Colombia’s armed forces boast of wiping out FARC guerilla forces on the eastern plains, winning international coverage. But ongoing paramilitary terror against campesinos seeking restitution of usurped lands gets no coverage outside Colombia.
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, constitutionally barred from re-election, will meet with Obama in the White House this week for his final NAFTA summit—with his country’s bloody cartel wars topping the security agenda.
The head of Libya’s Toubou people called for international intervention after deadly clashes at the southern oasis of Sabha. Issa Abdel Majid Mansur said the Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya was being revived, and broached secession.
Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) launched an attack on Mali’s northern city of Kidal—following through on a promise made in the wake of last week’s coup d’etat to advance on government-held towns.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the nation’s first Clean Air Act standard for carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. But ecologists protest that existing plants are grandfathered in, among other loopholes.
On World Water Day, the “March for Water, Life and Dignity,” more than 1,000 strong, reached Ecuador’s capital after a two-week, 700-kilometer cross-country trek to oppose plans for large-scale mining projects on indigenous lands.
The UN’s International Labor Organization released a report finding that the Brazilian government violated the rights of indigenous people by moving forward on the massive Belo Monte dam without consulting native communities.
Some 500 prisoners in several of Colombia’s facilities have initiated an indefinite hunger strike. The strikers are mostly imprisoned FARC guerillas who demand that they be recognized as “political prisoners of war and conscience.”
Both attacks by guerillas and road blockades by peasant protesters have slowed progress on Colombia’s new Bicentenario pipeline, slated to be the country’s biggest and extending into remote territory in the conflicted eastern lowlands.
Peru’s government sent a protest note to Chile, claiming an unauthorized incursion by Chilean troops into its territory—as the International Court of Justice at The Hague scheduled oral arguments in the border dispute case between the countries.
The US International Narcotics Control Strategy report has harsh words for Peru, lamenting the country’s “slow advance” in coca eradication. Bolivia’s Evo Morales meanwhile brandished a coca leaf at the annual UN anti-drug summit in Vienna.
The former head of Peru’s National Water Authority, Abelardo de la Torre, warned that the country faces at least 70 social conflicts related to control of water, and that these are likely to worsen if urgent action is not taken to address them.
