The ILC Secretariat is now accepting applications from member organisations to host interns for the ILC internship programme. The internship programme aims at giving the opportunity to Master’s students and young researchers from within the ILC network to be placed for an internship in another ILC member organisation.

Deadline: 30/09/2018

Why should you apply?

This is a unique opportunity for ILC members to attract additional capacity into their institutions. The internship programme will

Murders of land and environmental activists are surging in the Philippines

BANGKOK - Murders of land and environmental activists are surging in the Philippines, making it the deadliest country in Asia, according to campaigners who said the government has failed to provide protection.

The Philippines-based rights group Karapatan recorded at least 63 killings of land and environmental activists last year, more than double the previous year.

BOGOTA - Nearly four land and environmental activists were killed each week last year, murdered for opposing large-scale agriculture and mining projects in the deadliest year on record, a campaign group said on Tuesday.

In 22 countries surveyed by U.K.-based Global Witness, at least 207 activists were killed, making 2017 the deadliest year since 2002 when the human rights organization started collecting data.

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.

Tropical forest loss is at an all-time high, fomenting the global climate crisis. The result is rising seas, threats to global food security, and conflict across the globe. Along with this violence against the earth, there is growing violence against the people who defend it.

BANGKOK - Deadly clashes this week in southern India, and farmers' protests in the west against a refinery and a bullet train, highlight the increasingly fraught disputes over land and environment in the country's most industrialised states.

Police opened fire Tuesday on protesters seeking to shut down a copper smelter run by Vedanta Resources in the southern port city of , killing 10. Three more persons have since died.

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Thousands of indigenous Brazilians from across the country have rallied in the capital, Brasilia, to call authorities to protect their land rights.

Organisers of the annual "Free Land Camp" in Brasilia said more than 3,000 people reached the city this week to denounce what advocacy groups say is a continuing and unprecedented rollback of indigenous rights in the country.

Winner of "Green Nobel" prize says illegal mining is a scourge as it pollutes rivers with toxic mercury and cuts down forests

BOGOTA - Colombian environmental activist Francia Marquez has faced death threats and been forced from her home in her battle against the mines that she says are polluting rivers and ruining land.

But she has no intention of giving up the work that this week earned her a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, known as the "Green Nobel", which honours grassroots activism.

New treaty compels states to investigate and punish killings and attacks on people defending their land or environment

Officials from 24 Latin American and Caribbean states have signed a legally binding environmental rights pact containing measures to protect land defenders, almost two years to the day since environmental leader Berta Cáceres was killed in her home in Honduras.