Liberians displaced by the civil war are gradually returning home, filled with dreams of rebuilding their shattered country. Many have invested their savings in land, upon which they plan to construct new homes and businesses, only to discover that rampant corruption has been allowed to fester within the land administration system.
Indigenous communities occupying four territories in eastern Panama are taking their nearly five-year land-titling battle with the government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Their move comes despite recent gains in the Panamanian process.
Ramón Bedoya says his father, a land activist, was shot by local paramilitaries in league with agribusiness and narcos who fill the void left by Farc rebels
Nurse-turned activist Isela Gonzalez lives with bodyguards and constant threat in her fight against destructive economic interests
Not all land defenders fight in remote forests and coastlands. Some take the battle to the centres of power: to courtrooms, parliament buildings and corporate headquarters. The veneer of urban civility may be glossier here, but the struggle is no less dangerous. In some cases, it can be worse.
The government should promptly provide redress for past illegal confiscations of land and stop arbitrarily arresting activists, New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released this afternoon. The NGO also called on Nay Pyi Taw to enact laws and regulations to safeguard the rights of farmers and other small landholders from future confiscations.
BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos spoke out on Monday to condemn the nation’s soaring violence against human rights leaders amid growing pressure that the government act more forcefully to end the bloodshed.
Activists are being gunned down at a rate of one every three days in the Latin American country, rights groups say, and last Friday thousands of Colombians held protests and candlelight vigils to call for the killings to stop.
The area of forest cleared in Colombia jumped 46% last year, data compiled by the World Resources Institute show, in an “alarming” trend
Tree loss in Colombia for 2017 jumped by 46% from 2016 to 2017, a World Resources Institute (WRI) report revealed on Wednesday. It follows a doubling of tree loss between 2001 and 2015.
Fertile land is dwindling due to climate change combined with a population boom and is fueling conflicts across the continent
NAIROBI - The violent conflicts between farmers and semi-nomadic herders in Nigeria that left dozens of people dead over the weekend illustrate the intensifying pressure and competition for arable land in Africa, experts said on Monday.
Fertile land that is dwindling due to climate change combined with a population boom are fueling conflicts across the continent, they said.
"Gender, Land and Mining in Pastoralist Tanzania" is the product of rigorous field research over two years by WOLTS team members from Mokoro and HakiMadini. Significant stresses from mining, population growth and climate change, as well as disturbing levels of violence against women have been uncovered in this study of two traditional pastoralist communities in Tanzania. Initial findings are based on repeat rounds of participatory fieldwork by the WOLTS team and have already received attention at national and local level.
Experts from finance, research and policy cite land tenure as biggest perceived risk
United States - “It’s the biggest risk to look at,” said Sylvia Wisniwski, Managing Director of Finance in Motion investment advisory. “When land use conflicts arise, sometimes you can lose the entire investment. With big investments of 20 billion or so, you don’t have possibility of failure.”
"Walls have never solved problems, whether that's in terms of immigration, in terms of militarization"
EL PASO, Texas - To the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Indians, the water of the Rio Grande that divides the United States and Mexico sanctifies religious rites and purifies their hunts.
Indian communities living miles away use the river to send messages to fellow tribes downstream, tribal chief Jose Sierra told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
AgriSA represents 28,000 commercial farmers. It believes the reason land reform has failed is not because of inadequate legislation.
The Constitution should only be changed if it is deemed impossible to implement proper land reform under the current legal framework.
There is, however, no compelling reason why the Constitution must be amended to enable land reform, the country's largest commercial farmers' union will tell the parliamentary committee reviewing South Africa's highest law.