United Nations Human Rights chief Navi Pillay reported recently on the state of human rights in Mexico, after a visit to the mostly Indigenous state of Oaxaca.
A film called “Conservation’s Dirty Secrets” spotlights the alleged role of the African Wildlife Foundation in the brutal evictions of Samburu pastoralists in Kenya over the last three years. British film maker Oliver Steeds interviewed evicted Samburu elders and filmed their burning dwellings as Kenyan police attempted to arrest his Samburu guides. A Kenyan court is currently hearing the Samburu eviction case (see updates posted on this website).
The Ngöbe Indigenous People, environmentalists, and human rights advocates in Panama are celebrating a decision by Panama’s National Public Service Authority (ASEP) that will prevent US-based AES Corporation from building a second dam on the Changuinola River.
After six years of protests against construction of the Chan-75 dam, including a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the American engineering company AES and the Panamanian government closed the dam’s floodgates on the Changuinola river.
Human rights defenders in Honduras, including Indigenous leaders in the Moskitia, are vulnerable to assassination, assault, and other abuses, according to an editorial in the Miami Herald. Some 40 social movement leaders have been killed since President Porfirio Lobo took power following the coup that ousted the elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Mr.
In April of 2001, Global Response launched a campaign to stop the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in Brazil. Now, ten years later, after major international protest, the dam has received it's final approval and will soon begin construction.