As a young man, Abdon Nabadan loved nature-tripping—climbing mountains and trekking forests.
Little did he know that his love of nature would lead him to reconnect to his ethnic roots and become one of Indonesia’s leading advocates of the rights of indigenous peoples (IPs), locally known as the masyarakat adat.
The relatives of the young Argentine activist Santiago Maldonado have said in a statement that he was forcibly disappeared by agents of the state and demand his immediate return.
About 200 people from Kampot and Kandal provinces gathered yesterday at the Land Ministry asking for two separate disputes with development companies to be resolved.
The protesters asked the ministry to take land from the companies for them to us because they were struggling to make a living.
Bo Sambath, a representative of 308 families from Techo Angkanh and Techo Chrey Bak villages in Kampot province, said their dispute over 1,231 hectares with First Bio-Tech Agricultural (Cambodia) began in 2013.
About 100 villagers from southwestern Cambodia’s Koh Kong province clashed on Tuesday with security forces in Phnom Penh during a protest over a decade-long land dispute with two sugar companies, a spokesmen for the residents said.
The villagers travelled from Chikhor commune in Sre Ambel district and from Botum Sakor district in Koh Kong to the country’s capital to protest what they called land grabs by the Koh Kong Sugar Industry Company Ltd. and Koh Kong Plantation Company Ltd. that took place in 2006, said Phav Nheung, representing the villagers.
(Ecofin Agency) - In an open letter sent to the president of Madagascar on August 17, the Tany group exposed its concerns about land grabbing by foreign investors in the country. For the civil society group, whose objective “is to support the development of Malagasy farmers and citizens and defend their lands and natural resources”, it is urgent to boost land tenure and establish a stricter framework for land related transactions.
The silent, but persistent and deadly attacks on social leaders and human rights defenders has claimed another life in southern Colombia, pushing the number of leaders killed during the peace process above 50.
The bullet-riddled corpse of Fernando Asprilla was found by the locals of the community of La Tigre, a rural hamlet in the municipality of Piamonte, Cauca.
NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Using digital technology to record land deals in Honduras can help clean up a corrupt system, protect the poor against eviction and stem violence in the world's most dangerous place for environmental activists, according to an analyst.
Nearly 80 percent of the country's privately held land is either untitled or improperly so, and acquisitions for mining, dams, tourism and other developments are often enforced through violence.
Indigenous peoples across Latin America have demonstrated their determination to protect their communities and their territories over the centuries and, in the process, have proven their role as stewards of the environment. Threatening to encroach upon ancestral lands, contaminate water sources, and divide communities with the construction of mega projects, national and multinational companies have long wreaked havoc on the environment and taken advantage of indigenous communities. Yet, the communities have not sat idly by.