Indigenous Rights

Demarcation of Native Territories Essential for Venezuela’s Amazon Region

By Humberto Márquez
“All of the countries of the Amazon basin say they want to protect the environment, but they all have agreements with transnational corporations for the construction of roads or for mining and exploitation of forests,” Curripaco indigenous leader Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, from the south of Venezuela, told Tierramérica.*

Indonesia’s Forest Communities Victims of ‘Legal Land Grabs’

By Stephanie Wildes
Indonesia’s rainforests are facing “legal land grabs”, allege NGOs. Its ancient communities are finding that their ancestral lands are slipping into the hands of foreign companies for oil palm cultivation, as demand for the product grows in Europe, India and China.

Idyllic Island Confronts Bloody Past

By Catherine Wilson
Anguish over the whereabouts of loved ones who went missing during a five-year civil conflict that ended a decade ago continues for countless families in the Solomon Islands. Searching for the remains of those who disappeared is vital to enduring peace in this culturally diverse south-west Pacific island nation of 550,000.

Mining Takes a Bite Out of Guyana’s Amazon

By Desmond Brown
Guyana is engaged in a balancing act to save its rainforest, regarded as a living treasure, from the destructive activities of miners digging their way to another kind of treasure buried beneath this fragile ecosystem.

Ethiopia’s Indigenous Excluded from Rapid Growth

By Ed McKenna
As the construction of a major transmission line to export electricity generated from one of Ethiopia’s major hydropower projects gets underway, there are growing concerns that pastoralist communities living in the region are under threat.

The Woman Who Reduced Impunity in Guatemala

By Louisa Reynolds
Guatemala’s first female attorney general has managed to reduce impunity in a country where over 90 percent of murders go unsolved.

Zimbabweans Left Worse Off by Local Mining Companies

By Tatenda Dewa
Ranganai Zimbeva, from the rural village of Mutoko, which lies about 200 km northeast of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, plugs his ears with his fingers and shakes his head as he watches miners close to his village blast the hard rock to extract the black granite within.

South of the Border, Mining Is King

By Carey L. Biron
Civil society groups from throughout Latin America are urging “home countries” to take greater responsibility for the actions of their companies abroad, particularly those in the extractives industry.

India Illegal Mining Enquiry Cut Short

By Ed McKenna
A nationwide enquiry into illegal mining in India was aborted before it completed its investigation into the failings of the country’s mining industry. The study had prompted the government to ban mining in two states and arrest high-ranking politicians.

Conflicts Over Water Rise in Tanzania

By Kizito Makoye
Conflicts over water are increasing in the sprawling Pangani River Basin in northeastern Tanzania as farmers and herders jostle for dwindling water resources in the face of climate change.

Walking an Economic Tightrope with No Safety Net

By Thalif Deen
With the richest one percent of the population now owning 40 percent of global assets, and the bottom half sharing just one percent, inequality is fast being recognised as a stubborn underlying obstacle to development.

Finding Land for Cameroon’s Pastoralist Nomads

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
Adamou Harouna’s herd of cattle grazes leisurely on lush green vegetation in Ndop, a small village in Cameroon’s North West Region.

Chevron Fights Amazon Pollution Verdict in U.S. Court

By Samuel Oakford
Two years after they were awarded 18 billion dollars by an Ecuadorian court for environmental damage caused by Chevron in the Amazonian rainforest, a group of indigenous villagers and their U.S. lawyer went on trial Tuesday in New York, accused by the oil company of bribery and racketeering.

Baka Pygmies Drink Up Their Voting Rights

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
When Daniel Mgwape, a Baka man in Mindourou of the East Region of Cameroon, felt like drinking local liquor commonly called ‘kitoko’, he simply took his biometric voter ID card to the village bar tender.

Making Local People Stewards of the Earth

By Stephen Leahy
The lack of land rights is a crisis not just for local people but for all of humanity, warned organisers at an international conference here.

Nigerians Uncertain of Future in Bakassi Peninsula

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
Thomas Effiom, a 35-year old fisher in Jabane, a small locality in Cameroon’s Bakassi Peninsula, scoops off floodwaters from the muddy floor of his house. It is a ritual he performs each time the Atlantic Ocean overflows.

Q&A: Room for Negotiation in Decisive Battle over the Amazon

By Mario Osava
Everything indicates that the decisive battle between harnessing hydropower and preserving the Amazon will play out in the Tapajós river basin in Brazil. At stake there are a potential of nearly 30,000 MW and a vital part of the Amazon rainforest.

Squatting on Kenya’s Mineral Wealth

By Miriam Gathigah
Zeinab Mohamed is a 70-year-old squatter in Kwale County, in Kenya’s Coast Province. Like many other Coast Province residents, for decades, Mohamed has lived in what squatters call “floating houses”.

Survivors of Peru’s Armed Conflict Still Waiting

By Milagros Salazar
Venisia Ávalos, a 65-year-old indigenous woman from Peru’s highlands region of Ayacucho, looks for her son’s name among a labyrinth formed by thousands of small grey stones.

‘Biggest Guns’ to Control Somalia’s South

By Ahmed Osman
Somali clan leaders say that an Aug. 27 agreement between the government and only a few leaders from the country’s three southern Jubba regions, which aims to resolve the ongoing dispute over who controls the area, creates more problems than it solves.

Native Americans Take Lead in Tar Sands Resistance

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
Native American tribes in the United States have taken the lead in opposing the expansion of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, engaging in civil disobedience to the point of arrest and attempting to physically block shipments of construction equipment from passing through their native lands.
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