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Defending Human Rights

Segregation and Discrimination

By: Carol Schachet | December 20, 2012

The recent war between Hamas and Israel was fought not only in the bloodied cities and refugee camps of a huge civilian population and in vulnerable cities and towns of Israel, but also on newsfeeds and social media. In the papers, the websites and twitter feeds, reports and analysis of the Gaza war rarely revealed any context and no reports of the deadly siege and frequent incursions that have crippled Gaza for years. Reporters and politicians often spoke with a level of racism and disregard for Palestinian civilians that should be disconcerting to anyone who values human life and the right of people to resist oppression.
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Defending Human Rights

Defending Palestinian Human Rights

By: Mina Remy | December 18, 2012

Globally, activists at the forefront of human rights protection are coming under increased scrutiny and attack by state and non-state actors. Although being a human rights defender is becoming dangerous work, the commitment to human rights promotion and defense amongst activist has not waned. Nowhere is this truer than in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), where our partners have had their offices raided and equipment confiscated by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
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Defending Human Rights

Protecting Human Rights in Haiti

By: Jonathan Leaning | December 17, 2012

On March 28, 2012—more than two years after the devastating earthquake—884 displaced families living under makeshift tents and tarps in the displacement camp of Gaston Magron in Port-au-Prince were busy putting their children to sleep when bullets suddenly began flying. A gang of thugs had broken into the camp searching for the camp’s security volunteers, apparently in retaliation for being stopped from entering the camp previously. They shot and killed three people, wounding several dozen others including a pregnant woman. They set fire to tents, raped several women and girls, verbally threatened terrified camp residents, and then left.
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Defending Human Rights

International Solidarity Moves Brazilian Governor, Supports Landless Families

By: Saulo Araujo | December 13, 2012

It is rare to see direct changes resulting from international solidarity. But it does happen. And while international solidarity alone doesn’t move governments to protect the land rights of landless peasants, when combined with and informed by actions on the...
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Defending Human Rights

Indigenous Kaiowá in Brazil Pledge ‘Collective Death’ to Defend Ancestral Territory

By: Saulo Araujo | November 26, 2012

Leaders of the Guarani Kaiowá boldly announced that the entire community would rather die in their land defending from businesses and corporations. Their assertion is more than a war declaration. For us, the buyers of “clean energy,” their pronouncement is a jarring wake-up call that the “Green Economy” actually promotes genocide of indigenous people and Afro-descendent communities –whether in the form of a slow die off of disposed peoples or a quicker resistance.
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Defending Human Rights

People Power versus Hydropower

By: Jonathan Leaning | November 26, 2012

A massive, very active social movement against the loss of land and ecosystems caused by hydro-electric dams is making headway in Brazil. The movement is little known in North America so far, but that’s changing. And it’s on the brink of spreading across the world wherever large dams are being built and waterways threatened.

But what’s all the fuss, some may ask. Doesn’t it usually only affect isolated communities, and isn’t hydropower a much more environmentally friendly source of cheap energy, especially compared with nuclear, coal, or oil? Are these anti-dam activists clinging to a kind of prosaic, but impractical pastoral way of life, or just trying to push the dams into somebody else’s backyard?
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Defending Human Rights

SOFA’s Violence Against Women Campaign in Haiti, One Year On

By: Mina Remy | November 21, 2012

Although the January 2010 earthquake suspended the government’s work on a national strategy to combat violence against women, women’s organizations led by SOFA (Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen/Haitian Women’s Solidarity) have pressed on in their struggle.
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Defending Human Rights

Gaza’s Civilians under Attack

By: Mina Remy | November 20, 2012

The toll Operation Pillar of Defense (Pillar of Cloud in Hebrew) is taking on Gaza’s population is unimaginable to most Americans, but Twitter is changing that. As information flows from Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, and Khan Younis the pain, suffering, and senseless death of innocent men, women, and children cannot be denied. More than half of the 105 Palestinians killed during the last seven days of this operation have been civilians, including children.
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Defending Human Rights

Message from Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights

By: Mina Remy | November 19, 2012

Operation Pillar of Defense (Pillar of Cloud in Hebrew) is once again destroying Gaza missile by missile, building by building. Our partner Raji Sourani, the director of Palestinian Center for Human Rights, sees history repeating itself with each civilian casualty. As he makes clear in a recent article on Al-Jazeera (posted below), the world is standing by while scores of civilians lose their lives, Gazans human rights are violated and community infrastructure is destroyed.
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Defending Human Rights

Grassroots International Condemns Violence in Palestine/Israel

By: Nikhil Aziz | November 15, 2012

Once again, the steady violence that passes for “normal” in Palestine and Israel has escalated to alarming proportions. After months of rocket exchanges between militants in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the situation rapidly deteriorated in the past 24 hours. Grassroots International joins the growing chorus of voices calling for an end to violence from both sides, a return to negotiations for a just and lasting peace, and enforcement of international human rights and humanitarian law as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.
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Defending Human Rights

First Global Encounter on Agroecology and Peasant Seeds

By: Carol Schachet | November 13, 2012

Members of the Via Campesina gathered in Thailand to discuss, strategize and coordinate about one of the mainstays of farmers across the globe: Seeds.
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Defending Human Rights

Brazil’s “Green Energy” too Costly, say People Affected by Dams

By: Saulo Araujo | November 9, 2012

Before becoming Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Roussef helped to engineer an ambitious development plan that would change the country. Known as the Accelerated Growth Plan and the Ten-year Energy Plan, it would build 134 dams by the year of 2020 in the Amazon alone. Among the losers in the plan: thousands of acres of forest; habitat for endangered species; and thousands of families unfortunate enough to have ancestors who chose to settle these lands. According to Grassroots International’s partner, the Brazilian Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), the ambitious development plan failed to include any funding to offset hunger and unemployment, or to revamp public services for those displaced populations whose livelihoods will be wiped.
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Defending Human Rights

Preparations Underway for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine

By: Mina Remy | October 22, 2012

For the past year, Stop the Wall and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (both Grassroots International partners) have been working diligently with their Palestinian and Brazilian allies to fulfill the call issued in 2011 at the World Social Forum in Dakar. Then, participants expressed a desire to hold a thematic World Social Forum to explore ongoing social injustice in the occupied Palestinian territories; and to formulate an international response from the peoples of the world since states have either been unwilling or unable to provide pathways toward a just peace.
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Defending Human Rights

Korean Women Peasant’s Association Awarded the Food Sovereignty Prize

By: Nikhil Aziz | October 15, 2012

Last Wednesday, October 10^th, in New York City, I had the privilege of witnessing the US Food Sovereignty Alliance award the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize to the Korean Women Peasant’s Association (KWPA).
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Defending Human Rights

Message from Rafael Alegría, Honduran leader of the Vía Campesina

By: Sara Mersha | October 15, 2012

On May 1 of this year, my colleague Saulo Araujo (Program Coordinator for Latin America) and I spent the day with Rafael Alegría, a leader of the Vía Campesina based in Honduras. The video below offers some of his reflections.

Rafael’s message is clear:
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Defending Human Rights

Palestinians Face Food and Water Crisis in the West Bank Spurred by Israeli Control of Resources

By: Carol Schachet | October 11, 2012

Beit Ummar used to be known as the fruit basket of Palestine.
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Defending Human Rights

Honduran peasant leader’s life under threat

By: Saulo Araujo | October 2, 2012

Yesterday, Grassroots International received the alarming news that our partner Rafael Alegria, a leader of La Via Campesina in Honduras, has been moved to a safe house in fear for his life, following the murder of his closest legal advisor, Antonio Trejo Cabrera.

This comes as the violence in Honduras against farmers and Afro-descendent leaders continues to escalate. Politically motivated killings, kidnappings and death threats have increased steadily since the 2009 coup in the country and the installation of a post-coup regime. In the Aguan Region alone, more than 65 landless farmers have been killed.
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Defending Human Rights

Nicaragua Withdraws from US School of the Americas

By: Saulo Araujo | September 7, 2012

During a visit of a delegation of US and Central American activists to Nicaragua this week, the Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega announced that his country will not send any Army personnel to Fort Benning, Georgia to be trained in combat,...
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Defending Human Rights

Between the Buffer Zone and the Bluest Sea

By: Mina Remy | September 4, 2012

Before I arrived at Grassroots International (nearly a year ago), I thought I understood the hardships imposed on Gaza. I knew about the imposed siege, had read and heard of the Turkish flotilla of 2010 and other humanitarian attempts to reach Gaza. I even knew about loss of acres of farmland, inadequate access to potable water, shortage of medicines, shortage of building materials, and periodic bombardment by the Israeli Defense Forces.
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Defending Human Rights

“Land, water and food are part of our existence,” Garifunas share

By: Saulo Araujo | August 28, 2012

They left San Vicente searching for a peaceful place to live, free of the oppressive British colonial powers. Three thousand women, men and children sailing atop the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea were thirsty and hungry. The sun over their heads was abrasive. Many perished before reaching the island of Roatan, Honduras, their new home. Today, many of their Garifuna heirs, an Afro-descendant population in the Caribbean coast of Central America, are still struggling for days of peace, like their ancestors envisioned some 213 years ago.
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