The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, ruling in Sarayaku v. Ecuador, found in favor of a Kichwa community’s right to consultation prior to industrial projects on their land.
Gualberto Cusi, a magistrate on Bolivia’s Constitutional Tribunal, has been asked to resign after accusing the executive of pressuring the court to approve a rainforest road project.
A Brazilian court suspended construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam project on the Amazon’s Xingu River, finding that indigenous people had not been properly consulted.
Ecuador will use the pipeline that links Peru’s northern Amazon oil zone to the Pacific coast to transport crude under a deal the comes despite renewed border tensions.
Brazil’s government reaffirmed a court decision calling for return of usurped lands to the Xavante indigenous people. When Xavante protested at the Rio+20 summit, local ranchers blocked roads and burned bridges.
For two weeks the jungle construction site of the planned Belo Monte dam in Brazil’s Pará state has been under occupation by some 200 members of the Xikrin, Arara and other indigenous peoples, many armed with spears.
At the People’s Summit being held on the sidelines of the Rio +20 meeting, leaders from Bolivia’s eastern lowlands denounced President Evo Morales for violating the rights of indigenous peoples in the region.
Indigenous leaders loyal to Evo Morales voted to remove Adolfo Chávez as president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB)—as CIDOB’s march in protest of a jungle highway advances on La Paz.
The Transportation Commission of Peru’s Congress approved a new road through remote jungle thought to protect isolated indigenous peoples. Madre de Dios indigenous leaders protested that they were not consulted.
Survival International is calling upon Mick Jagger—recently named by Peru as an “environmental ambassador”—to demand answers on Lima’s “secret plans” to expand the Camisea natural gas bloc into a reserve for “uncontacted” indigenous tribes.
The Asháninka indigenous people helped beat back the now-resurgent Shining Path in Peru’s Apurímac-Ene River Valley, but now oppose a government hydro-electric mega-project that would flood their traditional territories.
Two ministers have resigned and the army chief has been sacked after charges that Peru’s armed forced abandoned stranded troops in a guerilla-controlled jungle. Local indigenous residents now charge a “dirty war” is being carried out in the zone.
