Journalist Sue Branford and social scientist Maurício Torres spent a month learning about Ferrogrão (Grainrail), one of the newest threats to the Brazilian Amazon – first meeting with government officials in Brasilia and then travelling along the proposed route, speaking to both sides in the heated debate over its construction. This the first of their reports.

MANILA, Philippines — The deaths of nine sugar workers in Negros Occidental over the weekend is a sign of continuing social injustice, a land rights advocacy group that has been working with farmers on Negros island said Monday.

"The agrarian reform program began 30 years ago and thousands of farm workers remain landless, earning a measly amount of less than P100 a day," KAISAHAN, which has been working with agrarian reform beneficiaries or ARBs since 1990, said in a statement. 

Transparency International (TI) Kenya is sensitizing youth at the Coast on land and property rights to avert violence related to land disputes in the region.

The  organization’s Coast Senior Regional Officer, Ms. Mary  Maneno said the initiative is aimed at promoting youth land ownership rights as well as access to family and community land.

Speaking at a Kwale County  Youth Summit, Ms. Maneno, who is a lawyer by profession, said there is need to create awareness among the local youth and the populace in general, on solving land disputes amicably.

The Responsible Land Policy project (RELAPU) is being implemented in the two districts

Land conflicts are expected to reduce in Teso sub region after the German government and the Lands Ministry has come in to resolve land disputes and demarcate land in Soroti and Katakwi Districts.

The German International Cooperation (GIZ) in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, including local governments as well as Ateker Women Land Rights Partners (AWOLARIP) is implementing the Responsible Land Policy project (RELAPU) in the two districts.

“We arrived to La Guajira to defend our sovereignty from the corrupt who call themselves defenders of Mother Earth that only hinder the country’s progress."

A Colombian paramilitary group known as the ‘Aguilas Negras’ (Black Eagles) spread pamphlets in the northern Guajira department threatening human rights defenders and Indigenous organizations working in the region.

NAKURU COUNTY, Kenya — Caroline Chepkoeh looked around her idyllic property, perched on a hilltop surrounded by green maize fields as far as the eye can see. A storm front was approaching from the north and the wind swayed the corn stalks and trees alike. The 34-year-old mother of three was bundled up in her winter coat. It’s colder here, she said, and it’s too far to school. Her two youngest children haven’t started nursery school yet because of the distance. “I still have hope that we will return to our land,” she said.

In Brazil, indigenous and traditional communities are fighting for their land in the face of threats from big businesses, mining and environmental destruction. In some cases, the peoples' very survival is at stake.

In early 2018, Ageu Lobo Perreira was on the run. He'd received word that his life and the lives of two other members of the traditional Amazon riverside community he leads were in danger.

KOTA KINABALU: The Dusun Begahak people in Lahad Datu are crying foul over what they claim as unfair treatment of indigenous people by the state government, past and present, after their ancestral land was given to Felda.

Speaking to FMT, Robin Balud, a representative of the small community, said the conflict started 36 years ago when the then Berjaya government decided to grant 120,000ha of prime agricultural land in Tungku to Felda.

“Somehow, the land also included some 2,400ha of our native customary right (NCR) land.

The Ignacio Huilipan Indigenous community won back 97 hectares from a major Chilean conglomerate Tuesday, setting precedent for native land rights.

In a historic ruling, a Chilean judge ruled that a major national lumber company has to give back nearly 100 hectares to the Ignacio Huilipan Indigenous community the company had illegally claimed as its own.

Human Rights Organizations have requested state officials launch an impartial investigation into the murder.

The memory of Mexican activist Jesus Javier Ramos Arreola will only strengthen the activist’s cause to stall construction of the New Mexican International Airport (NAIM).

The activist was dedicated to the defense of a strip of stony ground called Cerro del Tenayo, the location destined for the new international airport. Residents say the hill was home to several archaeological remains as well as diminishing species of flora and fauna.

MWINGITSA, Malawi (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Life was never easy for Salome Nkalawire but when her husband died the mother of four faced her toughest challenge yet.

She lost the small plot of land the couple had bought together and farmed in Mwingitsa village in the south of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world.

When her husband passed away, Nkalawire’s relatives would not allow her to keep the plot because cultural norms dictate that widowed or abandoned women cannot own land, even if they have a legal claim to it.

The battle to stop the spread of extractive industries pits indigenous and peasant communities against powerful business interests, backed up by politicians who encourage the foreign investments that convert millennial ways of life into cash—for them