News on Land

Monrovia – A civil society organization, the Foundation for Community Initiatives (FCI), has begun a project to assist rural communities in Liberia to legalize their customary ownership of their lands.

The Protection of Customary Collective Community Land Rights (P3CL) project, which began since January this year and will end in December next year, targets 24 communities in Bong, Grand Bassa, Lofa, River Cess, Nimba and Sinoe Counties.

Kampala. Advocates for Natural Resources and Development, an advocacy organisation, have blamed government for licensing quack Chinese investors who have invested in mineral extraction activities that have caused environment destruction and affected surface rights of people whose land falls within licensed areas.
This was revealed during a training of judicial officials at the Judicial Training Institute (JTI) in Kampala yesterday to equip them with knowledge on how to dispense justice in cases relating to extractive activities and environment.

Escalation of violence against indigenous groups in Brazil pushes growing number of native women to lead the movement.

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Celia Xakriaba was 13 years old when she joined the fight for indigenous rights. Her indigenous Xakriaba community is one of the few who survived the advancement of colonisers and missionaries in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais during the 18th century.

• Newly released data indicate the tropics lost around 120,000 square kilometers (around 46,300 square miles) of tree cover last year – or an area of forest the size of Nicaragua.
• The data indicate 36,400 square kilometers of this loss – an area the size of Belgium – occurred in primary forest. This number is an increase over the annual average, and the third-highest amount since data collection began.

Systematic racism and the failure of governments to recognize and respect land rights are at the root of violence leading to the murder of Indigenous peoples around the world, said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples on Tuesday. 

This week, thousands of Indigenous People from all over Brazil are gathering in the capital to demand their human rights and changes to political decisions that threaten their survival

Since the new Brazilian government came to power under President Bolsonaro, commitments to dismantle the rights of Indigenous People have accelerated.

A recently ended six-month occupation of a public square in central Asunción by the Tacuara'i community has brought attention to systemic violations of the land rights of indigenous groups in Paraguay. Español.

For Ashton Janvier, land and water are the portals to teaching and preserving the Denesuline language, which he says originates from the environment. 

“In my culture, everything that we talk about and everything that we teach one another has to do with the land,” said Janvier, an educator and filmmaker from La Loche community near the Clearwater River Dene Nation in Canada’s province of Saskatchewan.

For Indigenous peoples across the Americas, urgent threats imposed by the industrial extraction of natural resources has characterized the 21st century. The expansion of industry has threatened Indigenous territories, cultures and sovereignty.

The Kayapó war cry resounds deep in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. Four dozen warriors, their headdresses made of yellow and red macaw feathers, stand in the village clearing, carrying shotguns and war clubs. Warrior women, the crowns of their heads shaved, sing high-pitched war cries and wave machetes in the air.

Japan enacted legislation Friday aimed at protecting and promoting the culture of the Ainu ethnic minority through financial assistance, while at the same time stipulating for the first time that they are an “indigenous” people.

The law requires the central and local governments to promote Ainu culture and industry, including tourism, in order to correct long-standing socioeconomic disparities faced by the group. But some Ainu have criticized the legislation, saying it will not do enough to reverse historical discrimination.