News on Land

Demand for recognition and protection of indigenous and community land rights is at an all-time high. ILC members around the world are mobilizing to support communities to claim and defend their land rights.

A United Nations commission has released a trio of letters it recently delivered to Canada that warn the country is likely failing to meet its commitments to the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Two of the letters concern infrastructure projects underway in British Columbia.

On a late night in December, I arrived in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A warm breeze welcomed me as I sat down with 30 women and men from Forum Petani Bersatu — the local farmers’ union — who had gathered to share stories of their ongoing struggle to reclaim their land.

We are prepared, we won’t back down or give up the rights we have conquered, much less hand over our territory so that Bolsonaro and his coronéis [old land elite] can carry out the plan they’ve hatched,” declared the Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil (APIB), one of the country’s leading indigenous organizations, in a public statement on 3 January.

HATIYA, Bangladesh, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.

Her husband worked as a day labourer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.

Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.

La deforestación en el estado Amazonas se ha intensificado en los últimos cinco años, pues la pequeña minería ilegal al sur del río Orinoco ha cobrado más fuerza, desde que se oficializó la Zona de Desarrollo Estratégico Nacional “Arco Minero del Orinoco”, un decreto con el que se entregaron concesiones mineras a empresas nacionales y extranjeras, para la explotación de bauxita, cobre, diamante y oro en 112.000 kilómetros cuadrados.

TARTAGAL, Argentina , Jan 12 2019 (IPS) - Nancy López lives in a house made of clay, wood and corrugated metal sheets, on private land dedicated to agriculture. She is part of an indigenous community of 12 families in northern Argentina that, like almost all such communities, has no title to the land it occupies and lives under the constant threat of eviction.

Last month, indigenous Karen communities, the Salween Peace Park Committee, and the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) officially launched the Salween Peace Park in the Mutraw District of Myanmar’s Kayin State.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 14 is focused on the effort to conserve and sustain the world’s oceans, seas and marine resources. It is an essential goal for the life of the planet and the wellbeing of all. The ocean feeds billions of people and provides livelihoods for billions more - including, of course, women and girls.

WASHINGTON — Nine years after a devastating earthquake ravaged Haiti, a group of Haitian farmers won a settlement with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Haitian government after demonstrating they were adversely impacted by a bank-financed industrial park built on land seized in 2011.

Landscapes need to be restored. The growing global population needs enough food to eat. How can both needs be met at once?

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 10 2019 (IPS) - “We have already been decimated and subjected, and we have been victims of the integrationist policy of governments and the national state,” said indigenous leaders, as they rejected the new Brazilian government’s proposals and measures focusing on indigenous peoples.