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Advocacy

Speaking out for Climate Justice and Food Sovereignty

By: Carol Schachet | September 23, 2014

Miriam Miranda’s journey from Honduras for the People’s Climate Justice Summit put her on the podium in front of thousands of people in New York this weekend. A leader of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH, a Grassroots International partner), Miriam and her community have been on the front lines of work for climate justice. She boldly told the crowd, “We cannot accept nor perpetuate this supposed development which does not take into account or respect nature and the earth’s natural resources… We should and must have the obligation to leave water, air, food and secure the safety for our sons and daughters and other living things.”
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Advocacy

Human Rights Defenders in Haiti Continue Despite Personal Risk

By: Jen B. | September 19, 2014

by Jen B.
Human rights defenders in Haiti risk their lives to protect the basic rights of Haitian citizens. Exile, intimidation, death threats, and assassinations have become part and parcel with human rights work in Haiti. Since January 2014, 15 local human rights defenders have been the targets of physical attacks and death threats that aim to end their critical work.
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Advocacy

Talking Palestine, Racism and Climate Justice

By: Carol Schachet | September 4, 2014

Making the connections between the bombing of Gaza, the ongoing occupation of Palestine, violence faced by black communities in the United States, migrant rights and climate disruption may seem like a tall order. But that is what happened on a recent Learning Call facilitated by Grassroots International co-sponsored by the Climate Justice Alliance, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. (Grassroots International is a member of and works with these coalitions.)
Listen in by clicking the link here:
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Advocacy

Latin American Women Speak out for Palestine

By: Carol Schachet | July 29, 2014

Latin American women raised their voices in solidarity with Palestinians. The video below features several Grassroots International partners, including members of the Via Campesina, the Landless Workers Movement and the Latin American Confederation of Peasant Organization (CLOC).
On July 20, six members of the family of Ziad Saad were killed. Ziad works with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine, which recently became a member of the Via Campesina.
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Advocacy

A Mother’s Grief for Children Caught in the Eye of the Storm

By: Claire Gilbert | July 24, 2014

On the way to a camping trip on Cape Cod last week, my family made a pit stop at a gas station. My partner took our four-year-old to the bathroom and I picked up a copy of the New York Times. I felt the ground shift as I saw the image of a tiny boy lying dead on the beach.
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Advocacy

Will the WTO fast-track trade at the expense of food security?

By: Timothy A. Wise and Jeronim Capaldo | July 24, 2014

The General Council of the World Trade Organization begins a two-day meeting in Geneva today, with India and other developing countries threatening to block implementation of an agreement on trade facilitation. They would be justified in doing so.

The potential gains from that agreement, reached last December in Bali, Indonesia, are vastly overstated, and they flow primarily to rich countries and private sector traders. Meanwhile, the United States and other developed countries have made little effort to resolve the legitimate demands that developing country food security programs be exempted from archaic stipulations of the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA).
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Advocacy

Historic Victory for People Affected by Dams

By: Lydia Simas | June 25, 2014

For the first time in Brazilian history, a decree will grant legal rights to people impacted by mega-dam projects. Tarso Genro, Governor of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, signed the decree creating a State Policy of People Affected by Hydroelectric Projects on June 23.
Grassroots International joins our partner, Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), in celebrating this huge victory. MAB played a key role in pushing for the rights of communities displaced or disrupted by dams, and works for the rights of dam-affected communities nationwide.
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Advocacy

Collective Punishment Cannot Bring Justice

By: Claire Gilbert | June 25, 2014

Imagine if three teenagers where you live disappeared, and, in response, authorities began to raid, terrorize, and arrest the population at large. That is what has happened in the last few weeks in the Palestinian Territories as Israel has conducted raids, attacks, searches, and arrests throughout the Palestinian Territories and especially in the West Bank after three teenagers from an Israeli Settlement went missing.
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Advocacy

How We Live: Video explores a transition toward a just economy

By: Lydia Simas | June 13, 2014

Modern production is based on extraction from the planet, and modern finance is based on extraction from the many for the benefit of the very few. What would a new economy look like and how can we rethink our relationship to resources, work and culture? Those are some of the questions explored in the video, How We Live: A Journey Towards a Just Transition.
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Advocacy

Fishing for Justice: A Fact Sheet about fishing in the Gaza Strip

By: Carol Schachet | June 12, 2014

Imagine fishers heading out to sea on a beautiful day, ready for a hard day of work to support their families. They might face challenges—a poor catch, storms, not enough buyers—but ordinarily their job is fairly straightforward. Now imagine these fishers getting shot at—routinely—when they go fishing. Imagine the fishers stripped, searched, detained and their boats confiscated by the navy. This is an everyday reality for fishers in the Gaza Strip who live and work under constant threat of Israeli attack at sea.

This fact sheet highlights the impact of increasing restrictions and violence faced by fishers in Gaza. For example:
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Advocacy

Hungry for Land

By: Carol Schachet | June 5, 2014

Governments and international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest share of the world's agricultural land. When the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation inaugurated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, he sang the praises of family farmers but didn't once mention the need for land reform. Instead, he announced that family farms already manage most of the world's farmland – a whopping 70%, according to his team.
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Advocacy

Stolen Harvest: Occupation and Palestinian Olive Trees

By: Claire Gilbert | May 27, 2014

Olives and olive oil are fundamental to Palestinian history, economy, subsistence, and culture. Olive trees symbolize Palestinian steadfastness and are deeply valued for their ability to thrive and send down deep roots in land where water is hard to come by. Many olive trees are thousands of years old and yet continue to produce olives. A worldwide symbol of peace, olive trees themselves have come under vicious attack by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
This fact sheet highlights the impact of the occupation, settlements and the Separation Wall on olive trees, olive harvests and Palestinian society, including:
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Advocacy

The Contamination of Native Mexican Corn Varieties by GM Strains

By: Carol Schachet | May 21, 2014

This presentation was given during the final thematic hearing of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Mexico on “Violence against Maize, Autonomy and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights” in November, 2013. Gabriela Linares Sosa is a member of the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO), a partner of Grassroots International and a leading indigenous voice in efforts to unmask the presence of genetically-modified (GM) corn in the Oaxacan countryside.
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Advocacy

Peasant Leader Brutally Attacked in Honduras

By: Carol Schachet | May 16, 2014

Grassroots International joins with our partners La Via Campesina-Central America in condemning the recent attack of Rafael Alegría which occurred on May 13.
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Advocacy

International Day of Peasants’ Struggles and Peasant Seeds in Resistance

By: Lydia Simas | April 17, 2014

Campesina(o), campon(a), paysan, peasant
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Advocacy

A Preliminary Report on Seeds & Seed Practices across the United States

By: Carol Schachet | April 17, 2014

For too many people and communities around the world, the dominant agricultural model is causing economic hardship, the destruction of biological diversity, and the exploitation of earth’s ecological commons. It is a model based on the commodification of life. We can no longer continue the status quo that enables multi-national corporations to corner our food system and our seed commons. Every element that is foundational to life (food, water, land, air) is under threat of privatization and marketization by an economic order that seeks to profit and own our common wealth.
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Advocacy

Land Means Everything Here: The Israeli Occupation is a Land Grab

By: Carol Schachet | March 31, 2014

The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories not only takes Palestinian land for Israeli use. The settler-only structures and infrastructure also annex land and cut off Palestinians from each other, curtail their ability to move freely, and make it difficult – and often impossible – for students to go to schools, patients to visit hospitals, and farmers to access their land and grow food.
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Advocacy

Grassroots International nominee a finalist for 2014 Front Line Defenders Award

By: Jovanna Garcia Soto | March 31, 2014

Berta Caceres, a Lenca indigenous woman who has been on the front lines defending the territory and the rights of the indigenous people for the last 20 years, is one of six finalists for the Front Line Defenders Award. Nominated for the award by Grassroots International, Berta is one of the founding directors of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), a Grassroots grantee and ally.
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Advocacy

Leading a River Revolution in Brazil

By: Carol Schachet | March 26, 2014

The Tapajos River basin is one of the best preserved regions in Brazil, a mosaic of protected forest reserves and indigenous lands. This river is located in the heart of the Amazon and is the home of the Munduruku’s indigenous people and other riverine communities. It is the only river in the Amazon River basin currently free of dams. And a river revolution is happening there, led by Brazil’s Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), a Grassroots International partner working in solidarity with indigenous people to stop the government’s outrageous plan to build six dams along the Tapajos River.
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Advocacy

UN Report Calls for Radical, Democratic Food System

By: Carol Schachet | March 12, 2014

The current global food system needs to be "radically" and "democratically" changed in order to alleviate global hunger and serve human rights over the profits of major agribusiness corporations, according to a report released Monday by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
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