Environmental health scientists from the University of Michigan find that a sample of Guatemalans who live near a controversial gold and silver mine in the country’s western highlands have higher levels of potentially toxic heavy […]
An official government site reveals that the Correa government plans on investing $180,000 on “social and environmental studies” during 2010 to determine the feasibility of the Junin copper deposit. The study would be the first step for the newly-created national mining company to try to reactivate a mining project which has resulted in two transnational mining companies being defeated by Intag’s communities and organizations. Now the stage is being set for possible confrontations between communities and local governments pitted against the national government and its national mining company.
Source: Andean Information Network New Human Rights Ombudsman finally sworn in Congress swore in the new Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo), emeritus Methodist Bishop Rolando Villena, on May 13. According to the 2009 Constitution, […]
Brazilian anthropologist Omar Ribeiro Thomaz has spent long periods of time in Port-au-Prince as a teacher over the last ten years. Despite being white and foreign, he speaks Haitian Creole and interacts with Haitians as an equal. His vision of the country after the earthquake and of international aid challenges ideas and images propagated by the media.
Source: Haiti Liberte The Haitian government sold a 60% share of the country’s national telephone company, Teleco, this month to the Military Telecom Company, known as Viettel, a subsidiary of the Vietnamese Army, based in […]
(IPS) – The indigenous peoples of the Amazon region of Bolivia have declared themselves in a “state of emergency” and announced that on May 20 they will begin a 1,000-kilometre march to La Paz to […]
Ecuador’s National Assembly President Fernando Cordero closed a highly-anticipated plenary session last Thursday by declaring that the controversial new water law would not be voted on until there has been prior consultation with communities. Cordero’s unilateral decision means that final treatment of the law will likely be delayed for months.
Twelve people were kidnapped and disappeared in San Juan Copala on May 16, following the ambush of a caravan on April 27 in which two human rights activists were murdered by Unión de Bienestar de la Región Triqui (Ubisort) paramilitaries. The twelve disappeared are women and children. The kidnapping appeared to be a reprisal for the call to send a second, international and larger caravan to San Juan Copala, scheduled for June 8.
Kayapó Indian leader Raoni Metuktire arrived in Europe last week and has appealed for support for his tribe, which is campaigning against the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon. Raoni […]
Copyright 2003-2018 Upside Down World