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Sunday, November 15, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Indigenous Rights
BURMA: Asian Highway to Disaster?
A regional U.N. body that claims to care about Asia's economically weak and marginalised is being taken to task for helping pave the way to achieve the opposite - strengthening a military dictatorship with development projects on the back of people under its oppressive grip.RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Homeless Join Month of Protests
The Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) blocked three access roads into Sao Paulo on Wednesday, continuing a month-long struggle during which they have invaded a large number of buildings and unoccupied urban sites in several state capitals.RIGHTS-U.S.: One in Three Native Women Suffer Sexual Assault
Native American women are at least 2.5 times as likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetime as other women in the United States, according to a major new report by Amnesty International (AI) released here Wednesday.ENVIRONMENT: "Green Nobel" for Fighting Extractive Industries, Defending Wildlife
The common denominator of all six winners of this year's Goldman Prize, often referred to as the "Green Nobel", is their effectiveness in fighting big fights to protect the environment despite their relative anonymity.MIGRATION-CHILE: Celebrating Multiculturalism
As a tangible way of appreciating diversity, tolerance and non-discrimination, and in order to launch a debate about migration policy in Chile, university students are organising the First Multicultural Festival to be held in the capital on the weekend of May 26-27.POLITICS-INDIA: Dalit Woman Favoured to Win Polls in Key State
When the results of the ongoing elections in northern Uttar Pradesh state are out on May 11 chances are high that a ‘hung' assembly would emerge, reflective of the highly fragmented polity in India's most populous province.SUDAN: China Takes Credit for Sending Int’l Troops to Darfur
China is taking credit for its role in persuading the Sudanese government to accept an international peacekeeping force to stop the killings in Darfur and is determined to prevent further sanctions on a country in which it has massive investments.BRAZIL: Indigenous Demonstrators Get Results
The indigenous protesters who camped out this week in the very heart of the Brazilian capital have victories to celebrate, like the installation by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of a national commission on indigenous policy.MALAYSIA: Indigenous Groups Resist Biodiversity Park
In the thick rainforest outside this town, about 150 km north of the national capital, the guileless Semai aborigines, famous to anthropologists for their for non-aggressiveness, are falling sick from stress brought about by sudden land development that threatens to uproot them.BRAZIL: Dispossessed Demand Land, Health, Justice
The Brazilian capital woke up to another "red April" Monday. Eight hundred landless peasants occupied the headquarters of the government office in charge of land distribution, while 1,000 indigenous people camped out on the Ministries Esplanade, demanding better healthcare and the formal demarcation of their territories.VENEZUELA: Global Women Activists Speak Out Against War, Imperialism
Condemnation of the United States' war in Iraq was rife at the 14th Congress of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) which concludes this Friday in Caracas. Over 1,000 delegates representing 165 organisations in 80 countries participated.COLOMBIA: Embezzling Health Funds as Children Starve
The arrest and investigation of officials accused of stealing public health funds in an impoverished Colombian region where a dozen children have died of malnutrition show to what extent corruption is an obstacle for the country's prospects of meeting poverty reduction targets.CENTRAL AMERICA-MEXICO: Summit Relaunches Development Plan
The flagging Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP) received a new boost at the summit that brought together the leaders of the countries that launched the development plan six years ago: Mexico, the seven countries of Central America, and a new partner, Colombia.POLITICS-MEXICO: Military Takes Centre Stage Under Calderon
Mexican President Felipe Calderón has placed the military on the front-line of his administration - a strategy without precedent in the modern history of Mexico, which has drawn fire from human rights organisations and has made analysts and legal experts nervous.RIGHTS: Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Ignored Again
The rights of indigenous people are given respect in speech after speech, but few countries have signed up to an international convention to protect those rights.HUMAN RIGHTS: Mexico Under Scrutiny by Inter-American Commission
The delegates of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) who began a visit to Mexico Monday will leave at the end of the week with their suitcases full of files and complaints by civil society groups, which say the human rights situation in the country remains serious and that the government is attempting to criminalise social protest.Q&A: “Our Homes Are Going Into the Sea”
"The ice is not only our roads but also our supermarket," says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit leader who has been fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic region for many years.CANADA: Seal Hunt Opens Again Amidst Outcry
The Canadian seal hunt began again in earnest this week despite protests in Canada, the United States and Europe.PERU: Gov’t Puts Renewed Emphasis on Forced Coca Eradication
The fight against coca crops in Peru increasingly involves the forced destruction of crops, and has shown little success in terms of alternative development plans, while resistance among coca producers is growing.RIGHTS-INDIA: Court Rules Against Affirmative Action for Low Castes
India's Supreme Court has thrown a spanner in the government's plan to promote affirmative action by reserving 27 percent of admissions for them in central (federal) institutions of higher learning. On Thursday, a two-judge bunch ruled against such reservations mandated by an act of parliament in 2006.MEXICO: Gov’t, Military Scramble to Deny Rape of Indigenous Woman
The handling of the case of an elderly indigenous woman who was allegedly raped by soldiers and died soon afterwards has seriously undermined public trust in the governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), the Mexican government and the armed forces, which deny that she was sexually assaulted.« Previous Page — Next Page »
The planet's roughly 350 million indigenous peoples took notable steps on the international stage in the last decade. They got the world's governments to agree to create a body to represent them at the United Nations, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and to appoint a special rapporteur responsible for their human rights. In 2007 a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was approved by the UN. Yet the living conditions of most "tribal", "aboriginal", "native" or "first" peoples remain precarious. IPS, with its network of contributors at the UN and linked to indigenous communities worldwide, is committed to tracking the world community's efforts to do justice to the rights and aspirations of these peoples, with a special current focus on Latin America's 40 million rural indigenous peoples.
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