LA PAZ, Apr 2 2019 (IPS) - The ancient Qhara Qhara nation began a battle against the State of Bolivia in defence of its rich ancestral lands, in an open challenge to a government that came to power in 2006 on a platform founded on respect for the values and rights of indigenous peoples.

Men and women from the Qhara Qhara indigenous people marched nearly 700 km over the space of 41 days, between the official capital, Sucre, and La Paz, the country’s political hub, to protest that the fragmentation of their ancestral lands threatens their culture.

On Friday morning, Palestinian residents of al-Farisieh village, in the northern Jordan Valley, were surprised to find out that Israeli settlers had fenced dozens of dunams of their land and planted them with olive trees. This transgression on the land is part of a series of daily appropriation and infringements on land, by settlers and the occupation authorities in the Jordan Valley, with a goal to displace its dwellers.

• A state-owned plantation company, PTPN XIV, is evicting farmers to make room for an oil palm estate on the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
• In 1973, the company got a permit to raise cattle and farm tapioca on the now-disputed land, but it expired in 2003. After a long hiatus, the company has returned to claim the land.

Sergio Rojas, a leader of the Bribrí community in Costa Rica, was murdered Monday night in the indigenous territory of Salitre.

An investigation into the death is underway, and President Carlos Alvarado has called the events “a tragic day for the Bribrí people, the indigenous communities and for all of Costa Rica.”

Costa Rica has for years struggled to mediate land-right disputes between indigenous and non-indigenous people. In 2012, Rojas was shot at six times in an apparent assassination attempt near the reserve.

GENEVA, March 18 (Reuters) - Israel is depriving millions of Palestinians of access to a regular supply of clean water while stripping their land of minerals “in an apparent act of pillage”, a United Nations human rights investigator said on Monday.

Michael Lynk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said that Israel “continues full-steam with settlement expansion” in the West Bank, which the United Nations and many countries deem illegal. There are some 20-25,000 new settlers a year, he said.

Getting to the bottom of illegal plantations on Indonesia’s state owned forests

In an ideal world, palm oil production would cause no deforestation, and have a transparent and fair supply chain. In reality, the impacts of the sector have been the cause of ethical concerns worldwide.

Complaint Linked to World Bank Loan Alleges Land Seizures, Damage to Water Sources

Last week, 13 rural communities in Guinea made public a complaint against the World Bank’s private lending arm over a loan to one of country’s largest bauxite miners, alleging its operations have destroyed ancestral farm lands and polluted vital water sources.

• A still controversial 2012 update to the Brazilian Forest Code that reduced the area required for legal reserves on rural private properties is endangering more than 15 million hectares (57,915 square miles) of Amazon forest, an area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Georgia, according to a recent study.

In El Estor, Guatemala, women lead fight for land rights despite added risk of sexual violence and stigma.

El Estor, Guatemala - Since her teen years, Maria Magdalena Cuc Choc, now 39, has defended the natural resources of El Estor, a predominantly Mayan Q'eqchi' community on the western edge of Lake Izabal. The calm, blue water surrounded by lush forest cover is home to hundreds of species of freshwater fish, lizards, crocodiles, manatees and more.

The latest report from Mokoro's WOLTS project team is the product of rigorous field research in a third Mongolian community, in collaboration with the Mongolian NGO, People Centered Conservation (PCC). The report addresses critical issues at the intersection of gender, land, mining and pastoralism in Tsenkher soum, in Arkhangai aimag in central-western Mongolia.

Decades-long legal disputes over land could cost tens of millions of dollars, research says

LONDON - Food companies doing business in Africa risk becoming bogged down in decades-long legal disputes over land that could cost tens of millions of dollars, according to a report released on Monday.

From sugar to coffee and palm oil, agribusiness firms could find that the land they are using is already claimed or occupied by local people, researchers said.

Indigenous Náhuatl land and water defender Samir Flores Soberanes was a vocal opponent of the "Proyecto Integral Morelos" (the integral project for Morelos) in Mexico.

The project includes the construction of the 160-kilometre Morelos Gas Pipeline that would start in the state of Tlaxcala and run to the town of Huexca (in the state of Morelos) where it would supply a proposed gas-fuelled thermoelectric plant.