Our partner, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), works to protect human rights and promote the rule of law. They have been recognized as an effective voice of the Palestinian people through awards such as the Human Rights Prize from France. PCHR has gained an international reputation as an independent voice on human rights vis-à-vis both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“¡La Tierra No Se Vende – Se Ama y Se Defiende!” (English translation: “The Land is Not for Sale – It must be Loved and Defended!”)
– A change from woman fighting against a large dam in Alpuyeca, Mexico
Gilberto and Natalia Silva are in their mid-thirties. Married and parents of a beautiful little girl, Geovanna, they exude hope for the future. “In life, nothing comes easy,” Natalia says as she works tirelessly in the kitchen. Gilberto nods in agreement from the other corner of the room.
Members of the Brazilian National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Justice announced this week the results of a non-binding referendum about whether the Brazilian government should limit the concentration of land held by individuals and businesses. Voters in 23 states and the capital overwhelmingly agreed that land holdings should be limited.
The United Nations designates December 10 as International Human Rights Day. At Grassroots International, we give special recognition to the efforts of our partners and allies around the world—but for them, it’s just another day in the trenches to realize these rights as communities in action.
From the Middle East to Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa and Asia, our partners engage in determined struggles for resource rights—the human rights to land, water, and food. Despite enormous obstacles like land grabs, poisoned water, and decreased access to local food, our partners build local solutions to solve problems from the bottom up.
by Sara Mersha
Today, November 25th, is observed around the world as the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women. Grassroots International joins women and men everywhere in calling for an end to all violence – interpersonal and structural – against women and girls.
Haitian peasant leader, Chavannes Jean Baptiste, put it best: “Haiti is going from disaster to disaster.” He was talking about debilitating disease among displaced people in squalid living conditions, tropical storms destroying agricultural land, and international aid programs undermining local organizing.
In the northeast of Brazil, the landscape changes from dry, spiny vegetation to humid, verdant scenery dominated by sugar cane plantations. Driving through villages inhabited mostly by sugar-cane cutters is like winding through a slum in a big city. Barefoot children sell candy beneath the traffic lights, Coca-Cola signs light up bars and open-air sewage gives an indication of the pervasive poverty. In the middle of a “green desert” of sugar cane (grown mostly for export), from the road I saw two adults and a young boy working in what appeared to be a tiny oasis teeming with lush fresh vegetables that shined from afar.
They cross borders to survive.
Young people, like Ponciano Perez, 19, left, take the long north-bound journey from Mexico, seeking an opportunity in the United States. The trip can take several weeks or months. Without money to pay bus fare, some travel on foot to the border. Too often, the journey does not go as planned – meet the wrong people and they strip you from anything you have.
Back home, family members do not hear from their loved ones for months. They just hope for the better: a call or information that everything is okay and some money will arrive soon. In the best-case scenario, some money will arrive but at the cost of not seeing their children for years.
The Via Campesina – a Grassroots International partner – is organizing a long march in Mexico for life and environmental justice, prior to the United Nations conference on Climate Change in Cancun. Led by indigenous and peasant families, the caravans will depart from different locations and converge in Mexico City's Zocalo for a mass demonstration on November 30. Along the way, participants will visit communities affected by environmental disasters, such as those caused by the San Javier mining site in the state of San Luis de Potosí and El Zapotillo Dam in Jalisco.
Many of us involved in the post-earthquake reality of Haiti have both feared and expected the kind of health crisis that recently surfaced in the news. In many ways, the seeming inevitability makes it all the more tragic – because a full and coordinated response might have averted the ongoing catastrophe.
Grassroots International’s global partners like the Via Campesina have frequently told us: “You have to work hard to change things in the U.S. for our hard work to bear real fruit.” In other words, for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary.
For a week in late September, steady rain in the southern states of Mexico created mudslides and floods, affecting communities and farms in Oaxaca, Chiapas and surrounding southern states. Fortunately early reports overestimated the number of people killed in the disaster in Oaxaca.
The below press release from Grassroots International's ally the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) discusses some of the events that were held on Indigenous Peoples' Day. IEN is a network of indigenous peoples who focus on creating sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice, and maintaining indigenous traditions.
The hillsides of Oaxaca literally slipped into mud and slid through community villages nearby. Among those affected by the deluge are Grassroots International partners: Mixe Peoples' Services; Center to Support the Popular Movement in Oaxaca;
Emerging out of the US Working Group on the Food Crisis, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance will be the first of its kind in the United States. Grassroots International is a member of this new alliance. To celebrate its launch, we encourage people fighting for food justice and sovereignty to take actions during the week of October 10-17.
In solidarity with people all over the world, we call on food justice groups to hold community events that educate, celebrate, and create affordable access to safe, healthy, and culturally appropriate food while turning our food systems into engines for local economic development. We call for actions to build food sovereignty in the US.
Big business wants to gobble up our resources—grabbing land, privatizing water, patenting seeds and trying to squeeze out anyone who gets in the way of their profits. Fortunately, an alternative exists that places the rights of people and communities ahead of big business. The alternative is resource rights.
Grassroots International produced a short video that explains the challenges and hope surrounding the movement for Resource Rights, starting with the story of our partner, Dona Maria. By sharing it through social networks like Facebook, you can help spread word of this powerful movement to secure land, water and food right for all.
As part of a larger campaign to support the right to land, this week Grassroots International provided a $10,000 grant to boost education and organizing around a powerful national referendum in Brazil. The referendum, being organized by social movements for the first week of September, probes public opinion regarding the size of land holdings.
Although non-binding, the referendum provides an opportunity for land rights activists to educate voters about the growing problem of landlessness in the countryside caused by the expansion of agribusinesses in peasant and indigenous communities.The recent monsoonal floods in Pakistan have devastated nearly a third of the country’s landmass – by some estimates area the size of Italy. More than 20 million people have been directly impacted by the rising waters of the Indus and other rivers in three of Pakistan’s four major provinces – Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the Punjab (Pakistan’s bread-basket) and Sindh.
