Big business wants to control our planet’s common natural resources to make profit—by taking over land, privatizing water, patenting seeds, and pushing aside anyone who gets in their way. Fortunately, there are people around the world—movements of peasants, Indigenous Peoples, women and youth—who are fighting to defend resource rights and to put the rights of people and communities ahead of corporate interests. Our partners are on the frontlines of this struggle.
At Grassroots International, we use resource rights as a way to frame political and economic struggles to win the most fundamental of human rights: the rights to land, water, and food. Without these natural resources, life itself is unsustainable.
Grassroots International has heard from our grantee Movimento Quilombola no Maranhão (MOQUIBOM) about a Quilombola territory in Maranhão, Brazil, that's been invaded by armed men. But the community has resisted.
There are currently 33 proposed laws in Brazil's National Congress threatening Indigenous rights. But Indigenous people are mobilizing with mass resistance.
