By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Jan 19 2011 (IPS)

With the first National Congress on Heritage Neighbourhoods and Areas, community groups in Chile plan to draw attention to their struggle to defend the country’s vulnerable historic heritage.

“This initiative has emerged from the citizens, for the citizens, and it has the aim of strengthening and empowering the different community organisations that throughout Chile are working to defend and develop our cultural heritage,” Rosario Carvajal, president of the Our Heritage Foundation, told IPS:

The three-day congress kicks off Thursday with the “Fiesta del Roto Chileno”, one of the most important traditional street festivals in Chile, with typical dancing and singing as well as photography exhibits, literature readings and films, in the neighbourhood of Yungay in Santiago.

On Friday and Saturday, 90 lectures and presentations will be given on local and international initiatives to protect cultural heritage, in the Gabriela Mistral Museum of Education, the Santiago Library and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Participants from La Paz, Bolivia; Quito, Ecuador; Lima, Peru; and Córdoba and Buenos Aires in Argentina will take part.

For example, Ángel Ybarhuen, mayor of Cotahuasi in the southwestern Peruvian region of Arequipa, will give a speech on the defence and development of the heritage of that Andean district, while José Baca from Ecuador will give a presentation on workshop schools in Quito.

Lawmaker Felipe Harboe of the Chilean opposition Party for Democracy (PPD) will discuss the successes of and challenges faced by the Special Historical and Cultural Heritage Commission of the lower house of Congress.

The Our Heritage Foundation was created in 2008 as part of a grassroots effort to preserve the Yungay neighbourhood, which two years ago was declared a National Historic District (Zona Típica) of Chile.

“During that effort, we realised we were not the only group that was concerned about the issue, and we began creating a network,” she said.

In 2009, they set up the Chilean Association of Heritage Neighbourhoods and Areas, which is also headed by Carvajal and has organised seminars and gatherings around the country. The Association is now holding the first National Congress, which will promote a “Citizen’s Heritage Agenda”.

“Our greatest threat is the institutional vulnerability that exists today in the area of cultural and historical heritage,” said Carvajal.

She called for the creation of a Heritage Law, which should “bring visibility to our heritage in an integral manner, in its various dimensions — tangible, intangible, urban, rural and natural — and should establish close citizen participation,” she said.

Another urgent challenge is to “create a National Heritage Fund and different instruments for conservation, ranging from the recognition of traditional forms of construction, like adobe, to subsidies, soft credits, tax exemptions and others,” she added.

The legislation currently in effect is a 1970 law on National Monuments, “which does not address the heritage preservation needs of the 21st century,” according to Carvajal.

For example, it does not take into account “citizen participation, and it takes a ‘monument-oriented’ approach focused on buildings, on constructions, and not on living heritage, the surroundings and the people of a place,” she added.

The government’s National Monument Councils has declared 106 National Historic Districts throughout Chile, which are home to a combined total of 500,000 of the country’s 17 million people.

“The state formally declares a National Historic District, but it does not follow through with management or development of these protected areas,” she said. “That is where public policies, funds and subsidies are needed, to help preserve these structures.”

“We do not have soft credits, or specialised technical advice. We need a true cultural change, and public policies,” Carvajal argued.

Much of the discussion on the rundown state of some of the National Historic Districts has been led in the last few years by the Association.

The situation was aggravated by the 8.8-magnitude Feb. 27, 2010 earthquake and subsequent tsunami which caused nearly 30 billion dollars in economic losses and damages in central and southern Chile and left nearly 500 people dead and thousands homeless.

In Carvajal’s view, in the wake of the catastrophe “there was much speculation, ignorance and crises caused by panic.

“Some historic districts completely disappeared, like the one in the town of Chanco, where we saw how the backhoe destroyed everything, without salvaging beams, adobe, window and door frames, tiles, doors or anything; without any specialised technical evaluation,” she said.

The town of Chanco in the central region of Maule was known for its 17th and 18th century colonial architecture, and was declared a National Historic District in 2000.

The town is currently a focus of the Housing Ministry’s Urban Renewal Programme.

During this week’s National Congress, three architects will give a presentation on “Recycling Heritage: The Potential for the Reuse and Recycling of Materials in the Reconstruction of Chanco”.

Other National Historic Districts that were severely affected by the earthquake — the fifth-strongest in the world since 1900 — are in the towns of Cobquecura, Curepto, Vichuquén and Villa Alegre.

Carvajal said it is time to move from evaluation to action.

The government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera has been receptive to the Association’s demands, she said, and the National Monument Council authorities themselves have called for reforming the law on monuments.

But no changes have yet been seen.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Jan 11 2011 (IPS)

While many are sceptical that the Chilean government will deliver on its promise of a shift in indigenous policy, the deadline is looming for the administration of Sebastián Piñera to live up to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommendations with respect to imprisoned members of the Mapuche community.

“The challenge for this year is preventing a situation where it is the courts that intervene, as a last resort, to try to solve the demands of both the indigenous communities and the owners of disputed lands” claimed by native groups, Jorge Contesse, director of the Human Rights Centre at the private Diego Portales University, told IPS.

“The political authorities have to take a hand in the matter,” the lawyer said.

Of the nine indigenous groups officially recognised in this South American country of 17 million people, the Mapuche are by far the largest, with more than a million members.

On Jan. 6, members of the Rapa Nui community filed a complaint of police brutality, which is now before the military justice system. Between September and December, members of the group were violently evicted by carabineros (militarised police) from land that they claim as their own on Easter Island.

On Sept. 9, 29 Rapa Nui clans asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to grant precautionary measures to protect them, a request that is under consideration.

“All of this is happening in the context of a conflict where the Rapa Nui are laying claim to land and demanding self-government, self-determination and immigration control,” Camila Labra, a lawyer with the non-governmental Citizen Observatory, which is backing the request to the IACHR, told IPS.

Easter Island, a tourist destination famous for the nearly 900 huge mysterious rock statues that dot the landscape, is located 3,500 km off Chile’s Pacific coast and was annexed by this country in 1888. The native inhabitants are of Polynesian origin, and some of them are threatening to declare independence if their demands are not met.

The volcanic rock island is one of the most remote inhabited places in the world, and has a population of 3,800. The Rapa Nui people, who make up 60 percent of the population, want to restrict immigration by mainland Chileans and foreigners.

“The more stubborn the authorities’ refusal to engage in dialogue, the more radical the indigenous demands will become,” Contesse said. “The more participation by and consultation with indigenous people increases, the more social conflicts will decrease. That is what the government should understand and act on.”

The Chilean government has until early February to respond to the IACHR about compliance with the recommendations outlined by the Organisation of American States (OAS) human rights body with respect to cases of violations of the human rights of Mapuche community members sentenced in 2003 under the controversial counter-terrorism law.

Some Mapuche areas in southern Chile have a long history of conflict over what the native communities claim as their ancestral land.

Although more than 600,000 hectares of land have been returned to indigenous communities by the authorities since 1990, activists stage periodic occupations of land, much of it owned by logging companies, and a number of them have been prosecuted and sentenced under the draconian anti-terrorism law.

Abuses against the Mapuche people are also widespread.

An international mission convened in 2007 by the non-governmental Observatory for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, which included representatives from groups like Amnesty International, Norwegian People’s Aid and the Argentine Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), documented dozens of complaints of abuses, such as violent raids of Mapuche homes in which the police often destroy household goods and objects of cultural value, mistreat elderly people, women and children, and hurl racist epithets.

The strategy to take their cases to the courts has brought the Mapuche people a few victories.

On Jan. 4, the Supreme Court accepted a case brought by the Citizen Observatory on behalf of a Mapuche community in the southern city of Lanco who were not consulted with respect to the construction of a garbage dump near their homes.

Prior consultation with native peoples with regard to any project that affects their communities or land is stipulated by International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, in effect in Chile since 2009.

In the meantime, the Anide Foundation and the Children and Youth NGOs Network of Chile (ONG-IJ) are preparing a report to present at a hearing that the IACHR granted them during its next period of sessions at its Washington headquarters in March.

The report will describe the “systematic pattern” of police brutality against Mapuche communities, which has particular effects on children and teenagers, psychologist Andrea Iglesias with Anide, a child advocacy organisation, told IPS.

They “have been victims of wounds by rubber bullets, intoxication by tear gas and harassment in their schools, and often witnesses to threats of violence,” she said.

The two organisations launched a citizens’ campaign on Dec. 10 to protest the human rights violations suffered by three young Mapuche Indians prosecuted under the anti-terrorism law even though they were minors.

The three youngsters are being held in preventive custody in a juvenile detention centre run by the National Minors Service (SENAME) in the town of Chol-Chol, in the southern region of Araucanía.

The organisations are demanding that the three be released, based on the approval last year of reforms to the counter-terrorism law that stipulate that the severe legislation cannot be applied in the case of adolescents.

On Jan. 19, members of several human rights groups will visit the detention centre where the three are being held, “to jointly assess what situation they are in and what guarantees they have,” Iglesias said.

“The judicialisation and criminalisation of persons, communities and organisations that defend their rights is increasingly seen as a strategy that those in power are trying to institutionalise,” Milka Castro, director of the juridical anthropology and interculturalism studies programme at the University of Chile law school, told IPS.

The aim is “to silence legitimate demands that are not compatible with the state’s export-oriented productive and extractive policies,” she said. “And the most worrisome thing is that it is not an isolated policy, but is occurring throughout the continent.”

In a column published early this month in the La Tercera newspaper, presidential adviser Sebastián Donoso stated that “the current government came to power with the conviction that public policies towards indigenous people were in need of a major shift, and that trust levels urgently needed to be shored up.”

Donoso, the government’s expert on indigenous affairs, said significant steps have been taken in five areas: cultural promotion; the improvement of mechanisms of land distribution and restitution and productive development; a restructuring of institutions; the creation of effective processes of participation; and the adoption of an integral focus on development.

Castro, however, says “the current authorities’ knowledge on the state of indigenous rights in the international legal order is scarce and biased, and they have, why not say it, a discriminatory and racist attitude and conduct.”

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Jan 3 2011 (IPS)

Unemployment in Chile’s fishing industry will rise this year, experts and the association of small-scale fishers warn, due to the reduction in catch quotas adopted in response to overfishing and plunging stocks of key species, particularly jack mackerel.

“Chile is one of the world’s leading fishing nations, but unfortunately this country has not administered its marine resources in such a way as to make the activity sustainable,” Alex Muñoz, the executive director of the international marine conservation group Oceana, told IPS.

The biggest problem involves the jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi), the main commercial species of fish caught in this South American country of 17 million people.

Jack mackerel is primarily used in Chile to produce fish meal and fish oil, although it is also exported canned or frozen.

The National Fisheries Council, made up of authorities and representatives of the fishing industry, set the 2010 quota at 1.3 million tonnes of jack mackerel.

But by November, just 450,000 tonnes had been caught, according to the Fisheries Under-Secretariat at the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism.

Oceana complained in August that since 2003, the National Fisheries Council had set higher annual quotas for jack mackerel than were recommended by the scientists at the Institute for Fisheries Development.

“Fortunately, the National Fisheries Council approved a 76 percent reduction in this year’s quota, which will help solve the problem. But in-depth legal reforms are obviously needed to keep this from happening again,” Muñoz said.

The new quota for this year is 315,000 tonnes of jack mackerel.

Chile is thus hoping to send out a compelling message to the other countries that make up the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), which will meet Jan. 24-28 in Cali, Colombia with the aim of agreeing on marine conservation measures.

The president of the Association of Industrial Fishing (ASIPES), Roberto Izquierdo, told the press that “2011 will be as complicated as 2010,” especially due to the decline in jack mackerel stocks.

To illustrate, he said that while fish freezing and canning plants in south-central Chile were active 100 days a year on average in previous years, only 45 days of activity can be expected in 2011.

The jack mackerel industry, including the fishing fleet and processing plants, generates more than 10,000 direct jobs.

Muñoz called for a reform of the 1991 General Law on Fishing and Aquaculture, in order to require the National Fisheries Council or any other agency that sets catch quotas to respect scientific recommendations. There is currently no obligation to do so.

“We are not only concerned about jack mackerel but about many other commercial species, such as hake, which is important to Chile and has been alarmingly over-fished, as well as anchovies, which face the same problem,” the activist said.

Fisheries Under-Secretary Pablo Galilea himself said that “of the country’s 22 most important fisheries, nine are overfished and four are at risk of overfishing.”

The National Fisheries Council approved a quota of 48,000 tonnes of South Pacific hake (Merluccius gayi gayi) for 2011 — a 13 percent cut from last year.

In addition, this year’s quota for southern hake (Merluccius australis) was set for 24,000 tonnes, eight percent down from the 2010 limit; the quota for Patagonian grenadier (Macruronus magellanicus) is 123,000 tonnes, a 20 percent cut; the quota for the pink cusk-eel (Genypterus blacodes) is 2,900 tonnes, a 22 percent reduction; and the combined quota for Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) and common sardine (Strangomera bentinki) is 650,000 tonnes.

The president of the National Confederation of Artisanal Fishers (CONAPACH), Zoila Bustamante, predicted a significant rise in unemployment in the sector, principally due to the reduction in the quotas for jack mackerel and hake.

In northern Chile, “artisanal fishers will not be able to fish for jack mackerel for more than one or two days,” Bustamante told IPS, complaining that the cost of the decline in fish stocks is not being fairly spread out among the different stakeholders.

“They have tried to find many ways to make us disappear. Today they are trying to do so with quotas,” she maintained.

There are currently around 120,000 artisanal fishers nationwide, she estimated.

“The quota for the common sardine and anchovies has been cut, even though the scientists said there was no problem with the common sardine,” she said. “In the eighth region (the south-central region of Biobío), artisanal fishers have 75 percent of the fishery, the only healthy one in the country.”

CONAPACH is demanding that the authorities recognise the real conditions in each fishery, and design specific measures for each one.

Bustamante said CONAPACH is “conversing with the government” about the difficulties faced by the industry. “At our national meeting in January, we will discuss how to face this terrible situation that lies ahead,” she said.

“We don’t want charity, like monthly assistance in the form of basic goods or money, as is being distributed in other areas. We want work, because work dignifies,” she said.

Muñoz said that “unfortunately the scientific findings were not taken into consideration for many years, which led to overfished stocks…This will clearly lead to problems in terms of employment in the fishing industry, both at sea and on land.”

But the executive director of Oceana believes Chile still has time to help its marine resources recover, “if drastic measures are taken.”

“Chile must make progress towards regulations that allow sustainable catch quotas; it has to eliminate fishing techniques like trawl nets, to protect the ocean floor; and it needs more scientific observers, to closely assess what is going on in the ocean,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Dec 17 2010 (IPS)

Programmes to reduce the unemployment rate among young people in Latin America and the Caribbean should be a priority for countries in the region, said experts, trade unionists and government representatives meeting in the Chilean capital.

ILO 17th American Regional Meeting Credit: ILO/Inostroza

In Latin America, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 will number 104.2 million this year. “There have never been so many young people in the region, and never again will they make up such a large proportion of the population. The demographic bonus is coming to an end,” said the Spanish expert, at the 17th American Regional Meeting of the ILO, concluding this Friday in Santiago.

Unemployment among young men and women is 2.5 times that of adults in the region. Some 6.7 million young people are looking fruitlessly for jobs.

Most of those who do find work have low-paying precarious jobs in the informal sector or on temporary contracts, without social security coverage.

Monthly incomes for the young average 424 dollars, compared to 788 for adults, according to the report Decent Work and Youth in Latin America 2010, published in October by the ILO, a tripartite agency made up of governments, employers and workers.

Another cause for concern is that 18 million young people, nearly 20 percent of the total, are neither studying nor working, the report says. Most of them are women who do domestic chores at home, reflecting the region’s high rate of teenage pregnancy, most commonly among poor families.

But at the same time, young people in the region have achieved a record number of years of schooling and their professional qualifications are better than ever.

“Before the global economic crisis broke out in 2008, young people already had a hard time finding decent work, and with the crisis the situation is shocking,” Amanda Villatoro of El Salvador, who is in charge of gender and youth issues for the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA-CSA), told IPS at the meeting.

“No country in the region lacks a programme for youth ‘employability’. But experience shows that a single programme is not enough,” Dema said.

“We need to move from youth programmes with limited coverage to national policies,” he said. These should combine, for instance, policies for training, job creation and social protection for the most vulnerable, he added.

The ILO’s Agenda for the Hemisphere 2006-2015 proposes within this period to halve the proportion of 15- to 24-year-olds who are neither studying nor gainfully employed. But the prospects so far are discouraging, as between 2005 and 2008 the proportion fell by only 1.1 percent.

Stakeholders agree that the main challenge is to improve the quality and relevance of education, with reference to labour market needs. Keeping young people in classrooms longer is another important need.

“If the market for lawyers is saturated, why carry on training lawyers? It only frustrates the young, and gives the generation that will manage the region in coming decades the message that education is not an instrument for social mobility and the key to a decent life, when in fact the reverse is true,” said Villatoro, calling for public policies to take action on education.

Incentives to hire young people include laws encouraging companies to hire youngsters without experience, although these have stirred up controversy because of their possible effect on adult employment. In this area, “balance and social dialogue are needed,” Dema remarked.

The Colombian legislature passed a “first job” law Wednesday designed to stimulate hiring of young people.

Colombian Vice President Angelino Garzón told IPS that the new law represents “a step forward for decent work.”

Youth unemployment in Colombia stands at 22.3 percent, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, he said.

The ILO also recommends supporting youth enterprise: Latin America has at least 5.1 million young entrepreneurs. But this is not the only way to go, Dema said.

Villatoro said, “We are very concerned about ‘first job’ programmes in several Latin American countries that are basically focused on enterprise.”

Dema praised Chile’s subsidies for hiring vulnerable 18- to 25-year-olds, implemented in 2009, and the “ProJoven” job-training programme in Peru. Brazil has a similar national policy.

“Companies vary, and so do their situations,” Dagoberto Lima Godoy, who represents the Brazilian business community on the ILO governing body, told IPS, referring to criticism of unfair or harmful labour practices that are especially aimed at small and medium enterprises.

In Lima’s view, the temporary contracts that affect mainly young workers are only justified when economic conditions are unstable.

“Companies that make a habit of employing temporary workers will never have really well-trained, capable staff, and they will never be competitive,” he said.

“Just as the quality of employment defines the quality of a society, the future of a society is determined by the employment of its young workers,” the ILO General Director, Juan Somavía, said this week.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Dec 8 2010 (IPS)

“It’s much more fun to die of old age than to die of AIDS. And if you die with your lifelong partner, so much the better. Avoid AIDS: be faithful” is one of the controversial TV spots in this year’s edition of the annual anti-AIDS campaign by Chile’s Health Ministry.

The ad shows an older couple suddenly clutching their chests and dying, while applause is heard off-stage and balloons and confetti are thrown.

The ads invite viewers to visit the web site http://www.quientienesida.cl to find information about the disease, prevention methods, and HIV testing centres.

“This is the worst campaign in the history of campaigns against AIDS, which, it should be added, have never been particularly successful in this country,” Manuel Jorquera, with Vivo Positivo (Living Positive), an umbrella group linking organisations of people eliving with HIV, the AIDS virus, around the country, told IPS.

Although one of the spots, all of which strike a humorous tone, urges people to use condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, activists, experts and politicians are complaining that the campaign as a whole does not send a clear message.

One ad shows an actress being made up to look like she has different illnesses, like the flu, mumps or chicken pox. But when she is made up to represent “AIDS”, she is dressed to the nines, ready for a party. The final message is: “You can’t see AIDS, but that’s no reason for us to act blind. Take the test, and bring your partner with you.”

“This is the vaguest, most ambiguous campaign ever. It does not have a health focus, nor does it target the highest risk populations. It sends out a very diffuse message, and we see it as a step backwards,” said Jorquera, whose organisation is studying the possibility of filing a court injunction against the Health Ministry for “attacking the right to life.”

The issue will also be discussed by the health commission in the lower house of Congress, where opposition legislators will ask the government to cancel the campaign.

“What needs to be said, no matter who likes or doesn’t like it, is that consistent use of condoms is still the most effective method to avoid HIV,” said Jorquera, who sent a letter Tuesday to Health Minister Jorge Mañalich in the name of Vivo Positivo.

“The campaign strikes out at women by establishing a link between the concept that AIDS is a disease that is not physically apparent and a woman ready to go out and seduce,” the open letter says.

“It is also insulting to people living with HIV, telling them it is fun to die of old age but not of AIDS, which is a return to the AIDS=death equation, which was overcome in earlier campaigns thanks to the influence of civil society,” it adds.

This is the first major health prevention campaign by the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, who took office in March, putting an end to 20 years of government by the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed the country since the end of the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The campaign, launched Sunday Dec. 5, targets teenagers and young men and women between the ages of 15 and 29, the highest risk age group. Government officials have said the playful, fun tone of the campaign is in line with the use of on-line social networking sites by today’s young people.

Between 1984 and 2008, 20,100 people in this country of 17 million people were notified that they were HIV-positive, according to official figures. Most HIV-positive people in the country are between the ages of 20 and 39, and a majority are men who have sex with men.

Although posters will be distributed to gay bars and night clubs, the failure of the TV spots to focus on this particular population group is considered discriminatory by activists.

“This campaign seems to me to be retrograde and out-of-date in terms of information,” Claudia Dides, director of the social inclusion and gender programme of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-Chile), told IPS.

“I am very annoyed because the title of the campaign ‘who has AIDS’ seems to be discriminatory, and everything that has been achieved in terms of a human rights approach to the question of HIV/AIDS over the last 20 years, including the 2001 law on AIDS, is back to zero,” Dides said.

She explained that “people don’t ‘have AIDS’, they are ‘living with HIV’, and the campaign revives the idea of the ‘sidoso’ (a pejorative term for someone who is HIV- positive), of the ‘leper’ who is outside the system, which shows an incredible lack of respect” for people with the disease.

“I value the intention, and every prevention effort is important, but the truth is that this campaign does not contribute” to the cause, concurred Elena Sepúlveda, head of the masters programme on sexuality at the public University of Santiago.

The campaign neither takes into account the sexual conduct of young Chileans nor their idiosyncrasies, Sepúlveda said. By urging people to abstain from sex unless they are in a stable, monogamous relationship, the campaign ignores the fact that teenagers are having sex at younger and younger ages, and that infidelity rates in the country are high, she added.

Dides said that “When you work in the area of prevention of cholera, you clearly explain that people should wash their hands and should avoid raw vegetables or fruit. So I don’t understand why it can’t just be clearly stated here that condom use is the most effective tool for preventing HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.”

In the FLACSO expert’s view, behind the campaign “are operating the most conservative ideas with respect to the sexuality of Chileans, and political and values-based decisions that do not reflect what the majority of Chileans think.”

“The government’s identification with the Catholic Church is very obvious” in the campaign, Jaime Valderrama, a 30-year- old Chilean, told IPS. “All approaches are valid, but I don’t think faithfulness should be a government policy against AIDS.”

Jorquera said “AIDS is curbed by means of anti- discriminatory policies, secular sex education, the promotion of citizen rights, and without a doubt, strengthening joint efforts by civil society and the state.”

Excerpt:

The wide-ranging knowledge about climate variation possessed by native people and other small farmers, such as the people in one region of Colombia, is almost a perfect match to scientific measurements recorded on high-tech instruments.

So says Andrés González, coordinator of the Joint Programme on Integration of Ecosystems and Adaptation to Climate Change in the Colombian Massif, carried out for the last three years by United Nations agencies.

In the southwestern Colombian department (province) of Valle del Cauca, indigenous people and scientists are working together on ways to adapt to climate change. But this is an exceptional case in Latin America.

This year, a network of seed savers or “guardianes” has been set up to preserve the seeds of tubers, maize, fruit trees, fodder species, quinoa, amaranth and other food crops of high nutritional value, and to promote seed exchanges among the autonomous indigenous reserves of Puracé, Paletará, Coconuco, Quintana and Poblazón.

Plots of land to acclimatise the seeds have also been created, as well as six agricultural schools where scientists and small farmers study and discuss food security, sustainable production, risk management and healthy environments. About 1,000 families from the municipalities of Popayán and Puracé are taking an active part.

The programme’s direct impact area in Valle del Cauca has a population of 11,000, but it is estimated that its wider benefits extend to over 240,000 people. González hopes that funding for the project, which has another six months to run, will be renewed. Historically, land conflicts have been frequent between the indigenous reserves, small farmers and large landowners. However, all sides signed “Pactos de Convivencia” (peaceful coexistence agreements) and worked together to draw up calendars of production activities and lists of species resistant to various climate conditions.

But “much remains to be done. Establishing a dialogue in which we can understand the logic (of peasants and indigenous people) and they can understand ours, is a major challenge,” González told IPS.

The project, sponsored by the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F), is headed by a team that includes representatives of native communities, who act as “counterparts to our technicians and experts, and ensure that their concepts and worldview are a fully respected part of the programme,” he said.

The MDGs, adopted by U.N. member states in 2000, include specific targets to curb poverty, hunger, maternal and child mortality, gender inequality, and diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as to achieve universal primary education, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development, by 2015.

Indigenous people and small farmers could not have been left out of the leadership of the Colombian climate change adaptation project, because their acute observations and empirical knowledge are so precise, González said.

In Latin America, farming is responsible for about 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The main contributing factors are changes in land use, fertiliser application and decomposition of livestock manure.

And agriculture is already being affected by climate change, for instance the greater intensity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena — floods, frosts and droughts — the arrival of new pests, changes in water availability as glaciers melt, and geographical displacement of crops.

Added to this, over 50 percent of the rural population of Latin America and the Caribbean are living below the poverty line, and nearly one-third of these are indigent (extremely poor), according to the Santiago-based Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“Farmers know about climate change because that is what agriculture is: dealing with the climate,” said Laura Meza, coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Multidisciplinary Team for South America on climate change and the environment.

Encouraging dialogue between academia and small farmers is “a challenge our region still faces,” she told IPS.

“We have discovered that in Australia there is a very strong connection between farmers, scientists and decision-makers. All three groups are working hand in hand,” said the FAO expert.

“Here they are in separate watertight compartments. We need a great deal more communication between them,” Meza stressed.

Adrián Rodríguez, officer in charge of the agricultural development unit within ECLAC’s Division of Production, Productivity and Management, told IPS that communication between countries is also needed, “because we are facing a phenomenon that recognises no borders.”

“It’s high time the ancestral knowledge possessed by small farmers and indigenous people was appreciated at its true value,” Rosa Guamán, a Quechua indigenous woman, told IPS. She belongs to the Jambi Kiwa Association of Medicinal Plant Producers of Chimborazo, Ecuador, a thriving cooperative business run by indigenous women who export herbs to Canada and European countries.

As an indigenous leader, and as a leader of the Association, Guamán had to overcome a great deal of prejudice to get her knowledge recognised and accepted, because she has no formal academic credentials, she said.

“I don’t think there’s any surefire recipe” for effective dialogue, Holm Tiessen, head of the intergovernmental Inter- American Institute for Global Change Research, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told IPS.

“What often happens is that science discovers solutions for problems that nobody has. Therefore, at some point during planning and seeking research funding, it is important to talk to people in the field. But there are no established mechanisms for doing this,” he said.

“As a funding body, we have to insist that scientists open their eyes and their minds, and go out and talk, engage in dialogue with producers, in order to improve the efficiency of their research,” said Tiessen. The institute funds collaborative studies involving more than one country.

In Meza’s view, public policies should urgently be directed at increasing knowledge about climate, strengthening meteorological networks, and spreading the information among authorities and farmers.

This would allow farmers to make key decisions, such as “taking out insurance policies, using fast-growing crop varieties that need less water in case of drought, conserving organic material in the soil to preserve humidity, or building sheds for livestock,” among other practical measures, she said.

Brazil, for instance, is a leader in the process of “agro- ecological zoning,” which maps the areas and seasons that are most suitable for particular crops. Other countries are making progress on river basin management, irrigation systems and risk management.

“But there is so much to be done. Climate change is still seen as being a long way off, and that is a real problem, because decision-makers and farmers, as well as society in general, don’t realise the urgency of taking immediate action,” Meza concluded.

*This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network http://www.cdkn.org.

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Dec 1 2010 (IPS)

As the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean get back on track with the economic growth and poverty reduction they were achieving prior to the global economic crisis, improvements in education and cash transfers to households with children are emerging as key tools to begin to defeat inequality.

“In every country in the region, there has been heated debate about education reform for years, but in terms of quality, next to nothing has been achieved,” Martín Hopenhayn, head of the social development division at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

The education policies adopted by governments in the region have failed “to reduce the learning gaps” between children from poor and non-poor homes, rural and urban households, and indigenous and non-indigenous families, the expert stressed after Tuesday’s launch of ECLAC’s Social Panorama of Latin America 2010 report.

“On average in the region, 49 percent of men and 55 percent of women aged 20-24 have completed secondary education, while in rural areas the figures are 26 percent of men and 31 percent of women, and 22 percent and 20 percent, respectively, among indigenous people of that age,” says the report.

But the ECLAC report, which was presented at the United Nations regional agency’s Santiago headquarters, stresses that “education is one of the main factors that can undo inequalities of origin (family or territory based) and provide equal opportunities for lifetime well-being and productivity for society as a whole.”

Among ECLAC’s concrete recommendations are: expanding early childhood education coverage, lengthening the primary school day and incorporating digital technologies into education to ensure universal access to computer skills.

Improving the quality of public school education and closing the gap that separates it from private education is also an urgent matter.

Similarly, ECLAC proposes increasing access to higher education by students from low-income families, and supporting families with children by means of conditional cash transfer programmes that ensure that children finish their school education.

“In many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, consumption by persons aged 0- 19 is met almost equally by public and family transfers, but the average state transfer component in Latin America does not exceed 20 percent for this age group,” the study says.

In terms of redistributive measures governments should take to combat inequality, ECLAC proposes three types throughout people’s life cycles.

The first is “a scheme of cash transfers to households with children aged 0-14 to improve the opportunities for families to have an appropriate environment for the socialisation of children (nutrition, housing, clothing).”

Secondly, “financing policies to cover the costs of incorporating those who are not covered by educational and care services (0-17 years).”

Lastly, “another series of cash transfers related to employment and training services targeting young people in the process of joining adult life (15-24 years).”

Hopenhayn cited, as an example, “the universal child benefit introduced in Argentina a year ago” by the centre-left government of President Cristina Fernández.

“The three kinds of transfers proposed would, combined, have a substantial absolute impact on poverty,” the study says. “For example, the poverty rate would fall from 61.8 percent to 34.6 percent in Nicaragua and from 45.7 percent to 29.9 percent in Guatemala.”

For some countries like Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, the additional costs of these extra efforts are manageable for a short period of time, and represent about two percent of GDP, ECLAC says.

“Other countries are in an intermediate position, for example Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. They need to make a greater effort because their tax revenue is low, and they need to maintain a high rate of growth,” said Hopenhayn.

“Then there are poorer countries, like Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, which would need to increase the tax burden and mobilise international cooperation resources,” he said.

Improving educational quality and equity are two major challenges in Chile, a country in the throes of a new education reform under rightwing President Sebastián Piñera, who took office in March after 20 years of government by the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy.

The Piñera administration proposes the creation of “schools of excellence” at secondary education level, efforts to draw the best students into teaching careers, an improvement in teachers’ salaries, an increase in the time spent on language and mathematics at the cost of history lessons, and greater autonomy for the principals of public schools.

“You cannot have quality without equality, and in Chile we have the most unequal results in the world, according to the OECD, because we have the most segmented educational system,” Rodrigo Cornejo of the Chilean Observatory of Educational Policy at the state University of Chile told IPS.

In Cornejo’s view, Piñera’s plans are just “for show,” because they do not attack the root of the problem, which is the high degree of segmentation of the Chilean system into public municipal schools, state-subsidised schools co- financed by parents’ fees, and completely private schools.

The good news from ECLAC’s Social Panorama of Latin America is that the poverty rate will fall by one percentage point in 2010, from 33.1 percent in 2009 to 32.1 percent of the regional population, leaving 180 million people below the poverty line.

Extreme poverty is predicted to fall by 0.4 percentage points, a reduction from 74 to 72 million people.

This is due to counter-cyclic employment and social measures taken by Latin American and Caribbean countries to weather the international recession that originated in the United States in 2008.

According to 2009 statistics, one of the most complicated situations is that of Paraguay, where 56 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, and 30 percent are extremely poor.

Other countries with highly vulnerable populations are El Salvador, with a poverty rate of 47.9 percent and an extreme poverty rate of 17.3 percent, Ecuador, with rates of 40.2 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively, Colombia, with rates of 45.7 and 16.5 percent, and the Dominican Republic, with 41.1 percent and 21 percent of the population living in poverty and extreme poverty.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Nov 29 2010 (IPS)

The Chilean government’s commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights has been called into question by a new report by a university human rights centre.

“I believe the authorities and different public institutions do not fully comprehend the obligation to respect and promote human rights, as established by the constitution itself,” Jorge Contesse, director of the Human Rights Centre at the private Diego Portales University (UDP), told IPS.

To illustrate, Contesse pointed to the way the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, in office since March, reacted to the hunger strike that around 30 Mapuche indigenous prisoners held for more than 80 days earlier this year.

The lawyer applauded the fact that Piñera persuaded the protesters to lift the hunger strike, sending Congress two bills to reform the military justice system and the controversial counter-terrorism law — reforms that have long been called for by human rights defenders in Chile and around the world.

But he said the bills “do not fully live up to international human rights standards.”

“The modification of the military justice system is only partial, because the bill submitted by the government would still leave open the possibility that civilians could be subject to military jurisdiction. That is inadmissible, from the international point of view,” Contesse said.

He added that if the bill is not improved, Chile will run the risk of once again being found guilty on that front by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an Organisation of American States (OAS) body based in Costa Rica.

With regard to the second bill, Contesse says progress has been made in some respects. However, the bill includes a definition of terrorism that is “so vague that even a serial murderer” could be found guilty of that crime, he said.

These are some of the questions analysed by the 2010 version of the annual report on human rights in Chile presented to the media by the UDP on Nov. 25.

With respect to the military justice system, the report questions decisions by public prosecutors to refer cases in which the victims are civilians to the military courts, which it says demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge, or disregard, of an earlier Inter-American Court ruling on the issue.

Early this month, various “sites of memory”, like the Londres 38 and Villa Grimaldi torture centres, preserved to recall the abuses committed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, complained that the government had withdrawn the direct financing that these national heritage sites currently enjoy from the bill for the 2011 budget.

After a public campaign, and with support from opposition legislators, an agreement was reached with the Piñera administration to reinstate the budget funds.

The Group of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) then accused the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Programme of “sitting on” more than 60 legal cases involving politically-motivated killings and forced disappearance committed during the dictatorship, which the Programme was to bring before the courts.

The AFDD sent a letter to Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter and has requested a number of interviews to discuss the issue.

“But we haven’t received a response,” Gabriela Zúñiga, head of the AFDD, which currently lacks financing, told IPS. She said the organisation is in hope of a government response to the grant proposal they have presented in search of funds.

The AFDD has also called into question activities by the current secretary of the Ministry’s Human Rights Programme, Rossy Lama, such as meetings she has held with retired military officers.

There are currently 700 people facing prosecution for human rights violations in this South American country, and nearly 300 have been sentenced, according to the Human Rights Programme.

More than 3,000 people were the victims of politically-motivated murders or forced disappearance during the Pinochet regime, and 27,000 were tortured.

“According to the figures provided by the Programme in May 2010, there are 350 cases open in Chile for forced disappearance, torture, illegal burials or conspiracies that date back to the dictatorial period,” the UDP report says.

“These represent one-third of the official number of recognised victims, which means that most of them have not yet initiated legal proceedings,” it adds.

One promising signal was sent out on Nov. 25 by the government, when it announced that legal action would be taken against those responsible for the March 1974 assassination of José Tohá, a former interior and defence minister of socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973), who was overthrown by Pinochet. Until now, Tohá’s death was labelled a suicide.

The former minister died in a military hospital, where he was brought, malnourished and in extremely poor condition, from Isla Dawson, an island in the extreme south of the country, where he had been tortured.

On Nov. 15, a court in Santiago ordered the exhumation of his remains and an investigation into the real cause of his death.

The director of the governmental National Human Rights Institute, Lorena Fríes, welcomed the initiative and urged “the authorities to pronounce themselves with the same vigour and speed with respect to the lawsuits in cases of politically-motivated murders that are pending in the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Programme.”

The Supreme Court has also been criticised by human rights groups, principally for reducing sentences handed down to human rights violators, while invoking the statute of limitations.

The Supreme Court also has a policy of throwing out lawsuits against the state that seek reparations in cases of human rights abuses, the report says.

The UDP Human Rights Centre also studied the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court with respect to International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 concerning indigenous and tribal peoples, which went into effect in Chile in 2009.

“The tendency of appeals courts to give precedence to the Convention’s standards, even above national standards, as required by international public law, has been appreciated,” the report says.

However, when cases reach the Supreme Court, arguments based on Convention 169 fall apart.

“With the exception of one case, in which the civil chamber of the Supreme Court ruled, the apex court has developed, in the constitutional court, jurisprudence that disregards Chile’s obligations and puts the State — once again — on the route of incompliance with its international commitments, exposing it to reprimands from treaty oversight and monitoring bodies,” the report concludes.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Nov 26 2010 (IPS)

Cactus, bushes, flowers and countless other plants are taken out of Chile daily to be studied, improved, marketed and patented. Due to the lack of regulations, the country can only stand by and watch them go.

Lion's claw (Leontochir ovallei), a flower native to the Atacama Desert and sold abroad. Credit: Courtesy of INIA

More than 11 percent of Chile’s native flora species are sold abroad as seeds or nursery plants, with no payment of royalties. This situation involves at least 586 species and 6.5 percent face extinction, according to a study published in March in the INIA journal Tierra Adentro.

Compared to other Latin American countries, like Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, Chile does not have a big variety of native plant species: about 5,200. But a great number — about 2,500 — are endemic to Chile alone, given the country’s relative geographic isolation, with the long Pacific Ocean coast to the west and the Andes Mountains to the east.

“That means they have unique chemical compounds,” for example, that make them resistant to drought or cold, María Isabel Manzur, of the non- governmental Sustainable Societies Foundation, told Tierramérica.

About 30 percent of Chilean flora has known or potential uses as food, medicine, forage crops or fuel.

Among the plants that INIA identified as being sold in other countries, there are cactus species of the Copiapoa genus, the lion’s claw flower (Leontochir ovallei) and glory-of-the-sun flower (Leucocoryne).

The “Chilean guava” (Ungi molinae), a bush whose berries have food, cosmetic and medicinal uses, is today grown in Australia and New Zealand, although INIA has developed and patented two improved varieties in Chile.

A well-known case is that of a microorganism, Streptomyces hygroscopicus, discovered in the 1960s on Easter Island by Canadian researchers. From it, scientists have extracted rapamycin, which has antibiotic, antifungal, immuno-suppressor and anti-ageing properties.

“The seeds leave the country because there are people or institutions that sell them overseas to meet the demands of international seed companies, or nurseries or individual collectors,” said León, who is in charge of INIA’s Vicuña Experiment Centre Seed Bank.

The authority to regulate access to a country’s genetic resources lies with the government and should be subject to national legislation, states the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992 and ratified by Chile in 1995.

The Convention also promotes the fair and equitable distribution of benefits arising from the use of those resources, especially among rural dwellers and indigenous communities, who have amassed knowledge about the properties of plants, animals and even microorganisms.

But it has taken the Convention’s member countries 18 years to adopt a specific protocol on genetic resources.

And 15 years after ratifying the treaty, Chile has yet to draft legislation on the matter. Because no laws are being violated, León prefers to talk about the “flight” of genetic material instead of “biopiracy,” as the practice is also widely known.

The flowers of the genus Alstroemeria, like the lily of the Incas, are another example of this process. Several wild species were taken from Chile to the Netherlands, where they were improved through crossbreeding — and now the Netherlands is an exporter of the flower.

Due to excessive extraction from their natural habitat, some plant species now face extinction, like cactus species native to Chile’s northern coastal desert. The true scope of the problem is unknown because only three of Chile’s 15 regions have “red books” tracking the conservation status of their flora and fauna.

INIA, meanwhile, has four germplasm banks, which collect seeds, tissue cultures or plant collections that hold the genetic material of each species. The institute is opening a fifth site to preserve different Chilean varieties of the potato.

According to León, Chile maintains about 60 percent of its agricultural diversity and 20 percent of native flora, with the goal to reach 45 percent by 2020. But to protect a plant sample can cost 2,000 to 3,000 dollars, and preservation of fruit species is only in its initial stages.

In order to preserve the array of species, INIA wants people or institutions to report when they are transferring genetic materials abroad. Botanical gardens, for example, sign “access contracts.”

But most biological samples leave the country with only a certificate from the Agricultural and Livestock Service, which states they are free of disease or pests.

In the last few years, Manzur, of the Sustainable Societies Foundation, has seen several drafts of laws aimed at regulating access to genetic resources. “But none of them has reached port because there is no consensus and because one government term ends and the next one has different priorities,” she said.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s law on biodiversity is “quite strict,” according to experts. But while it prevents genetic materials from leaving the country, it also creates obstacles for research within the country. Costa Rica and the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador) have similar regulations.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilisation, was agreed Oct. 29 in the Japanese city during the latest meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity. It could be the push Chile needs to fill the legal void, according to Manzur.

“Once and for all we have to appreciate the value of our natural wealth, designate the necessary resources to conduct an inventory, and to conserve them and utilise them in a sustainable way,” said INIA’s León.

“Chile participated in the Nagoya Protocol negotiations. The final text will be analysed by the Executive branch’s institutions before determining whether to sign it,” a source from the Foreign Ministry told Tierramérica.

The Nagoya Protocol will be open for signatures from member countries from Feb. 2, 2011 to Feb. 1, 2012, and will enter into force once 50 countries have ratified it.

According to the Ministry source, the government is again considering “a law on this matter.”

*This story is part of a series of features on biodiversity by Inter Press Service (IPS), CGIAR/Biodiversity International, International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), and the United Nations Environment Programme/Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP/CBD) — all members of the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Excerpt:

Nearly half of Chile's flora is found exclusively in this country and many possess unique chemical compounds. But for now there is no legal way to control their exploitation abroad.

Lion's claw (Leontochir ovallei), a flower native to the Atacama Desert and sold abroad. - Courtesy of INIA

“The departure or flight of biological material from Chile occurs daily and there is no legal framework to regulate it,” Pedro León, an expert with the Ministry of Agriculture's research institute, INIA, told Tierramérica.

More than 11 percent of Chile's native flora species are sold abroad as seeds or nursery plants, without payment of any royalties. This situation involves at least 586 species and 6.5 percent face extinction, according to a study published in March in the INIA journal Tierra Adentro.

Compared to other Latin American countries, like Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, Chile does not have a big variety of native plant species: about 5,200. But a great number — about 2,500 — are endemic to Chile alone, given the country's relative geographic isolation, with the long Pacific Ocean coast to the west and the Andes Mountains to the east.

“That means they have unique chemical compounds,” for example, that make them resistant to drought or cold, María Isabel Manzur, of the non-governmental Sustainable Societies Foundation, told Tierramérica.

About 30 percent of Chilean flora has known or potential uses as food, medicine, forage crops or fuel.

Among the plants that INIA identified as being sold in other countries, there are cactus species of the Copiapoa genus, the lion's claw flower (Leontochir ovallei) and glory-of-the-sun flower (Leucocoryne).

The “Chilean guava” (Ungi molinae), a bush whose berries have food, cosmetic and medicinal uses, is today grown in Australia and New Zealand, although INIA has developed and patented two improved varieties in Chile.

A well-known case is that of a microorganism, Streptomyces hygroscopicus, discovered in the 1960s on Easter Island by Canadian researchers. From it scientists have extracted rapamycin, which has antibiotic, antifungal, immuno-suppressor and anti-aging properties.

“The seeds leave the country because there is a group of people or institutions entrusted with selling them overseas to meet the demands of international seed companies, or nurseries or individual collectors,” said León, who is in charge of INIA's Vicuña Experiment Center Seed Bank.

The authority to regulate access to a country's genetic resources lies with the government and should be subject to national legislation, states the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992 and ratified by Chile in 1995.

The Convention also promotes the fair and equitable distribution of benefits arising from the use of those resources, especially among rural dwellers and indigenous communities, who have amassed knowledge about the properties of plants, animals and even microorganisms.

But it has taken the Convention's member countries 18 years to adopt a specific protocol on genetic resources.

And 15 years after ratifying the treaty, Chile has yet to draft legislation on the matter. Because there are no laws being violated, León prefers to talk about the “flight” of genetic material instead of “biopiracy,” as the practice is also widely known.

The flowers of the genus Alstroemeria, like the lily of the Incas, are another example of this process. Several wild species were taken from Chile to the Netherlands, where they were improved through crossbreeding — and now the Netherlands is an exporter of the flower.

Due to excessive extraction from their natural habitat, some plant species now face extinction, like the cactus species native to Chile's northern coastal desert. The true scope of the problem is unknown because only three of Chile's 15 regions have “red books” tracking the conservation status of their flora and fauna.

INIA has four germplasm banks, which collect seeds, tissue cultures or plant collections that hold the genetic material of each species. The institute is opening a fifth site to preserve different varieties of the potato.

According to León, Chile maintains about 60 percent of its agricultural diversity and 20 percent of native flora, with the goal to reach 45 percent by 2020. But to protect a plant sample can cost 2,000 to 3,000 dollars, and preservation of fruit species is only in its initial stages.

In order to preserve the different species, INIA wants people or institutions to report when they are transferring genetic materials abroad. Botanical gardens, for example, sign “access contracts.” But most biological samples leave the country with only a certificate from the Agricultural and Livestock Service, which states they are free of disease or pests.

In the last few years, Manzur, of Sustainable Societies Foundation, has seen several drafts of laws aimed at regulating access to genetic resources. “But none of them has reached port because there is no consensus and because one government term ends and the next one has different priorities,” she said.

Meanwhile, Brazil's law on biodiversity is “quite strict,” according to experts. While it prevents genetic materials from leaving the country, it also creates obstacles for research within the country. Costa Rica and the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador) have similar regulations.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization, agreed Oct. 29 in the Japanese city during a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, could be the push Chile needs to fill the legal void, according to Manzur.

“Once and for all we have to appreciate the value of our natural wealth, designate the necessary resources to conduct an inventory, conserve them and utilize them in a sustainable way,” said INIA's León.

“Chile participated in the Nagoya Protocol negotiations. The final text will be analyzed by the Executive branch's institutions before determining whether to sign it,” a source from the Foreign Ministry told Tierramérica.

The Nagoya Protocol will be open for signatures from member countries from Feb. 2, 2011 to Feb. 1, 2012, and will enter into force once 50 countries have ratified it.

According to the Ministry source, the government is considering “a law on this matter.”

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Nov 8 2010 (IPS)

Over-exploitation of jack mackerel, the main commercial species of fish caught in Chile, has caused the decline of the Pacific ocean species and a crisis in the fishing industry. Scientists recommend halving the catch in 2011.

Chile expected to fish 1.3 million tonnes of jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) within its 200-mile exclusive economic zone this year. But up to early November the country’s fleet had caught no more than 450,000 tonnes, according to the Fisheries Under-Secretariat at the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism.

And the countries belonging to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) have landed only 712,000 tonnes so far this year.

The SPRFMO, which has been in the process of being formed since 2006, seeks to manage fisheries resources in a sustainable manner in the region.

Scientific delegations from the SPFRMO countries meeting in late October in the Chilean resort of Viña del Mar “determined that the situation is quite critical, on the verge of collapse,” which means measures must be taken to protect the jack mackerel, Fisheries Under-Secretary Pablo Galilea told IPS.

The Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean, which regulates the SPRFMO, was signed by Chile, China, Colombia, the Cook Islands, the European Union, the Faroe Islands, New Zealand and Peru. But only the Faroe Islands have ratified the convention, so its regulations are not yet binding.

Jack mackerel are abundant in the coastal and oceanic regions of the South Pacific. In South American waters, they are found off Ecuador, and particularly off Chile and Peru.

The estimated total biomass of jack mackerel has fallen by 79 percent since 2001. The catch reached a peak in Chile in 1995: a record 4.4 million tonnes.

Experts predict three possible scenarios. The gloomiest is a continuing decline of the mackerel population if current catch volumes are maintained.

“If the catch volume is reduced to 75 percent of the present level, there is a more than 50 percent probability that stocks will continue to shrink,” said Galilea. “However, if the catch is cut by 50 percent, the biomass could start to recover.”

The local chapter of Oceana, the largest international environmental organisation dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans, complained in August that the Chilean National Fisheries Council, made up of government authorities and industry representatives, has since 2003 set the annual quotas for jack mackerel at higher catch limits than were recommended by the Institute for Fisheries Development.

Samuel Leiva, an activist with the Chilean office of the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, which has observer status on the SPRFMO, told IPS that there has also been “a large increase in the foreign fleet of fishing vessels operating outside the 200-mile limit, mainly from China and the European Union.”

Another factor is climate change, which may have affected the ocean currents and might be driving the jack mackerel further from the coast, towards the open ocean.

“Greenpeace believes the solution is ratification of the SPRFMO convention,” so that scientific recommendations about catch quotas are respected, Leiva said.

In Chile, the main catch zone extends from the central region of Valparaíso to the southern region of Los Lagos, principally off the Bíobío region, situated more than 500 kilometres south of Santiago. A second extraction zone is located in the extreme north of the country.

Some of the jack mackerel catch is exported canned or frozen, but most of it is converted to fishmeal and fish oil, used as feed for farmed salmon, for which Chile is the world’s second largest producer.

“Our big challenge is to get all the countries who exploit this fishery to adopt conservation measures,” said Under-Secretary Galilea. He added that Chile will propose “substantially lower quotas” at the next SPRFMO meeting, to be held Jan. 24-28, 2011, in Cali, Colombia.

The 2011 quotas will be decided by the National Fisheries Council in December, and Galilea stressed “this is the moment of truth, because out of the 22 major fisheries in the country, nine are overfished and four more are at risk of over-exploitation.”

Cutting back the quotas “will require a major social and economic adjustment, especially in the Bíobío region,” an area heavily damaged by the Feb. 27 earthquake and tsunami, Galilea admitted.

Industrial fishing vessels have been granted 95 percent of the catch quotas, set since 1999, while artisanal fishers have the remaining five percent. The fishing industry directly employs 10,000 workers in its vessels and processing plants.

The government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera is relying on economic growth to absorb part of the workforce displaced from the fishing industry. It will also promote human consumption of jack mackerel, in order to increase its added value.

“The decline of the jack mackerel population does have an impact on us, but it won’t cause a crisis in small-scale fishing because it’s not our main catch,” Zoila Bustamante, the head of the National Confederation of Artisanal Fishers (CONAPACH), told IPS. However, she acknowledged there would be a “significant” impact in the north of Chile.

In her view, “it’s not enough to just lower the quotas. We need to discuss how to ensure fair prices, in extraordinary periods like these. Because we are not the ones who over-exploit this fishery, and we think there should be a guaranteed minimum quota, in tonnes, for small-scale fishing.

“Jack mackerel ceased to be part of the basic Chilean diet years ago, when it began to be converted to fishmeal instead, so we’re not facing a food security problem, but rather the end of an industry developed by 15 large fishing companies,” Bustamante said.

On Nov. 2, the Senate passed a bill changing the way catch quotas are set and mandating a study on the sizes of jack mackerels caught. The bill still has to make it through the lower house.

From January to July 2010, Chilean fisheries and aquaculture exports amounted to just over two billion dollars, 13 percent lower than the total for the same period in 2009.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 29 2010 (IPS)

Protesters ranging from prisoners to government leaders have resorted to hunger strikes in Latin America in recent years to press their demands. Behind the growing use of the extreme protest measure is a lack of institutional responses, according to experts.

Mexican electrical workers on hunger strike. Credit: Daniela Pastrana /IPS

In Bolivia, the president himself, Aymara Indian Evo Morales, declared a hunger strike in April 2009 to press for passage of a law.

And opposition to another law prompted a group of around 30 journalists to fast this month for 14 days in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz.

In Costa Rica, a group of environmentalists have been on a hunger strike outside the presidential palace since Oct. 8, to protest an executive decree declaring that an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas, in the north of the country, is in the “public interest,” thus allowing the project to go ahead.

And in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo, Cristian Flores, spokesman for a group of 11 residents of the town of Caimanes, told IPS that “In 10 years we have never received a response from the state.”

He was explaining why the group decided to declare a hunger strike on Sept. 27, to demand the removal and clean-up of a nearby mine tailings deposit.

A much higher profile hunger strike in Chile came to an end early this month after 82 days. A group of 34 prisoners belonging to the country’s largest indigenous group, the Mapuche, were demanding fair trials.

They called off their protest when charges against them under a strict anti-terrorism law were withdrawn and the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera promised they would be tried under standard criminal law.

Although they are not a new phenomenon, hunger strikes are “symptoms of something more serious: that there are segments of the population in Latin America who are invisible and are not being heard,” José Santos, at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Santiago, Chile, told IPS.

On Jul. 23, laid-off members of Mexico’s Electrical Workers Union (SME) lifted a hunger strike in which both men and women participated for different lengths of time, ranging between 34 and 90 days, as part of a struggle to get their jobs back after a state-owned power utility was closed down in the capital.

The protest ended when conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón agreed to high-level talks to address the demands of the workers, several of whom were in critical condition.

Santos, a philosopher and academic, disagrees with the idea that the peaceful pressure mechanism has become “fashionable.”

He also said there was a difference between indefinite hunger strikes and shorter fasts joined to support a specific cause.

José Aylwin, co-director of the Citizen Observatory, a Chilean NGO, said hunger strikes in the Southern Cone country occurred because of the state’s “serious limitations” in guaranteeing “the exercise of political rights.”

One of these limitations, he told IPS, is Chile’s electoral system, “which excludes not only indigenous people, but also different currents of opinion or thought, from legislative decision-making.” Another is “the tightly controlled access to the media,” he added.

In both Cuba and Venezuela, protesters have died as a result of hunger strikes.

In Venezuela “the hunger strike is no longer just a tool used by prisoners; it has been used by oil workers and workers in other industries in the hands of the state, as well as other segments of society,” Marino Alvarado, coordinator of the Venezuelan Programme of Education-Action in Human Rights (PROVEA), told IPS.

In July 2009, the mayor of the metropolitan area of Caracas, opposition politician Antonio Ledesma, fasted for 130 hours to protest a move by the government of socialist President Hugo Chávez to take over many of the mayor’s duties and offices by creating another post.

And in September, university students fasted to complain against alleged political persecution by the Chávez administration.

Jesuit missionary José María Korta, 81, used the same mechanism Oct. 18-25 to press for the release of three Yukpa indigenous men in prison on murder charges, respect for native forms of justice, and a large uninterrupted Yukpa territory instead of several smaller disconnected ones in northern Venezuela.

The only Venezuelan to die as a result of a hunger strike was Franklin Brito, a 49-year-old farmer and schoolteacher who died on Aug. 30 after fasting for five months, demanding respect for his property rights over his land. In the last few years he had held several previous hunger strikes.

“The protests have not only grown in number, but have also become more radical and coordinated, and people are increasingly defying the state” in Venezuela, Alvarado said.

In Cuba, hunger strikes are used by dissidents protesting against the government of Raúl Castro, which considers dissident groups “mercenaries” at the service of the hostile U.S. policy towards the socialist island nation. According to the independent Cuba Archive, 12 people have died in hunger strikes since the 1959 revolution.

The demands set forth by the hunger strikers have been better prison conditions, recognition as political prisoners, and release from jail. Orlando Zapata, 42, died in prison on Feb. 23 after refusing food for 85 days.

“The government deliberately let Zapata die. It was a death foretold,” Elizardo Sánchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a dissident group, told IPS.

The government denied responsibility.

Political dissident Guillermo Fariñas was internationally renowned for his repeated hunger strikes. After Zapata died, he declared his own hunger strike on Feb. 24 in his home in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara demanding the release of 26 prisoners with health problems. He called off his protest on Jul. 8 when the imprisoned dissidents began to be released.

Hunger strikes are “a legitimate recourse in extreme situations, resorted to by racial, gender or other minorities,” said Sánchez, who added that “hunger strikes will continue to happen as long as people lack other means to defend their rights.”

Alvarado said “The hunger strike, an expression of desperation and civic protest in which people risk their health and life, is a sign that the game between government and the governed is stuck, that people are not finding a solution to their demands, and frequently not even institutional responses. It is a negative symptom, dangerous to society.”

*With reporting by Humberto Márquez (Caracas) and Patricia Grogg (Havana).

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 25 2010 (IPS)

Finally, her documentary film about the indigenous Mapuche people has reached theatres in Chile and in other countries. Elena Varela was in the midst of making the film when she was imprisoned on charges for which she has now been completely cleared.

“Something good always comes from bad. Although (the police) seized a lot of material and they returned tapes to me that were destroyed, the film ended up having even greater force,” said Varela about her film “Newen Mapuche” (Strength of the People of the Earth, in Mapudungun, the Mapuche language), which was previewed Oct. 12 in the Chilean capital and has begun making the rounds of film festivals.

Like the life of its author, the original plan for the documentary underwent big change. The film about Mapuche demands for justice begins with Varela’s arrest and ends with her unconditional release in April.

The Mapuches are Chile’s most numerous indigenous group — about one million — in a country of nearly 17 million people.

The documentarist was arrested May 7, 2008, at her home in the town of Villarica, in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía, accused of planning two robberies, allegedly committed in 2004 and 2005 by a cell of the insurgent Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), a group that originally took up arms against the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

In a unanimous ruling Varela was declared innocent on all charges.

In addition to “Newen Mapuche,” at the time of her arrest Varela was directing the documentary “Sueños del Comandante” (Dreams of the Commander) about the killing of MIR members by agents of the dictatorship in Neltume, a town in the Andean foothills.

The police seized 300 tapes. Not all were returned and some were returned in poor state, said Varela, who has not ruled out legal action against those responsible for the damage.

“I lost 300 to 500 hours of work on the two documentaries,” she said.

The film preview of “Newen Mapuche” took place the Alameda Art Centre, where the theatre was packed with people. Later, the documentary was screened at the 17th International Film Festival of Validivia, a city in the southern Chilean region of Los Lagos, Oct. 14-19.

High expectations turned into strong emotions for most of the audience, according to festival reviews.

Now the film has been invited to participate in several national contests, like the Viña del Mar Film Festival, Nov. 15-20 in the Atlantic resort city in the central region of Valparaíso.

It is also being presented at the 5th International Documentary Film Festival under way in Mexico City, and the 4th Documentary Film Exposition organised by the Association of Argentine Documentarists, Nov. 18-24 in Buenos Aires.

Varela is looking for funding to subtitle the film in English and French so she can respond to requests for copies coming from Belgium, Canada, France and Sweden, in addition to the Spanish-speaking Spain, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Though already in distribution, Varela plans to nominate “Newen Mapuche” for national funds in order to polish the post-production of the film and transfer it to 35 mm format, with sights on premiering a definitive version in February.

The filmmaker believes that the legal proceedings against her were a government-led effort in which “false evidence and protected witnesses” were abundant, although she does not give names of the supposed individuals or institutions involved.

Her case has mobilised journalists, audiovisual artists and public figures, both national and international, upset mainly by the fact that her material was seized. They cite the journalist’s right not to name her sources.

“The case of Elena Varela worried us from the beginning, considering above all the violation of the work’s intellectual property that was seized,” Viviana Erpel, president of the Association of Documentarists of Chile (ADOC), told IPS.

“We believe that the work of the documentarist, in general, was attacked and that Varela’s effort in particular was wrongly utilised as ‘evidence’ in a case that had no legal basis,” said Erpel.

“This causes a great deal of concern because we feel vulnerable to the government apparatus that executed those judicial actions, which I myself believe is not healthy and does not belong in a democratic government,” she said.

In 2008, ADOC and other human rights organisations turned to the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights, attached to the Organisation of American States and based in Washington DC, to request precautionary measures for Varela’s legal protection.

The Audiovisual Platform, an umbrella group including ADOC and other guilds, also promoted a legislative bill, in Chilean Parliament since 2008, that would regulate the professional right to protect sources in audiovisual works.

“The image is powerful,” commented Varela, reflecting on the function of documentarists in protecting human rights — in her case, those of the Mapuches. In the late 1800s, the Mapuche people saw most of their land usurped by the Chilean government and then end up in private hands.

“The struggle of the Mapuche people is very painful, very difficult,” said Varela, who believes that a hunger strike by some 30 Mapuche prisoners, lasting more than 80 days until early October, had only “limited results.”

“The deeper problem, the one they are fighting for — their dignity as a people –” is still relevant, she said.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada and Aprille Muscara
NEW YORK/SANTIAGO, Oct 22 2010 (IPS)

When Francisca arrived at the historic Curicó Hospital – a staple in the Chilean central valley for nearly one and a half centuries – for the birth of her first child, she didn’t know it would be her only one.

“I was in the recovery room at the hospital of Curicó when [the nurse] entered and, after asking me how I was feeling, told me that I was sterilised and that I would not be able to have any more children,” she recalls in a joint report by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the Chilean NGO Vivo Positivo released Thursday.

It was 2002. Francisca (not her real name) was 20 years old and she and her husband foresaw a future in which their visit to the maternity ward would not have been their last – in which their family would grow and in which their firstborn son would have siblings.

Instead, according to the report, the attending surgeon sterilised her during her cesarean section operation without any prior discussion and without her permission because Francisca is HIV-positive.

“They treated me like I was less than a person,” she said. “It was not my decision to end my fertility; they took it away from me.”

Suzannah Phillips, one of the authors of the report – which documents cases of discriminatory treatment against HIV- positive mothers – argues that Francisca’s story is not an isolated incident.

The report, titled ‘Dignity Denied,’ states that the forced sterilisation of HIV-positive women was routine in Chile prior to 2000, when its health laws were revised to include the notion of informed consent – a process of communication whereby patients voluntarily give their permission for treatment after being given adequate counseling about all possible options.

But the practice continued: In a 2004 Vivo Positivo country study, 29 percent of participants – seropositive women – said that their health care providers pressured them to get sterilised, while 12.9 percent said they were sterilised without consent.

Vasili Deliyanis, head of Vivo Positivo, told IPS that on the one hand, the South American nation is one of the countries that has had the most success in reducing the birth rate of HIV-positive babies, thanks to the adoption of a protocol for the prevention of vertical – or mother-child – transmission of the AIDS virus.

On the other hand, Chilean women with HIV continue to face discrimination in the field of sexual and reproductive health, he explained.

María Eugenia Calvin, with the Popular Education in Health Foundation (EPES), a non-governmental organisation, said sterilisation without consent is only the most severe expression of a deeper problem.

In Chile, “there are no specific programmes targeting women living with HIV in the field of sexual and reproductive rights,” said Calvin, a social worker who has co-authored several studies on the question.

Despite the fact that Chile’s health laws and regulations have incorporated a gender and rights focus, and that health care for people living with HIV is good, “there are limitations in the approach taken towards the specific situation of these women,” Calvin said.

They are not included, for example, in the Health Ministry’s guidelines on humanised birth, which are necessary, she said, due to the various restrictions that HIV-positive mothers face, such as the one on breastfeeding.

As part of a study on violence against women and the increased feminisation of HIV/AIDS, published in 2009, EPES interviewed 102 HIV-positive Chilean women.

A number of them talked about being sterilised without their consent, and of being pressured by health professionals to undergo the procedure, Calvin said.

She also noted the lack of HIV/AIDS prevention programmes oriented towards women. “Women have not been a major focus” in national campaigns against the disease, which continue to target men who have sex with men.

While ‘Dignity Denied’ focuses on Chile – Vivo Positivo is a Chilean non-governmental organisation working to enhance the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS – Phillips told IPS that the 27 case studies presented in the report are indicative of a global trend, which has recently been gaining awareness.

“It’s something that’s been emerging probably in the last decade,” she told IPS.

Since the 2004 study, other disturbing cases – mostly in the developing world – have become publicised, echoing Francisca’s narrative of loss and stolen progeny.

Seropositive mothers robbed of their basic right to choose the number and spacing of their children have filed lawsuits in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa and Venezuela. Phillips told IPS that these discriminatory practices are also common in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia.

But so far, while mounting, the evidence is largely anecdotal. Because of the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS and fear of retribution, women are often reluctant to speak out about being mistreated because of their HIV status while receiving maternal care. As a result, Phillips concedes that “it’s hard to get statistical data to really know how widespread the phenomena is.”

For a year after her son was born, Francisca kept quiet about being sterilised against her will, Phillips said. It was only after Vivo Positivo reached out to her at a clinic where she was receiving antiretroviral treatment that she began learning more about reproductive rights and finally shared her experience.

Troublingly, Phillips told IPS that she and her co- authors found this general lack of awareness and misinformation to be “rampant” in Chile even among health care professionals themselves.

“The problems originate more when they (HIV-positive patients) seek urgent or obstetric care – or any other specialty outside of… infectious diseases,” she said, because these health workers are typically undertrained to treat seropositive patients.

Cases documented in ‘Dignity Denied’ reveal that some doctors and nurses were shockingly misinformed about even the methods of HIV transmission, inaccurately advising mothers to use separate eating utensils and bathrooms, misguidedly directing them not to touch their babies – or refusing to touch the women themselves – and, as in Francisca’s case, coercing or forcing them to get sterilised.

“Forced sterilisation is not only a fundamental violation of a woman’s reproductive rights; it has few benefits in terms of HIV prevention,” said Yakin Ertürk, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, in the report.

“Key interventions can reduce the risk of MTCT (mother-to- child transmission) of HIV/AIDS to less than two percent in countries like Chile, where adequate breast-milk substitute is available,” the report states.

And U.N. experts, health officials and analysts say that the virtual elimination of mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission is achievable by 2015 worldwide – which means an HIV-free generation is within five years’ reach. Francisca’s son, now eight-years old, was born HIV-negative.

In 2007, with the help of Vivo Positivo, Francisca filed a lawsuit against Curicó Hopsital in local courts. The following summer, it was denied without the chance of appeal. Her case, filed against Chile by the CRR and Vivo Positivo, is now pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a regional tribunal.

*Daniela Estrada reported from Chile.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 20 2010 (IPS)

In June 2009, Chilean army captain Andrea Fuentes travelled to the city of Cap-Haïtien, in north Haiti, to serve for six months in her country’s contingent in the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Chilean Captain Fuentes with children at a school in Haiti. Credit: Courtesy of Chilean Army

Before being deployed she received training to implement a United Nations resolution on gender in peacekeeping operations. Resolution 1325 was adopted by the U.N. Security Council a decade ago to reaffirm the important role that women play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building, and to promote the equal participation and full involvement of women in such efforts and the need to mainstream a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations.

Through this resolution, the Security Council called on U.N. member states to ensure the representation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes, expand the role and contribution of women in these efforts at all levels and incorporate a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations, while taking special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and address their special needs.

Along with two non-commissioned officers under her command, Fuentes was in charge of various tasks, including coordinating the construction of separate bathroom facilities for boys and girls in schools, and organising baking courses to support Haitian women’s incorporation to the labour market.

Fuentes says the contribution that women soldiers can make “is not the same” as that of men: “It’s not better or worse; we just have a different sensitivity, which allows us to reach people better.”

MINUSTAH was established after the 2004 coup d’etat that overthrew President Bertrand Aristide. Its original mandate was to restore a secure and stable environment, foster the political process, strengthen Haiti’s tovernment institutions and rule-of-law-structures, and promote and protect human rights.

This mandate was later renewed several times and expanded to guarantee continued support to a weak national government and provide relief in natural disasters, the most devastating of which was the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed 220,000 people and left millions more without a home.

Although ten Latin American countries contribute troops to MINUSTAH, some with a large number of soldiers, only two of them — Argentina and Chile — have plans to implement Resolution 1325.

Of the countries in the region, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have the largest number of women in their troops. But even in their case, women are very far behind men both in numbers and in decision-making power.

“It’s still very common to see” women in traditional roles, Malena Derdoy, a lawyer and gender policy director with Argentina’s Defence Ministry, told TerraViva.

Uruguay has 85 women in a total of 1,700 troops, Argentina has 31 women in 493 uniformed and civilian personnel, and only 11 of Chile’s 516 soldiers are women.

The inclusion of female troops depends on several factors, Pamela Villalobos, equal opportunity advisor for Chile’s Defence Ministry, told TerraViva. Recruitment is done on a voluntary basis, and in order to qualify, women must meet a profile established by the United Nations and then pass the required tests.

In August 2009, Chile became the first country in the Americas to approve a national action plan to implement Resolution 1325, as required by the Security Council. Only Canada has followed suit. Although Argentina has also adopted one, it is limited to defence matters. Only 22 countries in the world have implemented such action plans.

Concrete progress has been made, Villalobos said, with the incorporation of issues such as special protection for women and girls in the training curricula of military academies. Another development is the production of gender statistics, which help make women visible in these missions.

Uruguay’s military press officer, major Jesús Aires, said he was unaware if his country’s troops received any training in gender equality issues. “The mission is not focused on gender issues,” said another military source who asked to remain anonymous. The troops in these peace missions run the risk of turning into occupation armies, or of turning a blind eye to situations that are damaging to women. In November 2007, MINUSTAH sent home all of Sri Lanka’s troops when charges of sexual abuse and exploitation were brought against some one hundred of its members.

Reports of sexual violence in the country became more common after the January earthquake, when hundreds of thousands of people were forced to settle in overcrowded makeshift camps.

In mid year, the Security Council decided to deploy an exclusively female police contingency of 600 members to these camps, and a unit of 110 Bangladeshi police women arrived in June.

The Latin American security forces, however, cannot match these numbers, because the participation of women is recent and scarce.

“If the number of women increases, we’ll be able to be more alert” to gender issues, said Fuentes, who is planning to apply in 2011 to the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace mission.

* With additional reporting by Marcela Valente (Buenos Aires) and Silvana Silveira (Montevideo).

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 16 2010 (IPS)

How many litres of water are needed to produce one kilogram of table grapes? The current effort to measure the “water footprint” of this and other Chilean exports could give us some answers by year’s end.

Valle del Huasco, in the semi-arid Chilean region of Atacama. Credit: Daniela Estrada/IPS

“Perhaps the water footprint will not follow the same critical path as the carbon footprint, but it does call companies’ attention to rethinking their water resource management,” said Rodrigo Acevedo, head of agro-industry projects at the Chile Foundation, one of the entities measuring the footprint in this South American country.

It is a matter of “changing the paradigm,” Acevedo told Tierramérica. It will obligate companies to “go beyond the legal spheres,” like water use rights, and consider the effects of their consumption on the sustainability of local watersheds and of their own businesses.

Right now, the leading entity for defining the standards is the Water Footprint Network, a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands. It has calculated the water footprint of such things as a cup of coffee (140 litres) and a kilo of rice (3,000 litres).

But unlike the globalised notion of the carbon footprint, which measures the quantity of greenhouse-effect gases emitted into the atmosphere by individuals, products or companies, the consumption of water is difficult to report or compare because it entails complex processes with a eminently local impact.

Three separate “footprints” are considered in the calculation: the green, which accounts for the contribution of precipitation; the blue, which involves the surface or underground water sources; and the grey, which entails the contamination generated in the production process.

Among the Chilean partners of the Water Footprint Network are the Chile Foundation, the public University of Chile, the Green Solutions consultancy, and the wine producers Concha y Toro, De Martino, and Errázuriz.

The Chile Foundation was created by the U.S. ITT Corporation (whose interests include water and sanitation, weapons, satellite technology and transportation), the Chilean government, and the copper company Minera Escondida, owned by the Anglo-Australian mining and petroleum group BHP Billiton.

In a pilot effort, the Foundation is measuring the water footprint of products and companies, mostly in the northern region of Atacama, which is a semi- desert area, with scarce water resources, several major mining projects, and for-export agriculture.

The results will be ready in December for six farming companies in the Atacama’s Copiapó and Huasco watersheds, which produce table grapes, avocados, olives and vegetables.

With a portion of that data, the institution is calculating the situation of the entire Huasco watershed. To create a complete map, it is preparing to measure — for the first time in the world — the full impact of mining activity on water resources.

There are already companies interested in what the Foundation is doing. The area is home to the highly controversial Pascua Lama gold and silver deposits, to be mined by the Canadian company Barrick Gold.

“We see the measurement of the watersheds as much more interesting than the measurement of the companies,” Ulrike Broschek, the Chile Foundation’s director of water and industry, told Tierramérica.

The fact is that the water footprints cannot be compared if the companies producing a specific product are located in geographically different places, with different precipitation patterns and different soil compositions.

In the watershed, however, “I can conclude that the table grape is much more efficient in terms of water consumption than the vegetables, or vice versa,” explained Broschek. This implies “determining the true impacts of each activity within a watershed,” taking into account various factors, like productivity, she said.

Once it has the results, the Foundation hopes to set up models for different scenarios in Huasco, like the launch of a new mining operation or a season of drought. Those models will then be used to evaluate other watersheds, said Broschek.

With applications like this, the water footprint could become a management tool, both for the public and private sectors, she said. There have been many disputes in Chile in recent years over the contamination of rivers and the conflicting interests of the mining, farming, sanitation and hydroelectric sectors.

According to Broschek, although the companies’ interest in the water footprint is usually related to their concern with their public image, they soon realise that it is the first step to improving efficiency.

Along with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Foundation is measuring the water footprint of different farm and forest products, like grapes, apples, avocados and blueberries.

First they will estimate a national average per product, and the provide context according to where it was produced and the sustainability of the watershed involved, said Acevedo, who is calculating the footprint of Concha y Toro for the farming and bottling processes of its famous wines.

Although it is not a requirement of the international market, the water footprint is an opportunity “to generate product faithfulness, differentiation and added value,” Paola Conca, head of sustainable commerce for the Board of Export Promotion, told Tierramérica.

“Providing information about the water footprint could be a factor of economic competition” for Latin America, “and Chile could be a pioneer in establishing methodologies,” because of the development of its private water market, said Joseluis Samaniego, director of sustainable development and human settlements at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Because it is a heavy exporter, Chile decided to participate in the water footprint effort, and not wait for the international community to impose disadvantageous parameters, said Acevedo.

He believes such parameters will be a reality in two or three years, taking form as a “sustainable water” certification to assure that the produce does not come from inappropriate or stressed watersheds.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 13 2010 (IPS)

The concept that the state plays a key role in overcoming chronic hunger is not a new one. But the latest figures from Latin America show that more public money and social programmes alone are ineffective solutions.

Undernourished child in Camotán, in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

“Countries have tried to implement programmes, but either they lack the necessary institutions, or they don’t have the funds” to ensure they are effective, said Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) regional representative and assistant director-general José Graziano da Silva.

The statistics are from the report “Panorama de la Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional en América Latina y el Caribe” 2010 (Overview of Food and Nutritional Security in Latin America and the Caribbean), launched Wednesday Oct. 13 by FAO.

The report says stronger links are needed between economic growth and social inclusion.

“The countries that have been least affected are those that had a social protection system for the poor, combined with programmes to support productive activities,” da Silva said.

Several countries in the region have implemented policies to support food production, organise trade and markets for food and agriculture, and provide social protection and food aid.

At present, 19 countries are implementing conditional income transfer programmes, like the Bolsa Familia (family grant) programme in Brazil, Oportunidades (opportunities) in Mexico and Familias en Acción (families in action) in Colombia.

However, not all of them have yielded the expected results, either because they were still at the pilot stage, or were not integrated with other social and productive policies, da Silva said.

Rural leader Florencia Aróstica, of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI), a Chilean NGO, and the Latin American Coordinating Committee of Rural Organisations (CLOC), told IPS: “Rather than a strong state, a more sovereign state is needed.

“The present neoliberal model, focused on industry, has been of no use in mitigating world hunger. There are no policies to boost small-scale agriculture, only a few ineffective programmes,” said Aróstica, who grows vegetables on her small farm in northern Chile.

In September, FAO announced that 98 million people have been freed from hunger since 2009. But there are still 925 million undernourished people in the world today, according to its report “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010: Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises”.

Aróstica criticised the backing given to intensive monoculture farming, the concentration of land tenure in the hands of a few corporations and monopoly control over water resources.

“As small farmers have been pushed off their land, the number of landless rural workers looking for jobs has risen. Unemployment is rife and working conditions are bad, especially for women,” she said.

CLOC, which belongs to the international peasant movement Via Campesina, is holding its Fifth Continental Congress in Quito Oct. 8-16 under the slogan “Against dispossession by capital and empire: For land and sovereignty for our peoples.”

Although the reduction of hunger has been minimal, it does however represent progress compared to the 2006-2009 period, when owing to the global economic crisis and soaring food prices, six million people in Latin America and the Caribbean joined the ranks of the hungry, and the region regressed to the situation that prevailed in 1990.

The region continues to enjoy economic growth, but the volatility of international markets makes it likely that the growth rate will decline in the next few years, and that employment will also fall.

“The incomes of a great many people in Latin America hover around the poverty line: as long as they have jobs they are above the line, but if one person in the family becomes unemployed, they fall below it. It’s a very unstable situation,” da Silva said.

Fernando Soto, coordinator of the policies group at the FAO regional office in Santiago, said the countries that “weathered the crisis best were those that had, or have, public institutions capable of implementing anti-cyclical policies.”

In these countries, the state plays a strong role in strategic areas of the economy, and can make a difference by bolstering food production for the domestic market, providing loans to farmers, and through public procurement, food stockpiling and distribution, and social protection programmes.

“The most successful countries manage increasingly to link economic growth and social inclusion. They are two separate things,” Soto said.

“We cannot have growth on the one hand, and on the other create social programmes for the people who are excluded from that growth. There is a limit to this: it’s called public debt,” the FAO expert said.

Countries that are extremely vulnerable to food insecurity, like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, increased their public debt in 2009 to such an extent that they are now negotiating adjustment measures with the International Monetary Fund and are planning to cut social expenditure in their 2011 budgets.

FAO’s recommendations include supporting a greater role for family agriculture in food supply, and improving the regulation and oversight of agricultural and labour markets, which are key factors affecting rural poverty, according to the regional report.

Investment in family agriculture is between two and four times more effective in reducing poverty than any other type of investment, the head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo Nwanze, told IPS last year when he visited successful projects in Brazil.

However, “during periods when poverty has risen, it has increased most among peasant families” in comparison with other rural populations, researcher Alexander Schejtman of the Latin American Centre for Rural Development (RIMISP), a regional organisation based in the Chilean capital, told IPS.

The family farming sector tends in most countries to exhibit the greatest slides into poverty and the smallest emergence from it, within a rural setting which is in any case poorer than the urban context, the economist concluded.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 13 2010 (IPS)

“This country has to understand that changes must be made,” said Mario Sepúlveda, the second Chilean miner — of the group of 33 trapped 700 metres underground for over two months — rescued in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

But what changes? What lessons has the mining accident in the northern region of Atacama left Chile, the world’s largest producer of copper?

In the media frenzy surrounding the rescue operation that started Tuesday night, no one has bothered to mention that there were more than 191,000 workplace accidents in this South American country of 17 million people in 2009, including 443 deaths, and 155 deaths in the first quarter of this year alone.

“The miners are not heroes,” as they have been called around the world for surviving underground for over two months; “they are victims,” Néstor Jorquera, president of the CONFEMIN mining union, told IPS.

“After our compañeros are rescued, we’re going to do everything we can to hold the people who were responsible for this accountable,” said the leader of CONFEMIN, which represents more than 18,000 miners who work at small, medium-size and large privately-owned mines — including the 33 miners at the San Jose mine in Copiapó, Atacama.

In an unprecedented rescue operation that has thrilled television viewers around the world while it is broadcast live and covered by hundreds of Chilean and foreign journalists, the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera is bringing up the 32 Chileans and one Bolivian trapped in the mine since an Aug. 5 collapse.

The first miner, Florencio Ávalos, came up in the capsule named Phoenix after midnight and was welcomed by the rescuers and by Piñera and several cabinet ministers. By the time this article came out, 16 miners had been rescued, and the last miner may be brought up earlier than expected, by Wednesday night.

Critics say Camp Hope, where relatives of the miners have been staying near the mine, has turned into the set of a reality show where the private lives of the miners and their families and the details of the spectacular rescue have trumped concerns about the poor safety conditions that caused the accident.

Television programmes that plan to follow the rescued San Esteban mining company workers over the next few months have already been announced, as well as books and films about their ordeal.

There has also been criticism of the government for making political mileage out of the case, given Piñera’s continuous presence at the mine and his frequent references to the strength of the miners in his speeches, as symbols “of the Chilean spirit of struggle against adversity.”

In the eyes of the world, “Chile has come off very well because of the rescue effort, and the responsibility assumed by the state,” Kirsten Sehnbruch, a professor at the University of Chile’s Institute of Public Affairs, told IPS. But at the same time, the accident “has caused tremendous damage to the country’s image, because everyone is wondering why it happened.”

She said the accident was the result of negligence on the part of both the mining company and the government.

According to Sehnbruch, “in any developed country, the owners of the mine would be in jail.”

The two Chileans who own the mine located in the desert 800 km north of the capital are facing criminal charges for serious bodily injury in connection with an earlier accident, in which a miner lost a leg. They are under court order not to leave the country.

“The joy over the near epic rescue that has been the result of the strength and wisdom of the miners of Atacama makes it necessary for us not to forget that situations like this one are absolutely avoidable,” María Ester Feres, director of the private Central University of Chile’s centre on labour relations, research and advice, told IPS.

Feres pointed out that “last year alone, according to partial figures (provided by companies affiliated with private insurance providers), more than 191,000 work-related accidents were counted” in this country.

In a speech after the first miner was rescued, Piñera said “we are carrying out a complete review of safety standards,” not only in the mining industry but in other sectors as well.

A national policy needed

According to Feres, Chile does not have “coherent, efficient public policies or a national structure in the area of work safety and health.”

“To judge by what is happening in agribusiness, salmon farming, the ports, construction and other industries, it is clear that decent work is not a strategic objective of this country’s model for economic growth,” the expert said.

The problems include long workdays, insufficient breaks, low pay, high turnover, and high levels of informal employment, she said.

A commission set up in August by Piñera is drafting a report on workplace safety, to be delivered on Nov. 22.

The president also announced the creation of a mining superintendency to regulate and enforce safety standards, a restructuring of the National Geology and Mining Service, increased funds for inspections, and the establishment of another advisory committee, to review mining safety regulations.

CONFEMIN president Jorquera called for the ratification of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 176 on Safety and Health in Mines, which was adopted in 1995 and went into force in 1998. But he complained that “the government isn’t interested in this, because it believes it won’t solve the problem.”

Feres said “the government’s actions are not pointing in the right direction,” because it set up “a commission that is only focused on labour safety, without including an analysis of overall working conditions in its objectives.” Nor did it include labour unions and other key actors, she added.

She also criticised the business community’s attempt to blame the problem “only on small companies.”

Mining unions complain that the government has gone after the weakest link, closing down small, dangerous mines that operate on a semi-informal basis in Atacama, without offering any support to help them improve conditions.

Although CONFEMIN and the Central Workers Union (CUT) — Chile’s largest trade union — will deliver a petition to the government, and other unions are organising as well, Jorquera is not optimistic with regard to the prospect of significant changes in working conditions, because of deeper underlying problems like outsourcing.

In addition, trends like outsourcing “externalise labour costs and risks, and fragment and hinder the labour movement and the organised participation of workers in setting and overseeing working conditions,” said Feres.

“Tackling labour problems as a key dimension of economic and social development, and workplace safety and health as a state policy, with a national structure and an integral and participative focus is an urgent challenge, in order to make the leap to true social and economic development,” she added.

For his part, Jorquera said the “business community’s regrettable irresponsibility” has provided “a great opportunity” for workers “to protest and reveal everything that is hidden in this country,” now that the eyes of the world are on Chile.

Excerpt:

Under pressure from the business sector, Chile is leading the way in measuring the impact on water resources in the production of everything from fruit to gold.

Valle del Huasco, in the arid Chilean region of Atacama. - Daniela Estrada/IPS

The water footprint is the total volume of freshwater used in the production of goods and services. It can be calculated for a specific product, a company or an entire country. This footprint, say experts, is an indicator of potentials and limits.

“Perhaps the water footprint will not follow the same critical path as the carbon footprint, but it does call companies' attention to rethinking their water resource management,” said Rodrigo Acevedo, head of agro-industry projects at the Chile Foundation, one of the entities measuring the footprint in this South American country.

It is a matter of “changing the paradigm,” Acevedo told Tierramérica. It will obligate companies to “go beyond the legal spheres,” like water use rights, and consider the effects of their consumption on the sustainability of the watersheds and of their own businesses.

Right now, the leading entity for defining the standards is the Water Footprint Network, a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands. It has calculated the water footprint of a cup of coffee (140 liters) and a kilo of rice (3,000 liters).

But unlike the globalized notion of the carbon footprint, which measures the quantity of greenhouse-effect gases emitted into the atmosphere by individuals, products or companies, the consumption of water is difficult to report or compare because it entails complex processes with a eminently local impact.

Three “footprints” are considered in the calculation: the green, which accounts for the contribution of precipitation; the blue, which involves the surface or underground water sources; and the grey, which entails the contamination generated in the production process.

Among the Chilean partners of the Water Footprint Network are the Chile Foundation, the public University of Chile, the Green Solutions consultancy, and the wine producer Concha y Toro, De Martino, and Errázuriz.

The Chile Foundation was created by the U.S. ITT Corporation (dedicated to water and sanitation, weapons, satellite technology and transportation), the Chilean government, and the copper company Minera Escondida, owned by the Anglo-Australian mining and petroleum group BHP Billiton.

In a pilot effort, the Foundation is measuring the water footprint of products and companies, mostly in the northern region of Atacama, which is a semi-desert area, with scarce water resources, major mining projects, and export agriculture.

The results will be ready in December for six farming companies in the Copiapó and Huasco watersheds, in Atacama, which produce table grapes, avocados, olives and vegetables.

With a portion of that data, the institution is calculating the situation of the entire Huasco watershed. To create a complete map, it is preparing to measure — for the first time in the world — the full impact of mining activity on water.

There are already companies interested in what the Foundation is doing. The area is home to the highly controversial Pascua Lama gold and silver deposits, to be mined by the Canadian company Barrick Gold.

“We see the measurement of the watersheds as much more interesting than the measurement of the companies,” Ulrike Broschek, the Chile Foundation's director of water and industry, told Tierramérica.

The fact is that the water footprints cannot be compared if the companies producing a specific product are located in geographically different places, with different precipitation patterns and different soil compositions.

In the watershed, however, “I can conclude that the table grape is much more efficient in terms of water consumption than the vegetables, or vice versa,” explained Broschek. This implies “determining the true impacts of each activity within a watershed,” taking into account various factors, like productivity, she said.

Once it has the results, the Foundation hopes to set up models for different scenarios in Huasco, like the launch of a new mining operation or a season of drought. Those models will then be used to evaluate other watersheds, said Broschek.

With applications like this, the water footprint could become a management tool, both for the public and private sectors, she said. There have been many disputes in Chile in recent years over the contamination of rivers and the conflicting interests of the mining, farming, sanitation and hydroelectric sectors.

According to Broschek, although the companies' interest in the water footprint tends to emerge from their concern with their public image, they soon realize that it is the first step to improving efficiency.

Along with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Foundation is measuring the water footprint of different farm and forest products, like grapes, apples, avocados and blueberries.

First they will estimate a national average per product, and the provide context according to where it was produced and the sustainability of the watershed involved, said Acevedo, who is calculating the footprint of Concha y Toro for the farming and bottling processes of its famous wines.

Although it is not a requirement of the international market, the water footprint is an opportunity “to generate product faithfulness, differentiation and added value,” Paola Conca, head of sustainable commerce for the Board of Export Promotion, told Tierramérica.

“Providing information about the water footprint could be a factor of economic competition” for Latin America, “and Chile could be a pioneer in establishing methodologies,” because of the development of its private water market, said Joseluis Samaniego, director of sustainable development and human settlements at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Because it is a heavy exporter, Chile decided to participate in the water footprint effort, and not wait for the international community to impose disadvantageous parameters, said Acevedo.

He believes such parameters will be a reality in two or three years, taking form as a “sustainable water” certification to assure that the produce does not come from inappropriate or stressed watersheds.

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 29 2010 (IPS)

As concern grows for the health and lives of 38 Mapuche prisoners on a hunger strike in different prisons in southern Chile, IPS consulted academics about the problems underlying the conflict.

None of the attempts by the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera to persuade the fasters to call off their protest, launched by the original group of hunger strikers 80 days ago, have been successful.

“Two completely different languages are being spoken here,” José Bengoa, an anthropology professor at the private Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, told IPS. “On one hand, the young Mapuche activists are talking about politics and rights, while the government, in a huge step backwards, is talking about poverty, development and building roads.

“These are two very different conceptions, which lead to a failure to find a solution to this hunger strike,” said Bengoa, who is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee.

Of the nearly one million Mapuche Indians in this South American country of 17 million people, around half live in the south of the country, in the regions of Bíobío and Araucanía, and half in the capital.

A group of imprisoned Mapuche activists who identify themselves as political prisoners began a hunger strike on Jul. 12, and were gradually joined by others, who brought the total to 38. They are being held in several prisons in the south.

Most of them are in a delicate state of health, and there are fears that some are near death.

The hunger strikers, who are in prison on charges of terrorist arson, invasion of property and attempted homicide and bodily injury against a public prosecutor and a passenger bus, are demanding that their cases no longer be tried under the controversial counter-terrorism law passed by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The law, which has been widely criticised by rights groups and experts within and outside of Chile, not only makes it possible for witnesses to conceal their identity, but allows secret judicial investigations, longer periods of arrest on remand, and heavy sentences. There are also allegations that unidentified witnesses have been paid to testify against the Mapuche defendants.

Another of the hunger strikers’ demands is an end to the practice by which some Mapuche activists are tried in the same case by both the civil and military courts when members of the armed forces are involved, and the resultant sentences are served consecutively.

After weeks of inaction, the Piñera administration, whose inauguration in March brought to an end two decades of government by the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, introduced two bills in parliament early this month, to reform the military justice system and the counter-terrorism law, with the aim of persuading the protesters to call off their hunger strike.

The government also asked Catholic Bishop Ricardo Ezzati to broker talks with the Mapuche activists, who have the backing of intellectuals and social and religious leaders, some of whom have even launched hunger strikes of their own in solidarity with their cause.

Although the government has promised to drop the charges under the anti-terrorism law that were brought by the government of former President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), the hunger strikers refuse to end their protest, arguing that there is no guarantee this will happen, given the independence and autonomy of the office of the public prosecutor.

They have called on all branches of the state to engage in dialogue with them. But the president of the Supreme Court, Milton Juica, and national prosecutor Sabas Chahuán refused, saying it was unconstitutional.

Congress, in the meantime, remains caught up in a heated debate on the two bills introduced by the executive branch, with no solution in sight.

Chahuán pointed out that the counter-terrorism law was invoked in just 12 of the 388 cases in which Mapuche activists have been tried since 2000, in connection with land occupations and other actions to lay claim to what the indigenous group considers its ancestral territory in southern Chile.

The government, meanwhile, called on different actors to take part in a dialogue on “underlying issues” — an initiative that has been questioned because the Mapuche community has limited representation in the dialogue, and because it focuses on the so-called Plan Araucanía, a development plan aimed at improving infrastructure and public services for the indigenous people of southern Chile.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups, as well as United Nations Special Rapporteur for the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, have urged the government not to use the anti-terrorism law to try Mapuche activists, and to consider all possible legal and political alternatives to find a solution to the conflict over land.

International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, ratified by Chile in 2008, “is being violated because” the Mapuche are not duly consulted on questions that affect them, as stipulated by the international instrument, said Milka Castro, director of the programme of legal anthropology and interculturalism at the University of Chile law school.

Castro told IPS: “It is surprising to learn from the media how little professionals in the public sphere and government officials know about Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (approved in 2007), which was also signed by Chile, and especially how little they know about the cultural diversity of our country.

“There is a historical state of ignorance intentionally cultivated from grade school up through university,” the anthropologist said, referring to the lack of awareness on the occupation of Mapuche territory by the state in the 19th century, in a process known as the “pacification of Araucania”, and the handing over of indigenous land to private owners.

The process continued throughout the 20th century, with the government offering incentives like land and subsidies to forestry companies and other firms interested in operating in undeveloped parts of the country.

Bengoa said “A significant proportion of the Mapuche people are seeking a different relationship with Chilean society in general, and with the Chilean state in particular.

“In precise, concrete terms, what they want is a process of decolonisation, which states have a hard time reacting to or understanding,” said the academic, who has written a number of books on the Mapuche people.

According to Bengoa, Chilean society sees indigenous people as having “a subordinate relationship” to mainstream society: Chileans “have an image of a respectful indigenous person who does not press for all of his or her rights.”

The government and part of the country’s political leadership claim that the Mapuche activists involved in land occupations and other protest actions considered to be criminal activities represent a small minority, and that the indigenous group’s main problem is poverty.

But Bengoa said “It is a manipulation to say there are two groups: the ‘good’ Mapuche and the ‘bad’ Mapuche.”

Just because some sectors of the Mapuche community are demanding better living conditions does not mean they do not also want “a significant degree of self-government or autonomy,” he said.

“Obviously, those who are demanding this (autonomy) have always been, everywhere in the world, the vanguard, the young, the elites, the intellectuals, the ones who think of their people as a collective, who think of the Mapuche nation as existing in the future,” he said.

Castro said “A key issue is territory,” and asked “Who is analysing and discussing this issue in a responsible, rigorous manner in our country? And how can Chile solve this problem?”

She said the Mapuche claims to their ancestral territory clash with the interests of business, especially the forestry companies, which own land that was seized in the past from indigenous people in the south.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 21 2010 (IPS)

The “people’s” climate agenda that the Bolivian government and civil society produced at an April conference in Cochabamba has made its way to the official United Nations negotiating table. But its inclusion in a binding climate treaty is unlikely, say activists.

Caribbean beach in Tulum, Mexico Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

The failure of the negotiations was evident last year at the Copenhagen climate summit, officially known as the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In August, the Bolivian government of leftist Evo Morales applauded the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention for its decision at a Bonn meeting to include more than a dozen proposals from Cochabamba in the text to be negotiated going forward.

Among them are proposals to establish an international tribunal on climate justice and to limit the increase of the global average temperature to one degree Celsius, with the consequent need to reduce carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to 300 parts per million (ppm).

Currently, the concentration of this greenhouse gas is 387 ppm. According to scientists, if it cannot be reduced to 350 ppm or less, the global average temperature will rise more than two degrees Celsius — with catastrophic environmental, social and economic consequences.

The delegates in Bonn also agreed to discuss a 50-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by industrialised countries for the second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, from 2013 to 2017.

They also agreed to bring in the concept of the rights of Mother Earth, the perspectives of indigenous peoples, and the issues associated with human migration spurred by climate change.

At the core of the official negotiations is determining just how far the wealthy countries are willing to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

The draft text also covers some of the Cochabamba meet’s more controversial demands: the exclusion of market mechanisms in forestation activities, and opposition to converting natural forests into monoculture tree plantations.

The negotiators said they are open to considering measures to block intellectual property protections when it comes to technology transfer aimed at mitigating climate change.

The draft will be debated Oct. 4-9 in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin, and finally at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16), to take place in the Mexican Caribbean resort city of Cancún, Nov. 29-Dec. 10.

“The proposals of the Cochabamba peoples’ summit have been included, which means they will be taken into account,” said Colombian activist Lyda Fernanda Forero, of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which includes non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and networks from Canada to Chile.

But “the lack of will of the developed countries has not changed, and the discussion will continue on the same terms that have been in place till now, making it difficult to reach binding conclusions,” Forero told Tierramérica.

“Although it is legitimate and very beneficial that the contents of the ‘Peoples Agreement’ have been submitted to the official talks, we don’t see the possibility that they will be included in the treaties in Cancún, if there are any,” agreed Eduardo Giesen, coordinator of Chile’s Alliance for Climate Justice.

Stanislaw Czaplicki, co-founder of Climate Reaction Bolivia, an NGO, said in a conversation with Tierramérica, “no issue will reach enough consensus to achieve the level of concrete and approved policy.”

In his opinion, there will be spaces in Cancún to debate scientific, technological and financial issues, “but there are not, nor do they pretend to be, a space in which to talk about economic geopolitics,” which he says are the basis of the biggest controversies.

The pessimism of the Latin American activists only seems to underscore the divisions among the civil society groups planning to participate in the Cancún events.

There will be at least three distinct sites for alternative forums at COP 16. A group of about 50 NGOs, among them Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation, created the Climate Dialogue-Mexican Space. The Hemispheric Social Alliance plans to be there.

Another set of organisations will take part in Klimaforum 2010, continuing the experience they began at COP 15 in Copenhagen. Its political platform is very similar to that of Cochabamba.

Meanwhile, the global movement of rural workers and farmers Vía Campesina will set up camp in Cancún.

The Cochabamba proposals are “radical,” said Jorge Villarreal, the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s regional coordinator for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, adding: “We fear the negotiations will be radicalised and there is a risk of breakdown.”

However, he acknowledged to Tierramérica that there are “points of consensus, for instance, that the UN Convention should administer the global funds, developed countries should change consumption patterns, and a climate tribunal should be created.”

The peoples’ agenda “is not going to be become part of the Cancún agreement because (the governments) are more interested in discussing other issues, like market mechanisms,” said Alberto Gómez, coordinator for North America of Vía Campesina.

In the opinion of Forero, of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, “COP 16 once again will be a moment of tension for imposing the Copenhagen Accord,” forged at the last minute by Brazil, China, United States, India and South Africa. That non-binding agreement does not have fixed targets for reducing greenhouse emissions.

The Copenhagen Accord has been slowly accumulating the signatures of many less developed and vulnerable countries, “which see it as the only way to obtain resources, though scant, for confronting the impacts of climate change,” said Chilean Giesen.

In this context, the activists are setting their sights on building alliances and proposing alternatives to the “dominant model,” for example, at the upcoming meeting of the Group of 20 wealthy and emerging nations, Nov. 11-12 in Seoul, said Forero.

For Giesen, sooner or later “the movement for climate justice will converge in the countries of the developing South with other citizen groups to influence public policies, and will emerge as political actors at the national level.”

The Chilean activist believes that transformations at the national level, not in the international arena, “are the only real possibility for the convergence of civil society and government positions” on climate change.

* Emilio Godoy (Mexico) and Franz Chávez (La Paz) contributed reporting. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 17 2010 (IPS)

Chile is celebrating 200 years of independence as one of the Latin American countries with the lowest proportion of poor people, but also one of the most unequal.

Government palace lit up for bicentennial celebrations. Credit: Alex Ibáñez /Office of the Chilean president

Saturday Sept. 18 marks the bicentennial of the formation of the First National Government Junta and the beginning of the struggle for independence from Spain, achieved eight years later. The main official commemoration festivities are taking place Friday through Sunday.

Between 1990 and 2006, poverty fell from nearly 40 percent to 13.7 percent of the population, under successive governments of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación), which ruled the country from 1990 to March 2010. In 2009 it increased slightly to 15.1 percent, mainly due to the international economic crisis.

But income distribution did not do as well. According to this year’s Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 10 of the 15 most unequal countries in the world are in Latin America.

Bolivia has the highest inequality in the region, followed by Haiti, Brazil, Ecuador, and Chile, which is tied in fifth place with Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay.

According to the government’s National Socio-Economic Survey (CASEN) for 2009, the poorest 10 percent of households in this country of 17 million people receives 1.5 percent of the national income, while the richest 10 percent gets 39.2 percent.

Although state cash transfers, arising from the social policies implemented in the last 20 years, improve the figures somewhat when income is measured per person, the situation remains unacceptable for a country aiming to attain developed status by 2020, experts and authorities say.

But Alberto Mayol, a sociologist and political scientist at the state University of Chile’s Social Structure Research Centre, said income distribution is only one of the signs of inequality in the country. Educational, health care, cultural, territorial, ethnic and gender inequalities are also of concern, he stressed.

Weaknesses in the social protection system mean that families that manage to escape from poverty can all too easily fall back into it if, for instance, the head of household loses his or her job or a family member falls prey to a serious illness, requiring a large financial outlay.

González mentioned problems such as the “regressive tax system” based on consumer taxes which do not address the concentration of wealth, and the structure of production, “which creates too many poor-quality jobs, because it is based on exporting natural resources and a low-value service sector.”

Education has failed to deliver social mobility to the extent that was hoped, because of differences in the quality of education provided by public schools, state-subsidised private schools, and the fully independent private schools that achieve the best academic results.

“The Concertación’s targeted policies (focused on the poor) just divide the population into two or three bands and are very inefficient in the long term,” Mayol told IPS. In his view, equality should start with the state providing a free “universal supply” of high quality goods and services.

According to Mayol, “a culture of targeted policies has taken hold in the country, to the point that even people on the left argue that it would be a bad mistake to give money to rich people.”

“If this misguided view is taken, it follows that there should be no free universities, for example, but this is absurd, since public universities are by definition free,” he said.

“This is the first thing that has to be understood in a society that aspires to equality,” he added.

A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of the world’s most industrialised economies that Chile joined this year, indicates that, on average, Chilean families contribute 83.9 percent of the cost of their children’s higher education, with the state paying for the rest.

The proportion paid by parents is the highest among the 36 countries studied. In Finland, families contribute only 4.5 percent of the cost of tertiary education.

Mayol said one of the most worrying problems today is the cultural process tending towards the creation of a rigid “caste system,” that is, “the upper strata of society are taking on the character of a caste, which must not be ‘contaminated’ by the lower classes.” This has the effect of “creating exclusive neighbourhoods and ghettoes, to keep them apart.”

González, who holds a doctorate in social sciences, concurred. “A society as fragmented by inequality as Chile’s is a society doomed to continue spending increasing amounts on the police force, on alarms, on gated communities where people are trapped by fear, and in which public spaces are deserted.”

Social stratification remains entrenched in Chile because citizens have become depoliticised, according to Mayol, while González said lower-income sectors have very little influence and bargaining power vis-à-vis employers. These factors tend to legitimise the status quo and prevent structural change.

That is why Mayol called for “taking power away from the élites” and giving it to civil society organisations instead.

This dimension is being addressed by the campaign “Ciudadanía Bicentenario: para crear más democracia” (Bicentennial Citizenship: Creating More Democracy), launched Sept. 9 by the Chilean Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (ACCIÓN), which will use a variety of media to celebrate the collective social advances made in the 20th century.

“Inequality has many faces, but it all stems from the structure of work,” Martín Pascual, the head of ACCION, told IPS. “In this we are in agreement with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

“When you compare remuneration levels in the country, like returns on capital and wages for labour, and you see the daily struggle to maintain decent working conditions and to ensure our rights are not violated, you realise how far we still have to go,” he said.

In Mayol’s opinion, “since there are ‘no politics’ in Chile, social dissatisfaction has no outlet except through its somatisation as disorders like mental illnesses in individuals themselves.

“The system’s analgesic (pain-killing) remedies,” such as letting people fall into debt, are aimed at keeping conflicts from flaring up, Mayol said.

González, on the other hand, described Chile as “imploding,” that is, turning its rage inwards, which makes it difficult to predict the outcomes of the numerous fragmented conflicts that exist today, he concluded.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 14 2010 (IPS)

A level of enthusiasm seldom expressed at United Nations appointments welcomed the naming of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet as the first head of UN Women, the new agency created to raise the profile of gender and women’s issues.

Michelle Bachelet Credit: Courtesy of Alex Ibáñez/Chilean president's office

UN Women — whose longer name is the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women — was created on Jul. 2 by the General Assembly and will begin its work on Jan. 1, 2011.

“Bachelet’s designation was a cherished hope of the entire Latin American women’s movement,” Teresa Valdés, the coordinator of the Gender and Equity Observatory of Chile, told IPS.

In his announcement Tuesday in New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “Ms. Bachelet brings to this critical position a history of dynamic global leadership, highly honed political skills and uncommon ability to create consensus and focus among UN agencies and many partners in both the public and private sector.

“I am confident that under her strong leadership, we can improve the lives of millions of women and girls throughout the world,” he added.

A rumour had been going around in the past few weeks that Bachelet had declined the offer.

“I gave it a lot of thought,” Bachelet said Tuesday in Santiago. “But I accepted because I understood that this task is along the same lines of what my personal history has always been: working for equality, in this case gender equality, for the rights of persons, for social protection, and fighting violence and discrimination.”

AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organisation that works to promote more urgent and effective global responses to HIV/AIDS, applauded the appointment of Bachelet, describing her as “an eminently qualified, effective and respected leader” who has “an unimpeachable record of feminist advocacy in support of women’s rights and social justice”.

But in a statement signed by Paula Donovan, the organisation had harsh words for the selection process led by Ban, saying “Bachelet’s appointment is a rarity at the UN: an excellent outcome emanating from a fundamentally corrupt selection process.”

In response to a question from IPS, Ban said the selection process “has been very transparent, and very objective, and fair.”

The process began as soon as the General Assembly approved the creation of UN Women, and was opened up to nominations by the member states and civil society, he said.

From a list of “26 distinguished candidates from all around the world,” a selection panel chose three finalists, who “I interviewed personally last week,” Ban explained.

But in the view of AIDS-Free World, “the search for a strong under secretary-general to lead UN Women was cloaked in furtive secrecy, marred by backroom wheeling and dealing and thoroughly dishonest in its claims of being a ‘fair, open and transparent’ process with the meaningful involvement of civil society.”

Asked by IPS about what he expected Bachelet to accomplish in the medium term, Ban responded that he hoped that under her leadership, UN Women would meet “the expectation of so many millions and millions of women and girls around the world.

“We have a little more than three and a half months,” he said. “I will discuss this Sunday, when I appoint her formally, how we can make the process very speedy, so that we can appoint and recruit staff, and we have to have our agendas. Basically we have all these structures in place. Now it is a matter of how we can speedily implement these structures and policy and visions.”

The new agency will consolidate four separate entities: the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), and the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI).

UN Women will have a minimum budget of 500 million dollars — twice the budget of all four former organisations combined. But civil society organisations say one of Bachelet’s first tasks is to double that amount.

The appointment of Bachelet indicates that “the new agency has been given the highest possible stature” and “it crowns a political decision that equality must be a central focus; that development is not possible without women,” said Valdés, the editor of the book “¿Género en el Poder? El Chile de Michelle Bachelet” (Gender in Power? Michelle Bachelet’s Chile), presented Jul. 9.

Her leadership “will help strengthen concern for gender issues in the UN system, because she is closely associated with this issue at the international level,” political scientist María de los Ángeles Fernández, who is also writing a book on the former president, told IPS.

“Michelle Bachelet is a top notch choice and has long been one of GEAR’s dream candidates,” said U.S. activist Charlotte Bunch, a founding member of the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign launched by 300 organisations dedicated to promote the creation of a more powerful women’s agency.

“An effective leader of great integrity, Bachelet has demonstrated strong commitment to women’s empowerment and the ability to shape gender equality policies in a variety of areas. She also has the stature to mobilise the resources crucial to make UN Women a success,” said Brunch, the founder of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The legacy left by the government of Bachelet — who was herself arrested, tortured and exiled by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet — includes both concrete and highly symbolic achievements, analysts say.

Besides naming the first cabinet with gender parity in the Western hemisphere, she gave visibility in her speeches to the gender inequality that persists in Chile.

Her accomplishments include the 2008 reform of the pension system, which introduced a basic pension for poor homemakers who have never earned a wage outside the home, as well as a stipend per child for all mothers.

Another flagship programme of her administration, which has been replicated in other countries in the region, is the Integral Protection System for Early Childhood “Chile Crece Contigo” (Chile Grows with You), which provides support for parents and children from conception through age four.

Other major gains for women under her government include the large number of free day care centres and nursery schools established throughout the country, which have given women more freedom to enter the labour market, and a law aimed at bridging the gender wage gap, which also grants labour benefits to domestic workers.

Bachelet’s naming as head of UN Women “is a promising step because it entails recognition of the importance of a woman who set a precedent in Chile,” activist Adriana Gómez, with the Articulación Feminista Por la Libertad de Decidir (Feminist Network for the Right to Choose), told IPS.

“But it is also an opportunity for her to acknowledge the ‘debts and omissions’ of her administration,” she added.

Gómez cited, for example, the failure to push through a broad law on sexual and reproductive rights and a law on the decriminalisation of therapeutic abortion, which refers to the termination of a pregnancy when the mother’s life is at risk, the foetus is deformed, or the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape.

Despite the fact that under Bachelet, the poverty rate grew slightly in Chile for the first time since 1990, due mainly to the global economic crisis, and in spite of the institutional negligence and shortcomings revealed by the severe February earthquake, she is still the most popular political leader in the country, according to opinion polls.

Although she has stated that running for reelection in 2014 is not in her plans, the hopes of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed Chile between 1990 and March this year, to return to power at that time are pinned on her more than on any other leader.

She was even chosen as the best president in the history of Chile in a recent survey.

By accepting the UN appointment, “she is closing the door to the possibility of an immediate return to the political arena, despite the high expectations resting on her shoulders, as the Coalition’s most respected political figure,” Fernández said.

The former president summed up her decision: “It looked like a wonderful task that I could not turn down.”

* With additional reporting by Aprille Muscara at the United Nations.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 13 2010 (IPS)

Eleven members of the Chilean armed forces and three Uruguayan military officers were found guilty of the kidnap-murder of Chilean biochemist Eugenio Berríos, an intelligence agent of the 1973-1990 regime of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Berríos was secretly taken to Uruguay in 1991, hidden or kidnapped for more than a year, and then killed. The 14 military men were sentenced Friday on charges of illicit association, kidnapping and homicide. The three retired Uruguayan officers have appealed the verdict.

“This is without a doubt a historic ruling, because in one way or another it closes a chapter in Chile’s transition to democracy,” journalist Jorge Molina Sanhueza, author of the 2002 book “Crimen Imperfecto. Historia del químico DINA Eugenio Berríos y la muerte de Eduardo Frei Montalva” (Imperfect Crime: The Story of DINA Chemist Eugenio Berríos and the Death of Eduardo Frei Montalva), told IPS.

“All the different aspects of an era come together somehow in the Berríos case,” he said. “It’s as if we had wanted to speak of a case par excellence of all of the military dictatorship’s power in the shadows.”

“It entails all aspects: identity theft, clandestine payments, homicide, cover-ups, protection networks,” he added.

Berríos was involved in research on lethal biochemical weapons like sarin nerve gas in the dictatorship’s secret police, the DINA.

The verdict handed down by Judge Alejandro Madrid found that Berríos was kidnapped and killed by active duty members of the Chilean and Uruguayan armed forces in one of the last episodes of Operation Condor.

Operation Condor was a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents, with the tacit approval of the United States.

The unique thing about the murder of Berríos was that it was committed after both Uruguay and Chile had returned to democracy, and while Pinochet — who died in 2006 — was still army chief.

Madrid’s ruling states that the 14 defendants “strayed from their duties, forming an organisation parallel to the regular structure.”

With access to funds, the ruling says, the Chilean defendants established “ties with foreign military personnel, who they invited to join the criminal organisation, and who in some cases were directly involved and in others collaborated in carrying out crimes.”

The stiffest penalty, 10 years, went to retired Chilean army Maj. Arturo Silva, who was found guilty of kidnapping and homicide. He was also sentenced to three years for illicit association, to be served consecutively.

The other Chilean defendants, who included retired officers of different ranks as well as noncommissioned officers, received sentences ranging from probation to five years in prison.

The three retired Uruguayan officers, who were extradited to Chile in 2006, received sentences ranging from three to five years.

Five other defendants were acquitted by Judge Madrid, who was assigned police protection in July 2009 after receiving spooky phone calls and noticing strangers watching his home.

In 1991, a year after Chile returned to democracy, Berríos was snuck out of Chile to Argentina and eventually Uruguay, where he was guarded by members of the Uruguayan and Chilean armed forces.

The aim of the military intelligence operation was to keep Berríos from testifying in the trial for the assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed by a car bomb in 1976 in Washington, D.C. Letelier was foreign minister for leftwing president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), who Pinochet overthrew in the coup.

The last time Berríos was seen alive was on Nov. 15, 1992, when he appeared, dishevelled and agitated, in the police station of Parque del Plata, a small resort town near the capital of Uruguay, to report that he had been kidnapped.

But he was turned over to the men he denounced as his kidnappers, two of the Uruguayan officers who were sentenced on Friday.

Berríos’s body was found in January 1995, with two bullet holes to the head. He had been buried on a beach in El Pinar, the resort town next to Parque del Plata. The forensic experts determined that the murder had been committed in late 1992 or the first few months of 1993.

The biochemist’s murder is also linked to the death of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970). He died in early 1982 despite doctors’ efforts to fight an unidentified bacteria that caused a mysterious generalised infection after routine surgery.

Judge Madrid is also investigating the case involving Frei Montalva’s death.

The ruling in the Berríos case will have an impact on the Frei Montalva case “if the courts (the appeal court and the Supreme Court) uphold Judge (Madrid’s) verdict,” said Molina Sanhueza, who works today for El Mostrador, an on-line publication.

“Thanks to Berríos, Judge Madrid discovered (the army’s) bacteriological warfare laboratory, which was preparing the poisons that are presumed to have been used against Frei; Frei’s autopsy report was found; and the case of the ‘miristas’ (members of the left-wing Revolutionary Left Movement – MIR), who were poisoned in prison in 1981, came to light.”

“It’s positive that the defendants were convicted, since it is the only way to make reparations for the damages caused not only to the family, who I represent, but also to Chilean society as a whole,” the Berríos family’s lawyer, Thomas Ehrenfeld, told the Cooperativa radio station.

“Despite the time that has gone by, we welcome the verdict because it indicates that the Chilean justice system is not applying the statute of limitations in cases of human rights violations,” Leonardo Aravena, a lawyer with the Chilean chapter of rights watchdog Amnesty International, commented to IPS.

The defendants were also ordered to pay millions of dollars in reparations to the plaintiffs.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 8 2010 (IPS)

The Chilean government is pushing through legal reforms in an attempt to bring to an end a nearly two month hunger strike by 34 Mapuche indigenous prisoners. But it is failing to address two critical aspects of the conflict: the lack of effective dialogue and a failure to recognise it as a political problem.

“The Mapuche people’s demands don’t only have to do with the Mapuche. It’s a problem of Chilean society as a whole,” José Araya, coordinator of the Citizenship and Intercultural Programme of the Observatorio Ciudadano (Citizen Observatory, a local NGO), told IPS.

A group of Mapuche inmates who describe themselves as political prisoners declared a hunger strike on Jul. 12. They were gradually joined by others, to reach a total of 34 fasters, held in different prisons in southern Chile.

The hunger strikers, who are in prison on charges of terrorist arson, attempted homicide, bodily injury, invasion of property, threats and illicit association, were tried under the country’s controversial counter-terrorism law which limits the rights of defendants.

After being virtually ignored by government officials and the media, the Mapuche protesters became a source of concern due to the international impact of their hunger strike and the possibility that the death of one of the fasters could tarnish the national celebrations of Chile’s 200th anniversary of independence from Spain, on Sept. 18 and 19.

To try to solve the conflict, rightwing President Sebastián Piñera sent Congress a bill on Tuesday to reform the military justice system. And on Thursday he plans to introduce a bill that would overhaul the counter-terrorism law, which was issued in 1984 by the dictatorship of late Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and was only partially reformed after the return to democracy.

The first bill would keep civilians from being tried by the military courts, one of the foremost demands of the hunger strikers and an unfulfilled obligation of the Chilean state, which was ordered by a 2005 Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling.

The second bill would remove some of the offences of which the hunger strikers are accused from the category of “terrorism”, and would reduce the stiff penalties outlined by the anti-terrorism law.

The law allows secret judicial investigations, lets witnesses conceal their identity while testifying, and provides for longer periods of arrest on remand and extremely heavy sentences.

According to Araya, the legal reforms that the government is proposing are “overdue responsibilities of the state” that have been called for by numerous international human rights bodies, and which would benefit society as a whole.

But the Mapuche hunger strikers, who are now in a critical state of health, say they will continue the protest until their cases are removed from the sphere of the counter-terrorism law and until the government agrees to engage in talks and to set up a body that would monitor compliance with the agreements reached.

“Revocation of the anti-terrorism law is the only way to move towards a basic dialogue that would allow this to be dealt with as a political, not legal, problem,” Igor Goicovic, a professor of history at the University of Santiago, told IPS.

Goicovic was one of the drafters of a declaration in support of the Mapuche people, which was signed by 180 historians from Chile and abroad.

“We are saying that this is a political conflict” that dates back far before the current situation of the Mapuche prisoners, the professor said. “It is over four centuries old, and cannot be resolved by the ‘criminalisation’ of the Mapuche protests by means of anti-terrorist legislation.”

Even legislators of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy have deplored the lack of talks between the government and the Mapuche people, despite the fact that the Coalition governed the country from 1990 until March this year and itself applied the counter-terrorism law against indigenous protesters.

Piñera himself, on Tuesday, and other members of his government have called on the Mapuche inmates to call off their hunger strike, and said the reforms they are demanding would be treated with urgency in Congress. But they are evading direct talks with the fasters, using churches and other actors as mediators instead.

The line of argument followed by the democratic governments that have ruled Chile since 1990 is that violent groups represent a small minority within the one-million strong Mapuche community, and that the main problem involving the country’s largest indigenous group is reducing the high poverty levels that they face.

In the late 19th century, Mapuche lands in southern Chile were wrested from them by force by the state. A century later, in the early 1990s, Mapuche communities and organisations began to lay claim to their ancestral territories through a strategy of occupying private lands they regard as their own, which are often in the hands of lumber companies, and protesting logging and mining initiatives and garbage dumps with serious environmental impacts installed near their communities.

The Mapuche also consider insufficient the 667,457 hectares of land restored to them by government since 1994.

Some indigenous organisations are also demanding respect for political and cultural rights, and have put forth proposals that would give them a certain level of autonomy.

Three Mapuche protesters have died at the hands of the police during land occupations. Two of the deaths occurred during the administration of former president Michelle Bachelet, Piñera’s predecessor, whose term began in 2006.

Alfredo Seguel, with the Mapuche Working Group on Collective Rights, told IPS that the government had wasted an opportunity to reach an understanding with the indigenous group, when the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples was ratified by Chile on Sept. 15, 2008.

On Sept. 1, the government presented the first overview of compliance with that international convention which is aimed, precisely, at ushering in an ongoing process of dialogue between aboriginal peoples and states.

Civil society organisations issued at least three alternative documents parallel to the government’s report. One of the main questions raised by the NGOs was how indigenous communities are consulted on issues that affect them.

In September 2009, the Bachelet administration issued a decree to provisionally regulate the consultation procedure, and the government of Piñera is currently carrying out a new public input process to finetune the regulations, the overview of compliance with Convention 169 reports.

“The Chilean state knows that behind recognition of the problem as a political one lies a bigger problem: the neoliberal economic model, which it does not want to substantially modify because it believes it is the right route to development for the country,” said the Observatorio Ciudadano’s Araya.

Restoring ancestral lands to indigenous groups “would mean engaging in a process of conflicts with large Chilean logging companies,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 8 2010 (IPS)

Latin American activists who want to call attention to mining developments located in border areas will gather in Chile to “pass judgement” on projects they regard as detrimental to local communities, the environment and national security.

Gold mining in the Condor mountains Credit: Peruvian government

OLCA is one of the organisers of the first ethics tribunal against border mining, to be convened Sept. 30 in the Chilean capital. Projects on the borders between Argentina and Chile, Ecuador and Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, El Salvador and Guatemala, Mexico and Guatemala, and Costa Rica and Nicaragua will be examined.

A typical example is the case of Argentina and Chile, which signed a mining integration and complementarity treaty in 1997. So far a bilateral commission has licensed five projects to operate in the glacier-rich Andes mountain range that forms the border between the two countries.

Foremost among them is the controversial Pascua Lama mine, belonging to Canada’s Barrick Gold, in the northern Chilean region of Atacama and the northwestern Argentine province of San Juan. Others include El Pachón, Las Flechas, Vicuña and Amos-Andrés, all owned by foreign capital; and the Cerro Cuadrado project in Patagonia, of the Canadian Desarrollo de Prospectos Mineros company, is in the planning stage.

All these projects face opposition from local communities and environmentalists.

According to Cuenca, the environmental, social and political effects of these mining projects, which are mainly in the hands of transnational corporations, constitute a “new reality” that needs to be made visible, since it is not being dealt with by “institutions that should protect human rights, whether bilateral or international.”

Activists are also critical of the whole-hearted support given to the mines by the governments of the countries involved. OLCA, for instance, has found similarities between the Chilean-Argentine mining treaty and some IIRSA (Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America) project documents.

The panel of judges will be made up of Latin American personalities, and verdicts will be delivered on three levels: states, mining companies and countries of origin of the companies.

In the Cóndor mountain range

In northern Peru, along the border with Ecuador, mining concessions since February 2005 nearly tripled by June 2010. There are two emblematic examples: the Afrodita mining company owned by Canadian capital, and Río Blanco, belonging to China’s Zijin company.

Afrodita has a goldmining concession in the Cóndor mountain range in the Peruvian province of Amazonas, home to the native Awajún people and widely known as the site of the brief 1995 border war between Peru and Ecuador. Río Blanco is a projected copper mine in Piura province, an area of small farms.

Both projects are at the exploration stage, and are unwanted by the majority of indigenous and small farmer communities, who fear the mines will pollute their rivers and forests. A similar situation holds in the southern provinces of Puno and Tacna, which border on Bolivia and Chile, respectively.

José de Echave of CooperAcción, a Peruvian NGO working for development in mining and coastal areas, told IPS: “The government has no policy that considers the safety risks and possible harm to the environment before granting concessions in border areas. It all just seems to be improvised.”

Peru’s constitution bans the granting of concessions to foreign capital within 50 kilometres of the border, unless a government decree is approved declaring the enterprise to be of national interest. Between 2002 and 2009, 23 such decrees were issued.

Magdiel Carrión, a small farmers’ leader in Piura and head of the National Confederation of Peruvian Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI), opposes Zijin’s project because of its possible effects on the high plateaus and the Blanco river, which gives rise to two other rivers on the border with Ecuador.

According to Carrión, mining projects generate division and violence between those who are in favour and those against. “I hope that at the ethics tribunal in Chile, what these companies are doing will come out into the open, and that they will be punished in some form,” he said.

The Pantanal wetlands

In Bolivia, there is concern over the Mutún iron ore mining project, worked by India’s Jindal Steel company, in the eastern province of Santa Cruz which borders on Brazil.

According to Patricia Molina of the Bolivian Forum on Environment and Development, the Mutún mine would strengthen a steel making centre in the area around Corumbá, in the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, overriding Bolivian interest in access to the iron ore and finished goods derived from it.

Because iron ore processing demands enormous volumes of water, a huge environmental impact will immediately be perceived in the Bolivian sector of the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands, which have a regulatory effect on climate, Molina told IPS.

Four years after a contract was signed between Jindal Steel and the Bolivian government, there has been little activity on the project, but some indigenous communities have already been forbidden to use natural lakes as a water source, he said.

Central America and Mexico

The Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) asked the Guatemalan state May 20 to suspend gold and silver extraction at the Marlin mine, located in the southwestern province of San Marcos on the border with Mexico, as a precautionary measure to protect 18 indigenous communities.

However, the Montana Exploradora company, a subsidiary of Canada’s GoldCorp that has been accused of polluting several river basins, continues to operate the mine because of administrative delays in the suspension procedure.

Meanwhile Entre Mares, another GoldCorp subsidiary, is in charge of the Cerro Blanco mine in the southeastern province of Jutiapa, bordering El Salvador, which faces opposition by Salvadoran and Guatemalan social organisations.

“There is a risk of a binational political conflict, because El Salvador can legally argue that the human rights of its citizens are being violated,” due to alleged pollution of the Lempa river and Lake Güija, both of which are shared between the two countries and are water sources for the Salvadoran population, Rafael Maldonado of the Guatemalan Centre for Legal, Environmental and Social Action (CALAS) told IPS.

Natalia Atz of Asociación Ceiba, a Guatemalan social organisation, told IPS that holding mining companies accountable in an ethics tribunal is a great opportunity to show the serious harm the industry is inflicting on Latin American communities.

Ana María Alvarado, a leader with the Observatory on Mining Conflicts in Latin America (OCMAL), told IPS that she will present a case at the ethics tribunal in Santiago against Canadian company Blackfire Exploration, which mines barium oxide in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.

In November, Mariano Abarca, a leader of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) and a known opponent of Blackfire, was murdered. The mine has been closed since December.

A delegation of Canadian NGOs visited Chiapas this year, and found environmental damages, corruption and human rights violations had been committed by the mining company.

* With additional reporting by Milagros Salazar (Lima), Franz Chávez (La Paz), Danilo Valladares (Guatemala City) and Emilio Godoy (Mexico City).

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 3 2010 (IPS)

Exports from Latin America and the Caribbean will grow again this year, driven largely by demand from China. But the high proportion of commodities may increase dependency on China, and Asia as a region, warns a new report by ECLAC, the regional United Nations agency.

“Clearly, trade relations between the region and China could give rise to centre-periphery dynamics. We supply it with raw materials, with little added value, and it sends back manufactured goods,” Claudia Casal, a researcher at the non-governmental National Centre for Alternative Development Studies (CENDA) in Chile, told IPS.

Casal was one of the authors of the study “Las relaciones económicas y geopolíticas entre China y América Latina. ¿Alianza estratégica o interdependencia asimétrica?” (Economic and geopolitical relations between China and Latin America: Strategic alliance or asymmetric interdependence?), published in 2009 by the Latin American Network of Research on Multinational Corporations (RedLat), which is made up of labour research institutions and trade unions in seven countries in the region.

This specific issue was examined by the latest report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) about the region’s international insertion, presented Thursday at the agency’s Santiago headquarters.

“Trade relations between the region and Asia offer opportunities as well as challenges,” says the 216-page document.

Among the challenges, it says, it is particularly important to prevent the increasing trade between the two regions from reproducing and reinforcing a centre-periphery pattern of trade in which Asia (and particularly China) would be the new centre, with the countries of the region as the new periphery.

The ECLAC report, “Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2009-2010: A crisis generated in the centre and a recovery driven by the emerging economies,” forecasts 21.4 percent growth in exports in the region this year, mainly driven by exports of commodities from South America.

Making up for the fall of 22.6 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year, the rise in exports will be fuelled by demand in Asia, and particularly China, the study says.

The growth rate of exports from the region to China went from a decline of 2.2 percent in the first six months of 2009, compared to the same period the previous year, to 44.8 percent in the first six months of 2010.

According to ECLAC, China could displace the European Union as the region’s second biggest trading partner by the middle of this decade.

The Asian giant is already the top purchaser of exports from Brazil and Chile, the second for Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba and Peru, and the third for Venezuela.

In 2008, China was the second largest source of imports for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Cuba, and the third source for Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico and Venezuela.

However, looking at exports over the last decade, ECLAC found that Latin America “has reverted to an export structure based on prime materials, similar to that of 20 years ago.”

While in 1999, commodities made up 26.7 percent of total exports, in 2009 they were 38.8 percent of the total.

Due to high international commodity prices, South America doubled the value of its exports, which were mainly natural resources. In contrast, exports from Mexico and Central America fell in value by over 50 percent.

Mexico’s share of the region’s total exports fell from 40 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2009, while Brazil’s rose from 13 percent to nearly 20 percent over the same period.

“The region has been unable to improve the quality of its international insertion and the expansion of natural resource-related sectors does not seem to have contributed sufficiently to the creation of new technological capacities,” states the report.

ECLAC’s executive secretary, Alicia Bárcena, stressed that the region needs to strengthen three things, “diversification, innovation and cooperation.”

The RedLat study in which Casal took part also points out that nowadays, “Chinese-Latin American relations are asymmetrical, defined by China’s needs and reinforced by the limited export structure of countries” in the region.

“An unequal economic relationship is taking shape — although it takes different forms in different countries — that could lead to a further limiting of the maneuvering room of Latin American countries,” says the study, carried out with contributions from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.

According to ECLAC, governments in Latin America should help bolster the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises, improve workers’ skills, develop chains to link export sectors with the rest of the economy, and make the most of advances in areas like biotechnology, among others.

ECLAC also recommended the development of joint efforts to forge closer ties with China and the Asia-Pacific region. One example is the Latin America Pacific Arc initiative, made up of Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

According to ECLAC projections, exports from the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, will grow this year by 23.4 percent compared to 2009, and those of the Andean countries by 29.5 percent. However, those of the Central American Common Market will only increase by 10.8 percent, they predicted.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 30 2010 (IPS)

While efforts get underway to try to rescue the 33 miners who are trapped 700 metres underground in a mine in northern Chile, trade unions are calling on the country’s political leaders to tackle the underlying problems of worker safety.

“We applauded the government when it was focusing on finding our companions,” Néstor Jorquera, president of the CONFEMIN miners union, told IPS. “We sat tight, because we needed to know what their situation was. But now we know that thankfully they are alive, it’s time to say ‘enough!’ to so many abuses.”

CONFEMIN represents more than 18,000 miners who work at small, medium-size and large privately-owned mines in Chile, the world’s leading producer of copper.

On Aug. 5, 32 Chilean miners and one Bolivian were trapped in the San José copper and gold mine in the northern region of Atacama, after an explosion. San Esteban, the Chilean company that owns the mine, says it is on the verge of bankruptcy and that it may not be able to pay the miners their wages while they remain underground.

After repeatedly drilling in an attempt to reach the emergency shelter where the men were presumed to be, hammering sounds from below were finally heard after the eighth attempt, and on the 17th day after the tunnel collapse, a probe that was sent down brought back notes from the miners saying all 33 had survived.

But the different strategies being followed by the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera could take two to four months to rescue the miners.

Jorquera said the ratification of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 176 on safety and health in mines would be the best way for the country’s political leaders to show that the interest expressed these days in improving labour conditions in mines is real.

The Convention, which has been ratified by just 24 countries — in Latin America, only Brazil and Peru have done so — was adopted in 1995 and went into effect in 1998. It requires signatory states to legislate on safety in mines and to enforce regulations of the kind that were flouted in the San José mine, such as the requirement of two different escape routes.

“If a worker is in a mine where proper safety conditions are not in place, under the Convention he can automatically report the situation and stop working, and he would be protected,” Jorquera said. “But if you were to do that now in any mine (in Chile), you would be fired.”

However, ratification of the Convention has not been mentioned so far as part of the package of initiatives announced by Piñera in response to the mining accident that has riveted the world’s attention, and which is under investigation.

On Aug. 23, the president established a commission on work safety, made up of eight experts who will study the country’s labour safety and health regulations over the next three months.

Other measures, reported on Aug. 27, are the creation of a new mining superintendency to oversee mining permits and safety standards, the restructuring of the National Geology and Mining Service, an increase in funding for oversight, and the establishment of a nine-member expert advisory committee to review the country’s mine safety regulations.

But the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Chile’s largest labour federation, and the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed Chile from 1990 to last March, decried the absence of labour and social leaders on the committees.

Besides the ratification of Convention 176, Jorquera called for attention to be focused on what he described as Chile’s weak labour laws, which he said undermine trade unions, weaken strikes and allow a situation in which subcontracted workers do not enjoy the same benefits as permanent employees.

“What is happening now is the consequence of our weak legislation,” he said. “I don’t blame this government. The problem is a long-standing one. There is no will to really change things,” not only for miners, he argued.

“Chiefly responsible for this accident were the lack of conscience on the part of the business community” and the state’s failure to curb the abuses against workers’ rights, the trade unionist said.

In the case of the San José mine, several workers have been killed in the last few years, and it has been shut down more than once for flagrant safety violations. Just a few weeks before the tunnel collapse, a miner lost a leg when he was trapped by fallen rock. However, the company was allowed to reopen after each incident.

In 2009, a total of 191,685 workplace accidents, including 443 deaths, occurred in this country of 17 million people. And 155 workers died in accidents in the first quarter of this year alone.

“Our laws and regulations are relatively stringent and strict, although there is room for improvement. The real problem lies elsewhere,” Carmen Espinoza, head of the non-governmental Labour Economy Programme (PET), told IPS.

The critical issue, in her view, “is the lack of a culture of prevention among businesses, principally, and among workers as well, who for logical reasons pay greater attention to keeping their jobs than to work safety.”

To that is added poor enforcement and oversight, she added.

“In terms of workplace safety, we are far from seeing a return to the active role that trade unions played in the past,” because of a lack of information, training and strength, Espinoza said.

“We believe that an increase in labour organisation would help strengthen safety regulations, above and beyond the penalties that companies might face,” CUT national adviser Marco Canales told IPS.

“Because they don’t have legal protection or because there is no union, the members of safety committees within companies often end up being laid off when they report irregularities,” he said. “We believe this government is not including these issues in its discussions” on the question of workplace safety, he added.

In 2009, just 12.5 percent of the workforce in Chile was unionised, according to official statistics, far below the average of the industrialised countries grouped in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which Chile joined this year.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 27 2010 (IPS)

Controversial plans to build the Barrancones thermoelectric plant near a protected area in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo were cancelled Friday, but not before reviving the debate on other projects for polluting coal-fired power stations.

“Now Barrancones is being talked about as if it were the only project of its kind,” Lorenzo Núñez, head of the Mother Earth Defence Committee (CODEMAT) in Tarapacá region, over 1,700 kilometres north of Santiago, told IPS.

For years CODEMAT has opposed the construction of two coal-fired thermoelectric plants close to the Chanavayita fishing cove, 54 kilometres south of Iquique, the capital of Tarapacá.

They are the Pacífico plant, a project of the Chilean company Río Seco, and the Patache project belonging to Compañía Eléctrica Tarapacá, which is controlled by Endesa, a Spanish energy giant.

CODEMAT, made up of groups of local residents and social organisations, organised a National Meeting of Social Movements Against Coal-Burning Thermoelectric Plants, running Thursday to Saturday Aug. 26-28 in Iquique.

Other such plants that are being called into question include Castilla, owned by MPX Energía de Chile which is linked to Brazilian entrepreneur Eike Batista, and Endesa’s Punta Alcalde station, both located in the northern region of Atacama. Projected plants are also meeting with local resistance in the northern city of Arica and the southern city of Coronel.

Construction of the Campiche plant, belonging to AES Gener, a company backed by U.S. capital, in the municipality of Puchuncaví in the central region of Valparaíso was halted a year ago when legal action was brought by local citizens.

This month, an agreement was reached between the company and the municipal government for construction to continue, but the citizens’ organisations vow they will keep fighting the plant.

In other parts of the country ground is about to be broken for several more coal-fired plants, and a handful of others are in the process of being built.

The meeting in Iquique coincides with the debate raised by the Barrancones project, belonging to the Franco-Belgian GDF Suez company, which received the go-ahead from authorities in Coquimbo Wednesday Aug. 25.

Protests against the plant and political reactions from some sectors led rightwing President Sebastián Piñera to negotiate the relocation of the 540-megawatt power company, announced the next day.

Originally the plant site was to be only a few kilometres away from the Punta de Choros fishing cove and a national reserve for endangered Humboldt penguins, which are tourist areas.

But this Friday GDF Suez decided to cancel the project definitively.

However, local residents who would be affected by projected coal-fired plants all over the country are on the alert. They have not been reassured by Piñera’s promises of zoning and bans on locating polluting projects near protected areas.

Nor are they convinced by the president’s avowed intent to increase the share of non-conventional renewable energies (NCRE) from the current 3.4 percent of the energy mix, to 20 percent by 2020.

Chile’s total installed capacity is close to 13,000 megawatts, 31.8 percent of which is generated by hydroelectric power. If the projects in the pipeline are approved, the share of electricity generated from coal would rise from 17 percent to 30 percent in coming decades, according to official estimates.

Environmental organisations welcomed the president’s decision to relocate the Barrancones plant, calling it a “citizen’s victory,” but they said they would keep watching the company’s next moves.

Worryingly, there are moves to build another coal-fired power plant in the vicinity of Punta de Choros, where CAP, a Chilean company, is applying for permission from environmental authorities for its Cruz Grande project.

“We convened this national meeting because we believe that the struggle by individual coastal or urban communities is not enough. We need national coordination that is capable of tackling social, environmental, legal and political angles and of organising mass demonstrations,” said Núñez.

“Coal-burning thermal power stations are the cheapest, but they emit pollutants that seriously affect local people and wildlife, as well as greenhouse gases” responsible for global warming, Luis Cifuentes, a researcher at the Catholic University’s Environment Centre, told IPS.

However, ensuring the country’s electricity supply appears to take precedence.

In Cifuentes’ view, if the planned coal-fired plants are not built — in areas where they would have the least impact — then huge hydroelectric stations or nuclear power plants would be needed, options that are also criticised by environmentalists and public opinion. Neither gains in energy efficiency nor NCRE would be enough in the immediate term, he said.

“It’s true that NCRE cannot provide for mass energy needs right now, but that is because they have never been taken seriously,” Marcelo Mena, head of the Sustainability Research Centre at the private Andrés Bello University, told IPS. It will be difficult to prevent the advent of new coal-fired plants, he said.

Mena said that to prevent serious environmental consequences, a law setting caps on emissions from these plants, prepared by the previous government which ended its term of office in March, should be approved urgently.

The rise in electricity consumption is due to industrial demand, especially from copper mining in the north of Chile, the expert said.

“This demand is not being evaluated from a strategic point of view by the government. So far, economic criteria have prevailed, while the local and global environmental consequences of pollution have been left out of the debate,” Mena said.

“The fundamental question is: energy for whom? If we stopped supplying electricity to the mining companies, no doubt there’d be enough for the rest of the country,” complained Núñez, as he called for replacing coal with NCRE.

To develop renewable energies more rapidly, Mena proposed that Chile should manufacture the equipment needed for NCRE, such as wind turbines or solar panels, with a view to becoming the major producer of these items for the Southern Cone of South America.

On the positive side, most analysts believe the recent and ongoing reforms of Chile’s environmental institutions will in future help to minimise conflicts arising from energy and production projects and their negative impacts.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 26 2010 (IPS)

The poverty rate in the districts of southern Chile where the logging industry is the main economic activity is nearly twice the national average, a new study shows.

Logs ready for the pulp mill Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

According to Ramírez, the situation could flare up in either of two directions: “local social conflicts, or economic vulnerability,” because international customers for Chilean wood and paper pulp are becoming increasingly “sensitive to the environmental impact of the companies from which they purchase goods and services.”

The forestry industry, headed by Chilean firms Arauco and CMPC, is regarded as a spearhead of national development. Its main exports are cellulose, as well as paper and cardboard, board, veneers and lumber, and industry estimates put export earnings this year at around 4.6 billion dollars.

In the south of Chile, which has the highest poverty rates in the country, RIMISP compared four economic activities in municipalities in the Bíobío, Araucanía, Los Ríos and Los Lagos regions, more than 500 kilometres from the capital.

These four economic activities — forestry, livestock, salmon and rural tourism — were selected and studied by cross-referencing data from the 2009 CASEN socioeconomic survey published last month, the 2007 agricultural and livestock census, and information from the National Tourism Service.

On average, the 34 municipalities in Bíobío and Araucanía with the highest areas of forestry plantations had a poverty rate of 26 percent, nearly twice the national average of 15.1 percent.

Poverty in these areas where the logging industry is the main economic activity was also higher than in municipalities where tourism is predominant, which have a poverty rate of 21 percent; salmon farming areas, where it is 15 percent; and livestock districts, where it is 12 percent.

Between 2006 and 2009, poverty in the forestry municipalities fell barely 0.3 percent, according to RIMISP, compared to the 2.1 percent decline in the 13 livestock raising municipalities in Los Ríos and Los Lagos, which had the best results out of the four economic activities studied.

Furthermore, the study found that in the forestry areas, average monthly household income in November 2009 was equivalent to 214 dollars per person, compared to the salmon area earnings of 322 dollars per person, livestock sector incomes of 293 dollars per person and earnings of 239 dollars per person in rural tourism areas.

According to Ramírez, studies by RIMISP as well as the available literature point to two major issues: “the low degree of interaction of forestry companies with local communities, because they are basically extracting natural resources with very little added value; and the industry’s need to achieve economies of scale.

“The companies are buying up more and more land, displacing not only other economic activities but also the families that lived on that land,” he added.

In concert with other environmental and human rights organisations, Ramírez emphasised that this generates conflicts with communities of Mapuche indigenous people, the largest native group in the country, numbering nearly one million out of a total population of 16 million, who claim ownership of lands held by the logging companies.

On its web site, however, the Corporación Chilena de la Madera (CORMA), an industry association, claims that 85 percent of forestry sector export products have high added value. The United States, China and Japan are the largest markets.

CORMA declined to answer enquiries from IPS.

In Ramírez’s view, the results of the study “call for government policies that are more consistent with what is happening in the sector.” They also, he said, “call the industry itself into question, because it is unthinkable for it to continue operating like this. It must adopt a different strategy.”

For more than three decades, the industry has been receiving state forestation subsidies under a decree in force since 1974, which is due to expire in 2011. CORMA wants the decree extended, as it estimates that three million hectares are still available for forest plantations, but environmental and indigenous people’s organisations are opposed to an extension.

The government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera sent a bill to Congress Aug. 10 that seeks to extend the decree for two years and expand its benefits to include small producers and indigenous people, while a new Forestry Promotion Law is drafted.

“The CASEN survey shows that the four forestry regions have the highest poverty and extreme poverty rates in the country, which is because the companies pay very low wages,” Sergio Gatica, spokesman for the Consejo Nacional Forestal, a national confederation of forestry workers’ unions, told IPS.

Founded in 2007, the confederation representing close to 15,000 workers in the Maule, Bíobío, Araucanía and Los Ríos regions is demanding that forestry companies pay wages of around 495 dollars a month. At present they pay workers the minimum wage, 340 dollars a month.

“This is a highly profitable commodity export sector that brings large quantities of foreign exchange into the country. The problem is that many companies pay their subcontractors poorly,” complained Gatica, who is requesting meetings with lawmakers and the authorities to table proposals by organised labour.

“A large number of Chileans depend on the forestry industry. We’re talking about 130,000 direct employees and 300,000 indirect jobs, so we must all work together to make this a modern, just and equitable industry that develops in a sustainable way,” Gatica said.

Twenty percent of this South American country — 15.9 million hectares — is covered with forests. Native forests make up 85 percent of the total, while the other 15 percent is plantation forests, mainly non-native species like radiata pine and eucalyptus.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 23 2010 (IPS)

A bicentennial celebration for ordinary people, envisioned as the start of a process of social reflection, is being prepared by over 100 organisations and public personalities in Chile as a response to the official commemoration of the 200th anniversary of independence from Spain.

“The official activities are celebrating the history constructed by the élite, rather than contributing to a debate on the mistakes we have made as a country, and on what we still have to do,” José Osorio, a member of the Comité por un Bicentenario Ciudadano y Popular (Committee for a People’s Bicentennial), told IPS.

The Committee was convened in June by the Chilean Association of Heritage Neighbourhoods and Zones. So far, close to 80 social organisations and over 60 well-known personalities have joined it.

Among them are the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CEDEM), the Immigrants’ Association for Latin American and Caribbean Integration, the Heritage Committee of the College of Architects, the Communist Party’s Culture Commission, the Defend the City Foundation and the El Ciudadano newspaper.

Cultural centres, music ensembles, theatre companies, historians, university students’ federations and other groups have also joined.

Along with other Latin American countries, this South American nation of 17 million people is planning a number of official activities this year to celebrate the bicentennial of its independence from Spain. In Chile’s case, these will mainly take place Sept. 17-19.

“In the absence of calls from alternative perspectives attracting the general population and different social, cultural and political actors, the Chilean Association of Heritage Neighbourhoods and Zones issued a call to form a Committee to coordinate efforts for what we have called the People’s Bicentennial,” Osorio said.

The Committee’s agenda includes the bicentennial activities that each organisation is planning on its own, as well as jointly organised mass cultural events.

One of these will be a celebration of People’s Cultural Heritage Day on Sept. 4, with heritage routes planned in areas of Santiago and other places in the country.

A grand People’s Bicentennial Day of Commemoration will be held Sept. 19 in Barrio Yungay, a neighbourhood of the capital city.

In the space of eight blocks, Osorio explained, three stages will be built for a southern hemisphere Spring Festival, organised by university students. This will be the fourth Barrio Yungay neighbourhood festival, with theatre plays, dance, children’s activities and meetings for reflection and debate.

The organisers expect thousands of people to attend.

Plans are also under way for cueca dances (Chile’s beloved national dance), a concert and exhibition in memory of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, who was killed Sept. 16, 1973, five days after the coup that ushered in a military dictatorship lasting until 1990, and a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 seminar on “Workers’ Heritage”.

Popular events are also being organised in other Chilean cities, such as La Serena, Valparaíso, Chillán and Puerto Montt.

The authorities have undertaken several building works since 2000 to mark the bicentennial, such as the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre, renovation of the National Stadium and major infrastructure projects.

Rightwing President Sebastián Piñera, who took office Mar. 11, announced the building of a memorial for the victims of the Feb. 27 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, in the southern city of Concepción. He also said 50 secondary schools to serve as centres of excellence would be established throughout the country.

The schools project has been criticised by the high school teachers’ association, which argues that the so-called “bicentennial schools” will only deepen divisions and inequities within the education system, by emphasising their difference from other public schools.

A creative initiative organised by the Santiago city government is the 2010-2110 Bicentennial Time Capsule, which is to be filled with representative objects and buried in the central Plaza de Armas, with the participation of the public.

According to Osorio, though, none of the official activities “respond to the demands and expectations of the social world of ordinary people — workers, students and shantytown dwellers.

“In our view, the bicentennial in September should be a point of departure and not a finishing line, as will no doubt be the case at the official level,” he said.

Osorio recalled that the creation of the first national government junta on Sept. 18, 1810 was the beginning of the process of emancipation from the Spanish Empire, which culminated Feb. 12, 1818 when national hero Bernardo O’Higgins proclaimed Chile’s independence.

“We are beginning a process of dialogue, proposals, debates and artistic and cultural expressions. We intend to continue to carry out initiatives for the rest of the year, and on until 2018, because there is still much unfinished business,” he said.

The country has defaulted on its duty to consolidate democracy, with emphasis on citizen participation and social inclusion, Osorio said. Improving living and working conditions and ensuring access to quality education for all Chileans are also needed, he said.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 15 2010 (IPS)

The once booming salmon industry in Chile is trying to get back on its feet after the devastating health crisis that cut production in half. But its long-term viability has been called into question.

Workers at a Chilean salmon factory Credit: Courtesy of Fundación Terram

Chile is second in the world in farmed salmon, after Norway, and specialises in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), as well as rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch).

After introducing these exotic species in the 1980s, the industry here grew exponentially until mid-2007, when the infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) virus began to spread through the fish farms in the southern Chilean regions of Los Lagos, Aysén and Magallanes.

The virus forced producers to harvest the fish early and shut down operations in order to clear the waters. The fish farms hit bottom in January 2009.

According to industry estimates, in 2007 and 2008 Chile produced about 650,000 tonnes, while this year the yield is predicted to be between 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes. Of the 55,000 direct and indirect jobs in the sector during its best times, just 25,000 remain.

In 2009, revenues from Chile’s salmon exports reached 2.1 billion dollars, according to the National Customs Service. Nearly all the salmon produced in this country is exported.

“The situation is catastrophic — with former workers losing their homes, and no money to send their children to school or even to eat,” Javier Ugarte, president of the National Confederation of Salmon Workers, told Tierramérica.

According to data the National Fisheries Service provided to Tierramérica, in Los Lagos there are 283 fish farms in operation, 186 in Aysén, and 13 in Magallanes. The latest health report from the Service indicates that just eight farms are believed to currently have the ISA virus.

The response to the crisis was a reform of the 1991 Fishing and Aquaculture Law, which entered into force in April of this year to regulate — among other things — the permits, operation and duration of the concessions, momentarily putting the brakes on expansion of the industry in some regions.

“It is not an environmental protection law or one that benefits the workers. It’s a law to give viability to an industry in crisis, in order to support the salmon farm owners,” said the executive director of the environmental Terram Foundation, Flavia Liberona, who, nevertheless, admitted “some progress” for the environment and workers.

“In the long term, these reforms may generate better environmental and health conditions, because they provide more regulation and monitoring capacity. But how will it be implemented?” she wondered.

Environmentalists and artisanal fishers opposed the reform because it allows the salmon farms to mortgage their concessions in order to obtain bank credits. They warned that this means the “privatisation” of the sea, a national good that they argue is for public use.

The conservative government of President Sebastián Piñera, who took office Mar. 11, is working on the 15 regulations necessary to implement the law, according to José Miguel Burgos, head of the aquaculture division of the Fishing Subsecretariat.

For the last year, he said, “a plan for the rational use of antibiotics” has been under way, which includes the updating of records of these pharmaceuticals, monitoring the factories that incorporate them into fish food, and strengthening regulations.

One of the main criticisms of the industry has been its excessive and unregulated application of antibiotics.

“The density of salmon permitted per cage has been regulated,” and by the end of the year there will be rules “that establish appropriate safety standards for those structures,” added Burgos. The aim is to prevent a massive escape of the farmed fish, which otherwise could turn into predators of native fish species.

The official also noted that experts are measuring the capacity of the ecosystems to absorb the waste from the fish food and discharge from salmon production in the Reloncaví estuary.

Other diseases affect the industry as well, including the Caligus rogercresseyi parasite and rickettsial salmonid syndrome, of bacterial origin, which Burgos assured would be under control by the end of the year. But there is also fear that a disease of the salmon pancreas will appear — another aggressive virus.

The salmon farm owners say they have gone through a “self-critical” process and voluntarily adopted stricter standards. However, the Salmon Industry Association (SalmónChile), declined to respond to Tierramérica’s inquiries.

“The industry is not going to survive if it doesn’t incorporate biotechnological tools,” Rodrigo Vidal, an expert with the University of Santiago, told Tierramérica. Working with other scientists, he obtained public funds to create an Aquaculture Biotechnology Centre, with plans to continue developing genome-based instruments to evaluate the sector.

Vidal is a member of the scientific committee created in 2009 by Canada, Chile and Norway to sequence the Atlantic salmon genome by 2012.

“Are we prepared as a nation to take advantage of the salmon genome, considering that we have Norway as a direct competitor, and is light-years ahead of us in biotechnology?” wondered Vidal, who says the “genome key” is essential for better production, lowering costs and avoiding overexploitation of ecosystems.

In his opinion, this national project is almost unknown, and he has called for immediately improving public-private coordination to put environmental sustainability ahead of economic interests so that salmon farming does not “mortgage the future.”

But according to Liberona, of the Terram Foundation, instead of focusing on an industry that was flawed from the beginning, what is needed is “a real public policy for the Chilean coast,” to coordinate and promote various productive activities, based on research and citizen participation.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 12 2010 (IPS)

The families of 32 Mapuche prisoners on a hunger strike for a month in different prisons in southern Chile have come to the capital to denounce irregularities in their trials and push for dialogue with the authorities.

The hunger strike is a product of “the desperation of the Mapuche community members, who see all of the doors closing and that there is no political will to engage in talks and recognise the existence of a conflict” over land, Fernando Lira, the head of Liberar, a non-governmental organisation that is providing the prisoners with legal aid, told IPS.

Twenty self-declared Mapuche political prisoners started fasting on Jul. 12 and have now been joined by 12 others. The 32 hunger strikers, who are scattered in five different prisons in the south, have lost between seven and 12 kilos, and are suffering nausea, dizziness, disorientation, low blood pressure and cramps.

“They are going all the way with this, to the last consequences,” María Tralcal, a spokeswoman for the fasters, told IPS.

Tralcal forms part of a delegation that came to Santiago Wednesday to protest the situation of the imprisoned Mapuche activists, who are accused of crimes like terrorist arson, attempted homicide, bodily injury, threats and illicit association.

The delegation met Wednesday with legislators in Congress, which is located in the city of Valparaíso, 120 km west of Santiago, and on Thursday they were received by Supreme Court chief justice Milton Juica.

They also plan to meet with representatives of the Catholic Church and social organisations.

According to Tralcal, the fasters have learned from previous hunger strikes held by Mapuche activists in recent years, including the 111-day fast by Patricia Troncoso in 2007 and 2008.

Troncoso called off her strike after the government granted her prison benefits. However, she and her fellow fasters failed to achieve their demands of the release of some 20 Mapuche activists, the easing of military pressure on indigenous communities that are fighting for their traditional lands, a review of an arson case involving the Forestal Mininco logging company, and the modification of the controversial counter-terrorism law under which they had been tried.

Imprisoned since 2002, Troncoso and several Mapuche activists were sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of terrorist arson and ordered to pay a fine of 840,000 dollars to the Forestal Mininco company, near Temuco in southern Chile, owned by one of the country’s wealthiest families.

In December 2001 a fire burned 100 hectares of pine plantations that officially belong to the logging company but are claimed by the indigenous people as part of their ancestral territory.

When the activists were tried, the Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) administration invoked a controversial anti-terrorism law dating back to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The law allowed some 100 witnesses to conceal their identity while testifying.

The Mapuche community’s ancestral territory spans the southern tip of South America across Argentina and Chile. The Mapuche — who make up 87 percent of indigenous people in Chile — number around one million in this country of 16 million.

The Mapuche lost most of their territory in the late 19th century. Later, under the Pinochet regime, forestry companies and other firms interested in operating in undeveloped parts of the country were offered incentives like land and subsidies. As a result, indigenous communities, who generally have no formal title to their ancestral property, continued to be forced off their land.

Liberar’s Lira told IPS that there are 58 Mapuche political prisoners in jail in connection with the struggle for the ethnic group’s ancestral land.

The Mapuche complained that the indigenous policies of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed the country from the return to democracy in 1990 to March this year, fell short, even though more than 600,000 hectares of land have been returned to indigenous communities by the different administrations in power since 1990.

Occupations of privately-owned land by Mapuche activists were clamped down on harshly by the government of Michelle Bachelet (2006-March 2010). Two young protesters were even shot by the police in the crackdowns: 22-year-old Matías Catrileo in 2008 and 24-year-old Jaime Mendoza in 2009.

The military justice system, which is handling the two cases, has not yet handed down any sentence.

Thursday marked the anniversary of Mendoza’s death, which was commemorated by his family with different activities.

The hunger strikers are demanding an end to the use of the Pinochet era anti-terrorism law in their cases.

The activists say they are denied a fair trial under the law, which not only makes it possible for witnesses to conceal their identity, but allows secret judicial investigations, longer periods of arrest on remand, and heavy sentences. There are also allegations that unidentified witnesses have been paid to testify against the Mapuche defendants.

Another of the hunger strikers’ demands is an end to the practice by which some Mapuche activists are tried in the same case by both the civil and military courts when members of the armed forces are involved, and the resultant sentences are served consecutively — a “legal aberration” that only occurs in Chile, Lira said.

The anti-terrorism law has been criticised by organisations like Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), and by the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights, through its rapporteur on indigenous issues, Rodolfo Stavenhagen.

“Internationally, it is attacks on human beings that are considered to be terrorism. But so far, not a single civilian or police officer has died at Mapuche hands; the only people who have been killed have been Mapuche brothers at the hands of the police,” Tralcal complained.

“The only thing that has happened here are attacks on private property, which should be dealt with under civil law. Our brothers and sisters only want a fair trial,” she said.

The imprisoned indigenous activists complain that they have been framed by the police and prosecutors, and that they have been mistreated and abused in prison.

Lira said one possible route to solving the conflict would be the creation of a negotiating panel made up of representatives of all concerned parties.

But the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11, has not yet pronounced itself on the issue.

Indigenous and human rights activists accuse the government of double standards for denying the existence of a conflict with the Mapuche people while giving political asylum early this month to Cuban dissident José Izquierdo and criticising Cuba for holding “prisoners of conscience.”

Lira also said attempts to link Mapuche activists with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, based on a report sent by the Colombian attorney general’s office to the office of the public prosecutor in Chile, “went too far.”

The regional prosecutor in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía, Francisco Ljubetic, said his office was studying the possibility of citing former Colombian guerrillas and police to testify against some of the Mapuche defendants.

“The Mapuche don’t kidnap or kill anyone,” said Lira, who argued that “they’re going far enough using unidentified protected witnesses; and now on top of it they want to import witnesses from Colombia, who we know are demobilised members of the military working for the Colombian prosecutors.”

The Mapuche are also protesting what they call a news blackout on the hunger strike and biased coverage of the conflict by the mainstream media.

International organisations that back the Mapuche cause reported on demonstrations in solidarity with the hunger strikers this week in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Excerpt:

The unregulated farming of exotic salmon species in Chile generated a chain reaction that has cast a cloud over this industry — but now salmon operations are attempting to turn things around.

Workers at a Chilean salmon company - Courtesy of Fundación Terram

“Salmon farming expanded quickly, without a regulatory framework or adequate controls to prevent and anticipate environmental problems or the development of transmittable diseases,” Carlos Chávez, an expert in environmental economy and natural resources at the University of Concepción, told Tierramérica.

Chile is the second in the world in farmed salmon, after Norway, and specializes in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), as well as rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch).

After introducing these exotic species in the 1980s, the industry grew exponentially until mid-2007, when the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus began to spread through the salmon farms in the southern Chilean regions of Los Lagos, Aysén and Magallanes.

The virus forced producers to harvest the fish early and shut down operations in order to clear the waters. The fish farms hit bottom in January 2009.

According to industry estimates, in 2007 and 2008 Chile produced about 650,000 tons, while this year the yield is predicted to be between 250,000 and 300,000 tons. Of the 55,000 direct and indirect jobs in the sector during its best times, just 25,000 remain.

In 2009, revenues from Chile's salmon exports reached 2.1 billion dollars, according to the National Customs Service. Nearly all the salmon produced in this country is exported.

“The situation is catastrophic — with former workers losing their homes, and no money to send their children to school or even to eat,” Javier Ugarte, president of the National Confederation of Salmon Workers, told Tierramérica.

According to data the National Fisheries Service provided to Tierramérica, in Los Lagos there are 283 fish farms in operation, 186 in Aysén 186 and 13 in Magallanes. The latest health report from the Service indicates that just eight farms are believed to currently have the ISA virus.

The response to the crisis was a reform of the 1991 Fishing and Aquaculture Law, which entered into force in April of this year to regulate — among other things — the permits, operation and duration of the concessions, momentarily putting the brakes on expansion of the industry in some region.

“It is not an environmental protection law or one that benefits the workers. It's a law to give viability to an industry in crisis, in order to support the salmon farm owners,” said the executive director of the environmental Terram Foundation, Flavia Liberona, who, nevertheless, admitted “some progress” for the environment and workers.

“In the long term, these reforms may generate better environmental and health conditions, because it provides more regulation and monitoring capacity. But how will it be implemented?” she wondered.

Environmentalists and artisanal fishers opposed the reform because it allows the salmon farms to mortgage their concessions in order to obtain bank credits. They warned that this means the “privatization” of the sea, a national good that is for public use.

The conservative government of President Sebastián Piñera, who took office Mar. 11, is working on the 15 regulations necessary to implement the law, according to José Miguel Burgos, head of the aquaculture division of the Fishing Subsecretariat.

For the last year, he said, “a plan for the rational use of antibiotics” has been under way, which includes the updating of records of these pharmaceuticals, monitoring the factories that incorporate them into fish food, and strengthening regulations.

One of the main criticisms of the industry is its excessive and unregulated application of antibiotics.

“The density of salmon permitted per cage has been regulated,” and by the end of the year there will be rules “that establish appropriate safety standards for those structures,” added Burgos. The aim is to prevent a massive escape of the farmed fish, which could become predators of other species.

The official also noted that experts are measuring the capacity of the ecosystems to deal with the fish food and the organic waste from salmon production in the Reloncaví estuary.

Other diseases affect the industry as well, including the Caligus rogercresseyi parasite and rickettsial salmonid syndrom, of bacterial origin, which Burgos assured would be under control by the end of the year. But there is also fear that a disease of the salmon pancreas will appear — another aggressive virus.

The salmon farm owners say they have gone through a “self-critical” process and voluntarily adopted stricter standards. However, the Salmon Industry Association (SalmónChile), declined to respond to Tierramérica's inquiries.

“The industry is not going to survive if it doesn't incorporate biotechnological tools,” Rodrigo Vidal, an expert with the University of Santiago, told Tierramérica. Working with other scientists, he obtained public funds to create an Aquaculture Biotechnology Center, with plans to continue developing genome-based instruments to evaluate the sector.

Vidal is a member of the scientific committee created in 2009 by Canada, Chile and Norway to sequence the Atlantic salmon genome by 2012.

“Are we prepared as a nation to take advantage of the salmon genome, considering that we have Norway as a direct competitor, and is light-years ahead of us in biotechnology?” wondered Vidal, who says the “genome key” is essential for better production, lowering costs and avoiding overexploitation of the ecosystems.

In his opinion, this national project is almost unknown, and he has called for immediately improving public-private coordination to put environmental sustainability ahead of economic interests so that salmon farming does not “mortgage the future.” But according to Liberona, of the Terram Foundation, instead of focusing on an industry that was flawed from the beginning, what is needed is “a real public policy for the Chilean coast,” to coordinate and promote various productive activities, based on research and citizen participation.

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Jul 30 2010 (IPS)

The controversial proposal to pardon some convicts in Chile for humanitarian reasons, which was put forward by the Catholic Church and partially taken up by President Sebastián Piñera, has revived the debate on the country’s human rights situation, both past and present.

Chile has implemented “policies and initiatives that promote respect for human rights, but these are not yet incorporated into our daily life,” Lorena Fríes, the new head of the Institute for Human Rights (IDH), a government body created by law in December 2009, told IPS.

Over the past week, crimes against humanity committed under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, have returned to the spotlight because of the “bicentennial pardon” proposed to rightwing President Piñera on Jul. 21 by the Catholic Bishop’s Conference.

Protestant churches separately presented a similar request.

As Chile celebrates the 200th anniversary of its independence this year, the local Catholic hierarchy has suggested reducing the sentences of or pardoning prisoners over 70, women inmates with dependent children, and prisoners who are terminally ill, as long as they have shown good behaviour and do not pose a danger to society.

After relatives of the victims of human rights violations committed by the dictatorship loudly protested the proposal because it could apply to elderly military officers who participated in the Pinochet regime, the bishops clarified that the measure would not apply to people convicted of crimes against humanity.

Piñera rejected the idea of a “general pardon,” but agreed to consider prisoners on a “case by case” basis. He ruled out clemency for military officers or others sentenced for serious crimes, a decision that was welcomed by different sectors, who called for transparency in the process.

During the dictatorship 3,000 people were killed or “disappeared” and nearly 30,000 people were tortured. Some 600 members of the military are currently facing prosecution, and about 200 have been convicted. Of these, 65 are serving their sentences in prisons that offer certain privileges.

In spite of progress in this area, lawyers with the Interior Ministry’s human rights programme, which has the power to bring legal action in cases involving forced disappearance or political killings, have criticised the Supreme Court’s recent use of Chilean law on “prescripción gradual” (partial lapse of a crime’s statute of limitations) to reduce sentences imposed by lower court judges.

Under international law, crimes against humanity are not subject to any statute of limitations.

“This is an imposed form of transitional justice, in which the victims disproportionately bear the cost of reconciliation,” Karinna Fernández, a lawyer with the human rights programme, told correspondents from five international agencies, including IPS, Thursday.

(Transitional justice, after a period of systematic or widespread violations of human rights, like the Chilean dictatorship, seeks recognition for victims while promoting possibilities for peace, reconciliation and democracy.)

It also “infringes on the international obligation to punish offenders” in proportion to their crimes, she said.

Fernández said there has been a setback in the search for justice in recent years. “In 2006 and 2007, when sentences were just, prosecutions made good progress,” she said. “Now, though, when those responsible are being released without effective punishment, the investigations are suffering.

“Any measure that undermines a conviction, like parole, conditional remission of sentence or a pardon, results in the convicted criminal withholding further information because he has nothing to gain,” she said. And this does not include the effects on those demanding justice, who are turned into victims once again, she added.

Fernández gave some examples: the former head of the Joint Command, retired general Enrique Ruiz Bunge, faced four sentences for murder, but has been released, and retired general Sergio Arellano Stark, sentenced for leading the “caravan of death” — a special army mission that summarily executed leftist political leaders arrested around the country after the 1973 coup — “is at home, being cared for by his son.”

And retired colonel Hugo Cardemil, convicted of 28 kidnappings and of the theft of a child, was only sentenced to four years in prison, she complained.

Fernández called on the rightwing government that took office Mar. 11 to make greater efforts to engage in dialogue with the 13 lawyers in the human rights programme, who were hired during the previous administrations of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed Chile since its return to democracy in 1990.

Some officials appointed by Piñera criticised the lawyers’ work, after they summoned former army commander-in-chief and present deputy defence minister, retired general Óscar Izurieta, and the present Chilean ambassador to Panama, Alberto Labbé, to testify in two court cases as witness and defendant, respectively.

During the debate over the pardons, the Chilean association of non-governmental organisations, ACCION, and the rights watchdog Amnesty International called again for the repeal of the 1978 amnesty law enacted by Pinochet, which barred the prosecution of those involved in certain crimes committed from the date of the coup d’etat, Sept. 11, 1973, to Mar. 10, 1978.

Although judges no longer apply the amnesty law in practice, it has never been struck down, in spite of an order to do so by the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Meanwhile, the Ethics Commission Against Torture, formed by a group of organisations in 2001, reported Thursday that “police brutality and the use of torture resulting in death have worsened.” In the last two years, according to allegations, four young men have died from beatings by police officers.

“Police today feel free to kill people, even in front of dozens of witnesses,” complained Susana Aguilar, the mother of Mario Oviedo, an architect who was killed in 2009, because the cases come under military tribunals, which act as both judge and jury.

“We want international treaties and resolutions on torture to be enforced, and an end to military court jurisdiction in civilian cases,” Hervi Lara, coordinator of the Ethics Commission, told IPS.

The challenge facing the new Institute of Human Rights, which has a mandate to propose legislation and policies, is “to get everyone, authorities and citizens alike, to be governed by the same code of respect and guarantees for the rights of all,” Fríes, who assumed her post Jul. 20, told IPS.

In addition to dealing with the question of the abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship, the Institute will consider recommendations that international bodies have made to Chile, “which are basically about not discriminating against groups like indigenous peoples, sexual minorities and women,” she said.

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