose firm is representing the plaintiffs.

On Apr. 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd and under lease to BP, exploded off the coast of Louisiana, leaving 11 workers dead and 17 injured. It sank two days later.

By Jul. 15, 2010, when the oil leak was finally sealed, nearly five million barrels of oil had been spilled – only 800,000 of which were recovered – and at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants had been injected into the Gulf of Mexico.

The spill poses a long-term threat to flora, fauna and fishing resources in the Gulf of Mexico, which bathes the coasts of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, and to tourist sites, although the final extent of the damage is unknown, experts say.

“The government and BP can be sued in Mexico. The government was guilty of omission in this case,” René Sánchez, the coordinator of Colectivas, told IPS. The non-governmental organisation was born in November 2012 to provide advice to organisations and individuals with respect to filing class action lawsuits.

However, the 2011 law on collective action, which allows groups of consumers and PROFECO, Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency, to sue public and private companies, does not contemplate reparations.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster gave rise to a massive class action lawsuit involving more than 130,000 plaintiffs, known as multi-district litigation 2179 (MDL-2179), overseen by federal Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

In January, BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts and was sentenced to pay 4.5 billion dollars in penalties and fines. However, the amount is expected to climb as the lawsuit continues to wind its way through the courts.

The following month, TransOcean was found guilty by a U.S. federal judge of violating the U.S. Clean Water Act, and was fined 1.4 billion dollars.

Barbier set a Jun. 21 deadline for the attorneys to file their conclusions about evidence presented in the first phase of the trial.

In April, the government of conservative Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto sued BP and other companies in a U.S. court, after his predecessor Felipe Calderón (2006-December 2012) failed to do so.

The government’s lawsuit will fall under MDL-2179.

In 2010, the state governments of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, as well as several companies, had brought legal action against BP and TransOcean for damages to the marine environment, the coastline, and local estuaries.

Government agencies in Mexico spent more than 11 million dollars on studies, assessments, lab tests, training and overflights related to the disaster, the state governments argued.

BP Mexico did not respond to IPS’ queries about the government or class action lawsuits.

The dearth of studies on the magnitude of the damages in the Gulf of Mexico has been the Achilles’ heel of the environmental organisations and lawyers involved in preparing the class action lawsuit in Mexico.

“That is the question that has limited us the most,” Preciado said. “The Mexican state has not been very participative.

“The damages will appear over the course of years, and this won’t be easily resolved. But we are not frightened of taking on BP – on the contrary, we are very motivated,” added the lawyer, who is working on another class action lawsuit against Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) involving oil spills in the southeast state of Tabasco.

The class action suit will pose a challenge to the Mexican judges, who are not accustomed to environmental litigation, when it is presented to a federal court in the capital on a date that has not yet been established.

Colectivas’ Sánchez said “we have to see how the judges prepare, and the state of the judiciary’s bureaucracy. One of the first steps is for the plaintiffs to be recognised as a class,” as occurs under the U.S. justice system.

Sánchez is also preparing a collective lawsuit against the eventual approval of commercial planting of genetically modified maize in Mexico.

Despite the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster and a September 2008 blow-out on a BP rig in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan – which was covered up – Pemex signed a technological agreement with the British company in 2012 for deep-sea operations in this country’s Gulf of Mexico waters.

“It is an aberration,” Preciado remarked.