ASOLOKOBAL, Indonesia — Laurensius Lani’s footsteps can be heard at dawn alongside the traditional honay thatched-roof houses of the Baliem Valley, here in the archipelago country’s eastermost Papua province.
Campesinos producing coca, opium poppies and marijuana in Latin America try to make a living but become victims of a drug war.
Faced with few other viable alternatives for growing profitable legal crops, many campesinos have relied on growing marijuana, coca and opium poppies to help them survive, but are subjected the rules of the state and organized crime groups.
The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the Mekong Land Research Forum will run a week-long intensive summer school on land research in the Mekong Region. The purpose of the summer school is to equip early-career academic and advocacy-oriented researchers with key concepts, access to existing research outputs, and knowledge of current land issues across the region in order to strengthen individual and networked research that is geared towards secure access to land amongst the region’s rural and urban poor.
NYASHANA, Tanzania (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As Tanzanian widow Ruth Zacharia raised her right arm to protect her skull from a volley of machete blows, her three attackers sliced through her hand.
She fell to the floor; one leg slid into the kitchen fire.
"They said: 'We have been sent by our mother because you killed our father so that you could buy that land'," the 63-year-old recalled, fidgeting with her stiff, scarred right hand.
The pacific island of Papua New Guinea is one of the world's most resource rich countries, hosting nearly 7 percent of global biodiversity and important reserves of gold, copper and hydrocarbons.
By: Orlando Milesi
Date: 26 Janaury 2017
Source: Inter Press Service
The lands where the Mapuche indigenous people live in southern Chile are caught up in a spiral of violence, which a presidential commission is setting out to stop with 50 proposals, such as the constitutional recognition of indigenous people and their representation in parliament, in a first shift in the government´s treatment of native peoples.
By:Nicholas Parkinson
Date: 23 January 2017
Source: Intercontinental Cry
AN INDIGENOUS YUKPA COMMUNITY STRIVES TO RECOVER ITS LAND AFTER YEARS OF CONFLICT
A community of indigenous Yukpa saw their land reduced to a third of what it once was due to violence and intimidation. Now Colombia’s Land Restitution Unit is helping the community return to their lands.
Date: 18 January 2017
Source: Telesur
A peaceful demonstrator was shot dead during a protest in an Indigenous community.
An activist was killed Tuesday in Guatemala during a clash between protesters and police at a demonstration led by Indigenous community members who oppose the construction of a hydroelectric plant in San Mateo Ixtatan, a municipality in the country's western highlands.
Date: 19 January 2017
Source: The Guardian
Many believe the fight to combat climate change hinges on the aligned interests of capital and state. Give the Elon Musks of the world enough time and resources and they will innovate us out of impending climate catastrophe. Get the G20 in a room and they will hammer out a deal and create regulations to enforce it. Or so the thinking in some circles goes.
Residents were attacked by police forces Monday in order to evict them in Guahory, in the department of Caaguazu.
Responding to the urgent request of Paraguayan campesinos, who were violently evicted from their land, Paraguay's Permanent Legislative Commission held a meeting with the National Institute of Rural and Land Development, INDRT, director Justo Cardenas to try to resolve the issue.
