Brazil’s Guarani-Kaiowá people are the targets of violence at the hands of large landowners and their paid gunmen in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

There is a “deficit of justice” in Brazil, where the police themselves sometimes join the ranks of organised crime, in the form of militias, according to Amnesty International.

In the past few years, significant advances have been made in Brazil in terms of ensuring basic rights, but there are still problems in many areas, Atila Roque, director of the Brazilian chapter of the London-based rights group, said Wednesday.

Amnesty’s Annual Report 2013: The State of the World’s Human Rights, released Wednesday, analyses the situation in 159 countries and dedicates over four pages to Brazil. It notes the country’s high rates of violent crime, and the excessive use of force and even torture by those in charge of law enforcement.

“The threat to the life of the population in general posed by criminal activities is still serious, and the state bodies that should guarantee the rights of society often become the agents of violations of those rights,” Roque told IPS.

Rio de Janeiro’s militias - squads of rogue police who have formed illegal vigilante gangs and dominate entire neighbourhoods – are an extreme case, Roque said, because they are made up of agents who “use the uniform as an instrument to break the law and join the world of crime.”

The activist said the state is having trouble fighting this new form of organised crime.

“This phenomenon has gained visibility in recent years and reveals, above all, a process of deterioration in public security, because of the failure to contain the expansion of organised crime within the very ranks of the police,” Roque said.

The policy of creating ‘Police Pacification Units’ in Rio de Janeiro favelas or shantytowns has been one of the measures used to bring down soaring homicide rates. But the community policing strategy has not extended to favelas dominated by the militias made up of corrupt police.

“If this problem is not addressed in-depth, there will be no improvement in terms of justice and human rights,” Roque said.

The Amnesty report says at least 200,000 more guards are needed in the country’s prisons, where it describes conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”

Roque said that due to an aggressive incarceration policy, the prison population in this country of 198 million people has climbed to over 500,000 – a number only surpassed by the United States, China and Russia.

Worse, over 40 percent of inmates have not yet been sentenced, and a number of them may not even be found guilty in the end.

An Amnesty delegation that visited prisons in the state of Amazonas in northwest Brazil last year to investigate reports of abuse “saw inmates in foetid, overcrowded, insecure cells.

“In several prisons women and minors were detained in the same units as men, and there were numerous reports of torture, including near-suffocation with a plastic bag, beatings and electric shocks by the state military police,” the report added.

Indigenous people especially vulnerable

The Amnesty report also focuses on the plight of the Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, who are facing intimidation, violence and threats of being forced off their ancestral land.

“Peasant and indigenous leaders in that region are vulnerable to violence at the hands of landowners, and the risk of death remains high,” Roque said, referring to “the organised extermination of a people with the collusion of the state in the face of apathy on the part of society.”

Amnesty criticised a July 2012 attorney general’s office resolution authorising mining and hydroelectric projects and military constructions in indigenous territories without the prior consultation to which they are entitled under International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which was ratified by Brazil in 2002.

Flavio Machado, regional coordinator of the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI), a Catholic missionary organisation that works on behalf of indigenous rights, told IPS that native people are “completely disregarded” by the authorities in Brazil and are facing the most complex situations seen since the 1964-1985 dictatorship.

“There is a concerted attack on indigenous people. The demarcation of indigenous territory is moving ahead slowly, and they are treated as second-class citizens,” said Machado, who worked with Amnesty on the indigenous rights section in the organisation’s annual report.

The 45,000-strong Guarani-Kaiowá community is the second-largest native group in the country, where 0.4 percent of the population is indigenous. Most of the Guarani-Kaiowá live in small areas of land in the southern part of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where they face alarming levels of violence.

The overall homicide rate in Brazil is 27.4 per 100,000 population, according to the 2012 Map of Violence. But the murder rate among the Guarani-Kaiowá is 140 per 100,000, Machado said.

In the last 10 years, 12 indigenous leaders were killed in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul alone. Most of them were Guarani-Kaiowá.

“The violence is exercised by ranchers and their paid gunmen,” reported CIMI, which is linked to the Catholic bishops’ conference. “There is a militia to kill indigenous people and prevent the demarcation of their ancestral land by the authorities. So far only 10 percent of their territory has been officially recognised.”

But Machado said the most serious problem faced by the Guarani-Kaiowá is the high suicide rate, caused by anguish over the lack of prospects for the future. According to the Health Ministry’s special office on indigenous health, there were 611 suicides in that ethnic group between 2000 and 2012.

Survival International, a human rights organisation that campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples, reported that ”the Guarani suffer a wave of suicide unequalled in South America.”

“This is the consequence of the process of confinement in small areas without possibilities for development,” Machado said.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has not received representatives of the country’s indigenous groups since taking office in January 2011, despite their numerous requests, CIMI reported.

Toasted grasshoppers on sale in the Benito Juárez market in the capital of Oaxaca state, Mexico. Credit: Nsaum75 CC BY-SA 3.0

The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation to consider using edible insects as a food source to combat hunger may have particular repercussions in Colombia and Mexico, two Latin American countries that have a tradition of eating insects and a high degree of biodiversity.

Mexico has 300 edible insect species, according to a study published in May by the entomology department of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), titled “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”.

But local researchers have identified more than 500 species in the centre, south and southeast of Mexico, a mega-biodiverse country with a poverty rate of 47 percent.

“Insects are a viable, cheap source of high quality food that could be even better than the packaged foods that are consumed at present,” researcher Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Biology Institute, told IPS.

In her view, “This country is ready for mass consumption of insects, but people need education about techniques and ways of marketing them. Protecting them is not a concern. There are no official measures,” said the expert, who has been carrying out research since the 1970s on the benefits of insects, and has reported 549 edible species.

The issue acquires an environmental dimension, particularly on International Day for Biological Diversity, celebrated this Wednesday May 22.

Eating insects or entomophagy is an indigenous tradition in Mexico, attested to by the Florentine Codex, written by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590) who described the consumption of 96 species.

Some insects provide up to three times more protein, weight for weight, than beef, and their nutrient concentrations are surpassed only by fish, according to the National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

The Mexican insect menu is made up of blood-sucking bugs, worms, beetles, butterflies, ant and fly larvae, bees, wasps and “chapulin” grasshoppers. They can be grilled, fried or served with different kinds of sauces.

In recent decades, several of these delicacies have vaulted from kitchens in poor rural homes to tables in fancy restaurants.

In Mitla, a town close to a Zapotec archaeological site of the same name in the southern state of Oaxaca, a small business uses moth larvae (Hypopta agavis) that feed on American aloe leaves to make a hot spicy salt to accompany mescal, an alcoholic drink distilled from the same aloe plant.

“We follow a homemade recipe. Grinding is done by hand and we use a hand mixer. We also package by hand,” Diana Corona, the commercial manager of the firm Gran Mitla which produces 300 kilograms of “sal de gusano” (larva salt) a month, told IPS.

It takes 300 grams of ground larvae, 300 grams of dry chili peppers and 400 grams of salt to produce one kilo.

The larvae or worms are collected from August to October and frozen to ensure continuous production, as from November to the following May harvesting is banned throughout the country.

The FAO publication says that more than 1,900 species are part of the traditional diets of at least two billion people worldwide. The favourites are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets.

Collecting and farming insects could create jobs and income, and could have industrial-scale potential, the authors say.

“That could be achieved if the insects are farmed and marketed in large quantities. But producers need to be aware that their resources are being depleted,” said Ramos-Elorduy, who is investigating the productivity of insect species that feed on maize and pumpkin, and seeking ways of increasing it.

“Collecting techniques are the same everywhere, but there is no legislation stipulating proper techniques. People do not know what they are. Besides, wages are very low,” she said.

In their research paper “Edible insects in some locations in Central Region of Mexico State: Collection techniques, sale and preparation”, Ramos-Elorduy, Andrés Juárez and José Manuel Pino warn that “this valuable food resource is in danger of disappearing, due to a variety of environmental and socio-economic problems.”

The paper, published in December, concludes that “impacts on the environment, cultural change and changes in land use are causing the consumption of insects to decrease, especially among young people.”

Corona, of Gran Mitla, agreed that measures should be taken to protect these species. “Regulations are needed for collection and marketing. Insects are part of the Mexican diet and the resource must be protected,” she said.

For the same reason, many collectors are reluctant to talk about where they find their insects and grubs, and how they capture or harvest them.

The FAO report recommends automated infrastructure and regulatory frameworks to ensure stable, reliable and safe production. It also stresses that insect biomass could be used as the raw material for animal feed.

In Colombia, a snack available from street stalls is the crunchy “hormiga culona” (Atta laevigata), a leafcutter ant species, sold toasted and salted. The origin of this and other dishes is native culture.

But “going into the rainforest for large-scale extraction of insects is a touchy issue, because they are found in wildlife habitats,” Colombian biologist and regional planner Jaime Bernal Hadad told IPS.

Colombia has a poverty rate of 33 percent, and it is the second most mega-biodiverse country on the planet, after Brazil.

“In tropical ecosystems, although there is a great diversity of species, there are only relatively few individuals per species,” said Bernal Hadad. “Large-scale extraction could lead to the extinction of species, or create environmental imbalances.

“Beetles on fallen trees in the forest help decomposition and the balance of those forests,” he said. “Wasps and bees have an important role in pollination. And while there are native groups who eat beetles and prize them highly, they are minority groups and do not create problems.”

In Bernal Hadad’s view, farming insects “is an interesting option. But other factors come into play, such as the issue of cultural acceptability and consumption.

“Of course, in Europe it may be regarded as exotic, but if we consider marginalised populations in Latin America, the issue is very different,” he said.

The fight against hunger “cannot ignore structural issues,” he said. Moreover, “it is worth asking whether the proposal could be controlled or if it would become another method of interfering with conservation, not as a result of ranching and the timber industry, but because of insects,” he said. “Then we would continue to reproduce the destruction of natural systems, without real solutions.”

With additional reporting from Helda Martínez in Bogotá.

When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.

She is not sure where her vocation came from, but she does know that this is what she wants to do.

In Cuba, which is seeking to boost agricultural yields, there is a scarcity of young people working in the sector.

Blanco, a petite 20-year-old, dropped her math studies after two years to try her hand at the Vivero Alamar, a successful agricultural cooperative in Havana that operates as a Basic Unit of Cooperative Production.

“I began working here in September 2012; in three months they made me a member of the cooperative. I realised that I really like it and I want to stay here. The agricultural sector has lots of possibilities and many fields of investigation; it’s a very interesting and lovely experience,” she told IPS.

Mercedes Cepero, 18, has had a similar experience, although she came to this cooperative to fulfil her professional training requirement as an agronomy technician. “I’ve passed the student stage, and now I have to get trained and learn as a worker. I used to think that agronomy was just working with a hoe in the sun, but I was wrong,” she told IPS.

Cepero is also preparing for university entrance exams, which will be held this month, because she wants to be an agricultural engineer. Unlike Blanco, she was told about this career when she was in secondary school. “That was when I became interested,” she said.

Blanco thinks that the lack of interest in agricultural careers among young people is due in part to today’s society. “A lot of people see agriculture as something that is not studied, that doesn’t involve science, because it’s just planting and harvesting. Other people view work in the countryside as a lot of hard work that brings few benefits,” she said.

Twenty young people, between the ages of 17 and 30, work at the Vivero Alamar.

However, most young people leave agriculture when they find jobs that are more in line with their aspirations for better incomes and less hard work.

Cepero has little patience with the general attitude toward agricultural work: young people “are a little bit lazy, and they want everything to just fall into their lap,” she said.

According to figures provided by the national urban and suburban agriculture programme, about 70,000 young people in this country of 11.3 million are working in agriculture.

The Vivero Alamar urban farming cooperative is located in the housing project of Alamar about 15 km from downtown Havana. The housing development is home to about 100,000 people.

Research by the Centre for the Study of Youth has found that young Cubans prefer to seek jobs in the emerging economy, such as foreign companies, and reject jobs related to sanitation services, construction and agriculture.

“People view agriculture today as if it were punishment. Whoever misbehaves will go work in the fields. The children of farmers do not want to continue their parents’ work; they want to move to Havana and become doctors,” said Isis Salcines, who describes herself as a worker-of-all-trades at the coop, and who is about to graduate as an agronomist.

Shortly after beginning her university studies, Salcines decided to create a kind of vocational club at an elementary school close to the coop, dubbed “Agro-ecological Kids”. But first she conducted a couple of surveys. One asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and another asked them to complete the sentence: “When I grow up, I want to be.…” with farmer as one of the choices.

Not one of the children chose farmer. Salcines, who is the daughter of the coop’s founder and president, Miguel Ángel Salcines, set herself the goal of holding weekly sessions to teach the children about how the coop is run using agro-ecological methods, and why it is important to eat healthier.

By the time the first course was over, the “Kids” would eat every bite of vegetables they were served in tasty salads, and they knew how to work on the farm, understood the importance of producing food, and had learned about the comprehensive management of pests and diseases.

In a new survey she conducted at the end of the first workshop, 15 of the boys and girls – nearly three-quarters – marked agronomy as a possible career. “This experience was a real incentive. It made me see how it was possible for them to choose this line of work once they are grown-up,” Salcines said.

For Norma Romero, a plant protection engineer, the formula must include education from an early age and assurances for young people that they will feel recognised, motivated and encouraged to continue working in agriculture, despite any difficulties.

Good wages, a flexible schedule to allow them to study, free breakfast and lunch, work clothing and shoes, and other benefits are motivating factors, “because in agriculture there is mud, lots of sun, dust, and really hard conditions. For us it is vital for people to come and stay, especially young people,” Romero said.

As part of the recent reforms of the Cuban economy, the Education Ministry expanded in 2011 the number of agronomy specialties offered at the vocational school level and ordered a reinforcement of vocational guidance toward agriculture in the early years of primary education, in line with the characteristics and needs of each province.

Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of total employment but less than five percent of GDP because it has the lowest productivity of any sector. Last year, the country imported 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of food.

Smelter at the El Teniente mine, which produces 37 percent of Chile’s copper. Credit:Marianela Jarroud/IPS

Chile’s position as the world’s top producer of copper is not under threat, but the country faces the challenge of transforming its copper mining industry into social capital for the long term, and addressing high energy costs, which have grown seven-fold over the last decade, experts told IPS.

“The country’s comparative advantages, in contrast to its production indicators, are somewhat threatened by the upsurge in prices, especially for electricity and supplies,” said Rodrigo Balbontín, an analyst at the Centro de Estudios del Cobre y la Minería (CESCO – Centre for Copper and Mining Studies).

With 36 percent of the global market and 28 percent of known copper reserves, Chile remains in the lead as the world’s top producer of copper, which was nationalised in 1971 by then socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973). Copper accounts for 45 percent of the country’s exports and provides one-third of government revenue.

In 2012 the country produced 5.5 million tonnes of copper, three percent more than in the previous year, according to the Chilean Copper Commission (COCHILCO).

The National Copper Corporation (CODELCO), the state mining company, contributed 7.52 billion dollars to state revenues in 2012, maintaining copper as Chile’s chief product. CODELCO regulates the sector, which includes transnational operators like Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton, the British-based Anglo American and Xstrata, based in Switzerland.

Bernardo Reyes, head of the mining engineering department at the University of Santiago, told IPS that Chile’s copper reserves “guarantee about 80 more years of production, but the deposits are being exhausted, and if CODELCO does not make the necessary investments, production will decline, which is its prime concern.”

Accordingly, CODELCO plans to inject 27 billion dollars in the period 2013-2020, mainly to increase production and improve copper grades, the measure of the metal’s purity. In the immediate term, it plans to increase extraction to 6.3 million tonnes in 2015.

North of the Chilean border, the world’s second producer, Peru, is planning to double its 2012 production by 2016. Output in 2012 was 141 percent higher than in 2011, reaching three million tonnes. From 2016 to 2021 Peru forecasts stable copper production at six million tonnes a year.

Balbontín said the other big copper producers, particularly Peru and China, will gradually approach Chile’s production figures “because they have more potential for growth,” but Chile’s supremacy is not at risk.

He added that Peru, rather than a threat, represents “the possibility of a strategic alliance, in which there could be an exchange of knowledge, experience and professionals.”

The United States, the other large producer in the Americas, is not a threat either, Balbontín said. “Not only in the case of copper, but in that of other materials, the United States produces for its own internal consumption,” he said.

In the experts’ view, another baseless threat to which frequent reference is made, with ulterior motives, is the alleged high cost of labour in Chile.

Reyes said that mining workers’ wages are lower in Chile than in the United States, and he dismissed the idea that they might eventually be a hindrance to investment.

Cristián Cuevas, the president of the Confederation of Subcontracted CODELCO Workers, said this was a “fictitious debate” and “unacceptable blackmail” on the part of investors in the sector.

“To think that mining industry workers are a privileged elite is to not understand anything. I would like to send the investors to experience for themselves the reality of more than 70 percent of the workers I represent, their working conditions, their living conditions, and the impact the industry has on mining towns,” he said.

The experts agreed that the chief real challenge, in contrast, is high infrastructure and energy costs, which make production more expensive, largely because of difficulties in securing access to water.

“The cost of energy in Chile has risen approximately seven-fold in 10 years, and that has a big effect on production costs,” said Reyes.

Electrolytic refining of copper consumes huge amounts of electricity.

Reyes added that water shortage in Chile’s northern desert, where the principal copper deposits are located, has forced mining companies to get their water supply from the sea.

Water from the ocean must be desalinated and transported to 800 metres above sea level. “Pumping water up into the Andes requires a great deal of infrastructure as well as energy resources,” he said.

CESCO’s Balbontín said the issue of electricity supply is related to the geographical features of the location of the copper deposits, the concentration of the energy market, and an energy mix that, in the case of the Great North Interconnected System, is based on coal and diesel fuel.

He emphasised that another very important issue to analyse is “converting the exploitation of a natural resource into long-term social capital, because copper is non-renewable, we all know that.” Copper profits should be used to build up complementary productive industries so that “we are not just left with the revenue and jobs provided by the copper industry,” he added.

However, he forecast an increase in copper production and consumption worldwide over the next decade, and stable prices that will not drop below the level of two dollars a pound, as they did in the mid-1990s.

“While copper prices have fallen significantly, this must be seen in the context of a scenario of bumper prices spanning many decades,” he said.

“The copper market today is being driven by the greatest migration in the history of humanity, which is the rural-urban migration in China, where 500 million people are becoming consumers of electric cables, buildings, food processors, cars, and so on,” he said.

He dismissed the idea that in the medium term there could be a return to the copper prices seen in 2011, which reached an average of 3.99 dollars a pound, the highest since 1966.

“But neither does it mean that the ‘super cycle’ is over and that now we will go back to the situation that prevailed in the 1990s. In the medium term that is not likely to happen,” which means will continue to be the main source of Chile’s wealth, Balbontín said.

Of the 195 workers at Vivero Alamar, 46 are women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

“We offer flexible hours, relatively high wages, and professional upgrading, among other benefits that make the cooperative an attractive option. This is how we attract high quality human resources, who are crucial today in order to produce more organic food,” said Salcines, the president of Vivero Alamar, where production has been chemical-free since 2000.

The cooperative’s recipe for success also includes transparent accounting, equitable profit sharing, interest-free loans for the workers, free lunches, and support for women workers with young children or others in their care: they are allowed to arrive up to an hour later than the official beginning of the work day, at seven in the morning, Salcines told Tierramérica*.

Human capital played a decisive role in raising production at this urban agriculture venture, founded in 1997 on an initial 800 square metres of land in the community of Alamar, around 15 kilometres east of downtown Havana. This is why Salcines believes that the key to achieving food security in Cuba lies in agricultural workers with a “vocation” for farming, as well as training.

In 2012, world food prices skyrocketed as a result of poor crop yields in various centres of agricultural production, such as the United States. The Caribbean countries, which are net food importers, suffered the greatest impact in the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Less than five percent of the population of Cuba suffers from malnutrition, but the country was forced to spend over 1.633 billion dollars on food imports last year, an unsustainable expenditure for an economy in crisis for more than 20 years, specialists say.

Reducing this massive expenditure by raising domestic food production remains a challenge for the government of President Raúl Castro. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, the National Office of Statistics and Information reported a 7.8 percent decrease in agricultural production other than sugar cane.

“There is a big demand that needs to be met, which is why we are able to sell everything we grow,” said Salcines, one of the founders of the cooperative, which now covers a total of 10.14 hectares and produces more than 230 different crop varieties (primarily garden vegetables, as well as some fruits, grains and tubers) in greenhouses and open fields.

In the midst of a generally inefficient agricultural sector, Vivero Alamar has achieved consistent growth for more than 15 years, thanks to the constant upgrading of its organic farming methods, which have even earned the praise of the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, who visited the cooperative earlier this month.

In 2012, they produced 400 tons of vegetables, 5.5 tons of medicinal and “spiritual” plants (used in religious rituals), 2.6 tons of dried herbs and spices, and 350 tons of worm manure.

They also produced 30,000 ornamental plant and fruit tree seedlings and three million vegetable seedlings, some for their own planting needs, others for sale to other farmers, reported Salcines.

Fresh vegetables, especially lettuce, are the products most sought after by the local residents in Alamar, who have begun to learn in recent years – like people in the rest of the country – about the benefits of including more greens in the traditional Cuban diet of rice, beans, “viandas” (starchy tubers and plantain) and pork.

“The first time we planted cauliflower, in 2000, it all got left in the fields, because nobody knew what it was,” plant health engineer Norma Romero told Tierramérica. In her view, one of the most important contributions made by the more than 33,000 urban and suburban farms in Cuba has been the expansion of access to and consumption of vegetables.

Thanks to a new initiative at Vivero Alamar, recipes for the preparation of different vegetables and mushrooms accompany the lists of products available at the cooperative’s sales outlet, as part of its business and educational strategy. The shelves also stock pickled vegetables, fruit preserves and garlic paste, produced through its own small industry sideline.

Although organic produce can be prohibitively costly in other countries, the organic fruits and vegetables sold by Vivero Alamar are actually priced lower than those produced with agrochemicals and sold in private farmers markets, where the prices are set in accordance with supply and demand.

“The affordable prices are the biggest attraction. A head of lettuce costs four Cuban pesos (five cents of a dollar) here, and everywhere else they charge 10 pesos,” regular customer Sonia Ricardo told Tierramérica. “The vegetables here are fresh, they have no pesticides, and the service is really fast,” she added.

Despite these low prices, the cooperative is able to earn good profits, production chief Gonzálo González assured Tierramérica. Eighty-five percent of its products are sold directly to the population, and the rest go to restaurants like La Bodeguita del Medio, a major tourist attraction in Havana.

Since it first started out with just five people, Vivero Alamar has progressively moved towards a closed-loop farming system that reduces waste and environmental damage.

“We try to buy as few inputs from outside as possible,” explained González, which is what led to “the idea of producing our own manure and various bio-pesticides and fertilisers.”

Vivero Alamar raises bulls to obtain manure, has set up “worm bins” to produce earthworm castings, another organic fertiliser, and breeds mycorrhizal fungi (which attach themselves to the roots of plants and promote their growth) as well as insects and microorganisms that can boost crop yields naturally. The cooperative has also established links with 17 scientific centres for the incorporation of new organic farming techniques and products.

Today, the 195 people who work here are striving to raise production by 40 percent to reach the farm’s full potential output, and have also expanded into raising rabbits and sheep, in order to include meat in its sales to the public and improve protein consumption among the neighbouring population, some 30,000 people.

The staff is made up of 175 cooperative members and 20 employees, and boasts a high overall level of education, with 92 university graduates and 42 technical college graduates. Women currently account for only 46 of the 195 workers.

“A farm can do much more than produce food,” commented Salcines, as he watched a group of foreign tourists who had booked a guided tour and organic lunch at Vivero Alamar.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Indigenous students learning to operate equipment at a communications workshop. Credit: Courtesy of PCSAN/Daniela Silva

Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Rosiléia Cruz, 19, dreams of studying journalism. She chooses her words carefully during her interview with Tierramérica* by mobile phone from Tabatinga, in northwest Brazil, which can only be reached by plane or river travel.

Cruz is a member of the Ticuna indigenous ethnic group, one of the most numerous in the country. The Ticuna live in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in the Alto Solimões region around the river of the same name, near the borders of Peru and Colombia.

The lands of their ancestors were invaded for decades by “seringueiros” (rubber tappers), fishermen and loggers, who left poverty and destruction in their wake.

Up until three years ago, young people like Cruz had few prospects, and many sought relief in alcohol and even suicide.

But in January 2010, the Joint Programme on Food and Nutrition Security for Indigenous Women and Children opened a window of hope, with activities aimed at creating agricultural and other nutritional solutions, but with particular emphasis on training and awareness raising.

Cruz forms part of a group of 50 young people from Ticuna and Kokama indigenous communities participating in communications workshops held in local schools. At the Umariaçu II community school in Tabatinga, she learned how to conduct interviews, take photographs, and produce daily news billboards and radio programmes.

She was thrilled by the opportunity to handle a microphone or camera in order to question the village chief about community problems, explain the importance of breastfeeding to mothers-to-be, or inform children about healthy habits, soft drinks, processed foods and the fruits of the region.

“There are a lot of young people that we can rescue from alcoholism,” she said. “We just prepared a news report on ‘Indian Day’ (a Brazilian holiday celebrated every Apr. 19) and I’m going to participate in Indigenous Babies Week.”

The aim of the workshops is to motivate young people to promote and defend their rights. An agreement with a local television station made it possible for the youngsters to be trained in the use of the equipment donated by the joint programme. The radio station in Tabatinga provided them with space in its Saturday programming schedule so that they could broadcast their own radio show.

The group also uses loudspeakers mounted on posts in their villages to get their message across. The daily news billboards are displayed on the walls of medical clinics and schools, and internet workshops have provided them with the skills to run their own website, which will be launched on May 21.

Once all the workshops are completed, the participants will share what they have learned with other students. Partnerships with local governments, universities and indigenous organisations will ensure continuity, and the internet will serve as a platform to disseminate the results, expand communication and inspire other young people.

These experiences form part of a wider project to help Ticuna and Kokama communities to organise in order to demand health care, education and economic and political participation.

The joint programme is an initiative of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Achievement Fund, set up with a financial contribution from the government of Spain and administered by various United Nations agencies, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with the Brazilian government.

Now in the stage of collecting data and evaluating results, since it will conclude in June, the programme focused on the municipalities of Tabatinga, Benjamin Constant and São Paulo de Olivença in the northwestern state of Amazonas, and the municipality of Dourados in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which are home to a combined total of 53,000 indigenous people.

These areas were chosen because of their high rates of malnutrition, substance abuse and violence, as well as their remote and difficult-to-reach locations. It is hoped that the positive results expected can be extended to other regions of the country, Fernando Moretti, the national coordinator of the joint programme, told Tierramérica.

In the three and half years since the programme was launched, International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples has been translated into the Guaraní, Terena and Ticuna languages. Brazil ratified the convention in 2002, but its implementation remains a challenge.

Another concrete outcome was the publication of a book that shares the perceptions of 25 children and adolescents in villages in Mato Grosso do Sol and neighbouring Paraguay on food and nutrition security. The book, which includes photographs, letters and artworks, will be distributed in a Portuguese-Guaraní bilingual edition to schools, libraries and cultural centres.

“When we talk about food security, it is not simply a matter of food production, but also of training in health and self-esteem,” said Moretti.

The activities are aimed at motivating people to use the region’s biological and agricultural diversity sustainably.

Communities were provided with rural technical assistance and guidance for the establishment of agro-forestry systems, which combine farming with sustainable use and recovery of local forests, and of school gardens. In Dourados, indigenous farmers reintroduced yerba mate – used to prepare a hot beverage widely consumed in southern Brazil and neighbouring countries – and other native plant species with significant commercial potential.

In the village of Panambizinho, two plant nurseries were constructed, and the local residents learned how to make eco-friendly stoves that use less firewood, thus preserving the forest, and reduce harmful smoke emissions.

There were also discussions of concepts and practices related to healthy eating and disease prevention. Awareness raising and the creation of opportunities allowed the project to grow naturally, said Moretti.

Some families created gardens in their homes. Indigenous community members were trained to measure and weigh babies and children in order to provide data on these populations to the Food and Nutrition Security System.

In Alto Solimões, the ILO is supporting an association of craftspeople with a market study to help their products reach buyers.

For Moretti, what was most important was strengthening institutions and expanding interaction with the indigenous population. From now on, there will be two indigenous representatives on the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, the agency responsible for implementation of the Zero Hunger policy launched by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration (2003-2011). Indigenous community members are also organising to participate in municipal councils.

In Dourados, the National Indigenous Fund and UNICEF organised a colloquium in order to create a network for the protection of indigenous children and adolescents and to define the measures to be adopted in cases of abuse, abandonment and alcoholism. A similar event will be held with communities in Alto Solimões on Jun. 17-19.

An ethnic mapping exercise was also conducted, which included the identification of what is produced in each region. “These are tools that the indigenous people themselves will be able to use,” stressed Moretti.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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.

CFBC Professor Dr. Leighton Naraine in the plant research facility at the college. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

As Caribbean communities grapple with the entwined challenges of climate change and food security, modern technologies offer hope that the region’s stagnating agricultural sector can be made more profitable.

For the past six years, the University of Central Florida (UCF) has teamed up with the St. Kitts-based Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) to implement a climate change education project for sustainable development in the region.

The institutions are reporting “tremendous success” using hydroponics, organoponics and hybrid-ponics, techniques that they insist are far more cost-effective.

“Climate change affects us all and one of the areas that we are most vulnerable is in the field of food security, namely agriculture. So my task as part of this team was to develop models to test various scenarios to see which one would be the most significant,” Stuart La Place, a lecturer at CFBC told IPS.

“Strawberries don’t usually grow in these climates but we have managed to grow them successfully and we are still growing them at the moment,” he said.

Hydroponics is a technique used to grow plants without soil, instead using mineral nutrient solutions in water.

The organoponics technique involves using a single layer of soil, sand, manure and potting soil for planting vegetables. La Place noted “this is being implemented in St. Kitts on a large scale at the moment.”

Hybridponics, he explained, “is a scenario we created at the college that lends itself to starting the initial growing techniques in hydro and then transplanting into the organo beds and we have had significant results.”

Former CFBC student Candace Richards agrees these methods are more cost-effective and profitable than traditional agriculture.

Noting that for a 20 by 20-foot plot, the hydroponic system costs 2,000 dollars to set up and the organoponics system 3,703 dollars, she said it’s “a worthy investment” since the estimated annual profits are in the region of 66,660 dollars after all costs are deducted. In comparison, a plot of the same size devoted to traditional agriculture produces approximately 740 dollars per month profit.

“This is better than traditional agriculture that requires more land space, is more labour intensive and presents challenges that can yield fewer crops,” Richards told IPS, pointing to the added advantage of having crops all year round rather than on a seasonal basis under traditional agriculture.

Using the organoponics method, it takes 45 days to get lettuce from seed to maturity, using 9.1 gallons of water; while with hydroponics, from a seed the lettuce takes 25 days to mature and uses significantly less water because it’s in a circulation system. The water keeps moving around and the only way out of that system is through the plant.

Growing lettuce the traditional way – planting in the ground – the growth cycle from a seed to maturity is 55 days and uses 11.3 gallons of water for a single plant from a dripper that delivers 50 milliletres per minute.

Each summer a group of UCF students visit St. Kitts and Nevis through the President’s Scholars programme at UCF to work with students at faculty at CFBC.

Charlene Kormondy was among 11 UCF students who travelled to St. Kitts and Nevis in 2012 under the programme.

“I was part of the agro technology team and our product was to build a shade house now known as the CFBC plant research facility,” she told IPS.

“When we got to St. Kitts we worked alongside students from St. Kitts and Nevis, CFBC professors and members of the local community to construct the shade house.

“It’s an example of action learning, implanting something that is a solution to a problem in the community and also generating knowledge about how to build these shade house systems and how to make agriculture more sustainable in the face of climate change, which you know could have temperature and precipitation impacts which could adversely affect crop production,” she said.

Now that the facility is up and running, Kormondy said it provides many tangible benefits to the community, including health benefits because the plants and vegetables grown there are substitutes for less healthy foods.

She said it can also lead to greater independence from foreign imports, and even gender equality.

“Women and children are the ones who are most vulnerable to climate-related disasters and socio-economic impacts, and this kind of agricultural system allows women to participate in agriculture but also have enough energy to devote to their role as primary caregivers and that’s because the growth of these plants are more efficient,” Kormondy said.

Another UCF student, Jessica Gottsleben, noted that a rise in tourism has led the economy and lucrative jobs to be less focused on agriculture, and food imports now exceed exports by a factor of four to one.

“Food supply is vulnerable from these climate-related disruptions,” she noted, adding that in future years the programme will seek to create local leaders from the youth being brought into the agricultural and business communities to increase self-sufficiency and resilience.

“The partnership has the potential to create jobs in existing sectors of agriculture and also create innovation in fostering jobs in areas such as agro tourism, agro processing, marketing, collecting evidence-based social data,” Gottsleben told IPS.

Sixteen CFBC students are currently registered in the programme and are trained in building the hydroponic system.

But UCF Professor Dr. Kevin Meehan said they are getting the wider community involved through what’s known as ‘The Take Five Programme’ that was implemented in February last year.

“We used a publicity campaign in print and electronic media to invite the general public as well as CFBC faculty to come to the campus to bring five containers (hence the name take five) and we would drill drainage holes in the containers, fill them with nutrient rich potting soil and then put in seedlings and then they would take those home to cultivate those buckets.”

Some 52 participants showed up over the course of three days at the CFBC campus.

“A second round of ‘Take Five’ was driven by the students and they adapted it as an outreach competition to the primary schools throughout the Federation,” Meehan said.

With funding from the Organisation of American States under the Special Multilateral Fund of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development, Dr. Meehan said they are now getting ready to implement the programme in Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana and at two separate locations in Haiti.

The UCF and CFBC representatives participated in a two-day UNESCO Sub-Regional Meeting on the environment and climate in Nevis on May 15 and 16.

It was organised by UNESCO in collaboration with the St. Kitts and Nevis National Commission on UNESCO and the Nevis Island Administration to support national adaptation policies to climate change in the Small Island Developing States of the Caribbean.

Marchers in a conga line ended four days of activities against homophobia in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Cuba has won advances on issues like the change of name of pre-operative transgender persons, while they continue to fight for the right to same-sex civil unions.

For the first time since 1997, a transsexual woman who had not undergone sex-change surgery was issued a photo ID card this year reflecting her chosen name and gender identity, Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer with the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), a government-funded body, told IPS.

“We will continue supporting efforts to attain name changes in other cases, and we hope it will become the norm,” said Vázquez, who is head of the legal services unit in CENESEX, which reports that the family and the workplace are the spheres where the rights of LGBT persons are violated the most.

Up to now, the photo on the national ID card of trans women and men has had to reflect their biological sex.

In 1997, CENESEX managed to reach agreements with the ministries of the interior and justice to change the names and photos on the ID cards of 13 transgender people who had not undergone sex-reassignment surgery, although other civil registry documents, such as their birth certificates, were not modified. But that had not happened again until now.

Transgender people who have undergone sex-change surgery, which is provided free of charge in Cuba since 2008, are allowed to modify their ID cards. In Cuba, 19 people – two of them female-to-male transgender persons – have had sex-reassignment surgery so far, according to CENESEX.

“Now a trans person who has not had surgery is free to seek and win a name change, thanks to this precedent,” Vázquez said.

Speaking to IPS during the month-long events surrounding the International Day Against Homophobia, celebrated May 17, Adela Hernández, the only transgender member of a municipal assembly in Cuba, said she had started the process of applying for a name change on her ID card.

Hernández, a nurse and now a municipal assembly member in the city of Caibarién in the central province of Villa Clara, had to register as a candidate in the October-November 2012 municipal elections under the name José Agustín Hernández and with a photo that looks very different from the woman who won a majority of votes in her district.

Hernández is one of the special guests on this year’s agenda of educational, cultural and – for the first time – sports activities organised by CENESEX, which has led a month of anti-homophobia events every year since 2008.

On this occasion, the central activities took place May 14-17 in the city of Ciego de Ávila, 434 km east of Havana, ending with a festive march down the central avenue Libertad, with the demonstrators waving rainbow and Cuban flags and dancing in a conga line.

Mariela *, a 36-year-old mother, came to watch the conga line with her nine-year-old baby. “I haven’t taken part (in the activities), but I’m not against it,” she told IPS. “These events help families learn about sexual diversity and to respect it more, and help children and young people grow up better.”

But other people are still opposed to the campaign for respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity, which CENESEX carries out all year long, culminating in the May schedule of events, dedicated this year to families.

CENESEX director Mariela Castro said “the hardest thing is to change people’s mentalities,” in a country that is still heavily machista and homophobic. In fact, until the 1990s, “ostentatious public displays of homosexuality” were illegal.

Since 2012, the LGBT community and CENESEX have stepped up their activism demanding recognition of sexual rights as human rights in this country, which has no specific law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Cuban parliament has not yet debated the bill for a new “family code”, sponsored in 2008 by the non-governmental Federation of Cuban Women and other institutions. Among other things, the bill, aimed at updating the family code in effect since 1975, would recognise same-sex civil unions.

In Latin America, same-sex marriage is legal only in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Mexico City and three states in Mexico. In Brazil, meanwhile, civil unions that confer nearly the same rights as marriage are legal, and on May 14, the National Council of Justice ordered civil registries to allow same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license to marry.

Vázquez called for a law on civil unions in Cuba, and said he supported the creation of a law on gender identity, as advocated by legal experts and activists.

But until such legislation is approved, the 26-year-old lawyer’s strategy is to train attorneys and judges on how to take advantage of existing laws in cases of violations of LGBT rights

“People also have to be brave, and report these crimes,” he said.

He mentioned the first workshop on the question of LGBT rights for lawyers and judges, held in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. CENESEX also plans to expand its legal services to other parts of the country.

“There is no law on the rights of homosexuals. There is only very vague language about it,” said Raquel Fernández of the Red de Lesbianas Atenea, a network of lesbians based in Ciego de Ávila. Domestic violence and limited access to housing or jobs due to homophobia are among the limitations that lesbians suffer the most, she told IPS.

*The source asked that her last name not be used.

Trafficking turns people into merchandise. Credit: Amnesty International

In contravention of international law, in Brazil trafficking in human beings remains invisible and unpunished, which encourages the practice of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and the trade in human organs, according to experts.

Local laws punish drug trafficking more severely than human trafficking. The sale of drugs carries penalties of between five and 15 years, while trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation is punished with a maximum sentence of eight years, with work release allowed.

“Human trafficking is still an invisible crime. What we have here now is real impunity,” judge Rinaldo Aparecido Barros, a member of the National Council of Justice’s working group on human trafficking, told IPS.

An average of 1,000 persons a year are recruited in Brazil and sent abroad, the public prosecutor’s office said at a public hearing on “Tráfico de pessoas: prevenção, repressão, acolhimento às vítimas e parcerias” – Trafficking in persons: Prevention, repression, care of victims and (illegal) associations – that it held in this city on Friday, May 17.

The goal was to gather and share information about combating human trafficking and to organise joint action to prevent and crack down on the crime. The meeting focused on Brazil’s role as a source country of victims for other parts of the world.

Brazil is also a destination country for victims of human trafficking, and there is internal trafficking of Brazilians for exploitation within the country’s borders as well.

In the last three years, 3,000 Brazilians were transported abroad and subjected mainly to sexual exploitation and slave labour, participants at the meeting described.

“This is a significant number. A large group of people have been deprived of their dignity. The thousands of cases documented every year do not represent the total, because we do not know how many cases escaped our notice,” said federal deputy attorney-general Raquel Elias Ferreira Dodge.

The actual number of victims sent abroad by human trafficking rings is unknown, participants at the meeting agreed.

“We have to work more effectively so that these crimes are condemned without delay. The crime of trafficking in persons injures human dignity,” said Dodge, who is a member of the Higher Council of the federal public prosecutor’s office (MPF).

She said, “Slave labour negates the personhood of the individual and converts the victim into merchandise that can be smuggled and trafficked.”

But hindering the fight against human trafficking in Brazil is the fact that it is only a crime when it leads to sexual exploitation or slave labour, Erick Blatt, the representative of the federal police in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

“It is very hard to identify the crime; investigations can only be initiated on the basis of reports, without the certainty that illegality can be proved,” said Blatt, who is also the representative of Interpol, the international criminal police organisation, for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Moreover, when it comes to international trafficking, “most people go voluntarily to the place where they are exploited: the majority do not know that their passports are going to be taken away,” he said.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, for the purpose of exploitation.”

The forms of coercion cited are “abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.”

People smuggling, on the other hand, is limited to profiting from covertly transporting migrants, at their request, from one country to another where legal entry would normally be denied at the border. This is illegal, but no deception may be involved.

Article 231 of Brazil’s criminal code defines the crime of sexual exploitation, and article 149 describes subjection to slave-like conditions. Both crimes are punished relatively leniently, with lighter sentences than for other offences.

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted in 2000 and ratified by Brazil in 2003, specifically identifies human trafficking crimes and proposes wide-ranging punishments, which Brazil has still not incorporated in its laws.

“We are going against the flow of international legislation. In Brazil, the issue has been inadequately treated. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity that robs people of their human dignity,” Judge Barros complained.

He said the best measures for fighting human trafficking were those that block the assets of the trafficking rings, in order to attack their economic flank.

Trafficking in persons is run by complex international crime syndicates that, in Brazil, recruit poor women who have no opportunities for a better life, lawyer Michelle Gueraldi of the Trama Project, an umbrella group for NGOs that combat human trafficking, told IPS.

These women emigrate voluntarily, often out of the desire to improve their lives, and end up being exploited in Spain, the United States, Portugal and Caribbean countries, among others, she said.

Blatt added that Brazil, in turn, is a destination country for women victims of human trafficking from Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland.

“Trafficking in persons is a violation of human rights. The Trama Project is working on prevention and on victim protection. We also receive denunciations of cases, and we find that the majority of recruiters are persons known to and trusted by the victims,” Gueraldi said.

In February the Brazilian government established its Second Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons, but the challenge is to put these policies into practice, she said.

Blatt admitted that tracing victims of human trafficking across borders is difficult for the local police and for Interpol.

“If communications between the police and the prosecutors are slow here in Brazil, imagine what communications are like between police forces internationally,” he said.

Human trafficking is extremely lucrative. In Europe alone it generates some 3.2 billion dollars a year, according to speakers at the meeting.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says there are at least 2.5 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. A survey by UNODC found that 58 percent of respondents were victims of sexual exploitation and 36 percent of slave labour.