Home Blog Page 442

PBI “spin off” Guatemala Stove Project helps to address climate breakdown

By
Brent Patterson
-

In this interview for Ottawa Magazine, Stephen Dale says to Hans Sinn, who co-founded Peace Brigades International in 1981, “Tell me about PBI spin-offs.”

Hans replies, “The Guatemala Stove Project is a big thing for people in Perth. It helps people build stoves, which replace open wood fires that are health hazards, in particular for women, who traditionally cook.”

The Guatemala Stove Project was started in 1999 by Tom Clarke, a carpenter and mason, who like Hans lives near Perth, just outside of Ottawa.

This Fifty-Five Plus article highlights, “The first time Tom was in Guatemala was in 1985. He was there volunteering for Peace Brigades International, a group whose mandate was to make political space so that people could protest and advance change.”

That article from May 2012 continues, “His job was to accompany Guatemalans who were in political danger, in the belief that they would be safer moving around with a foreigner during a time of armed conflict.”

Tom says, “If the police or army took them away, we would report it. The group that they were supporting was called GAM [Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo] and they were mostly widows of men who had been disappeared during the civil war.”

But Tom wanted to help in a different way.

He says, “I have a very clear memory of when I was 42 and in Guatemala and having a sleepless night in this village called San Jose de Mas Alla. I think that was the beginning of the stove project for me in my consciousness.”

That vision has turned into an amazing reality. This November 2015 article in the Ottawa Citizen reported that The Guatemala Stove Project builds “300-500 stoves each year and recently went over the 6,000 mark since its inception” in 1999.

As noted on The Guatemala Stove Project website, “Due to the circumstances of poverty, hundreds of thousands of indigenous Maya in Guatemala continue to cook indoors over wood burning fires.”

The vented stoves the Guatemala Stove Project has built mean that fewer Mayan women and children are at risk for respiratory illnesses, blindness and burns.

The design of the firebox also means a reduction in wood consumption by about 50 per cent, an important consideration in a country where deforestation is a huge issue. And as this article in The Guardian pointed out, burning wood releases more CO2 than gas, oil and even coal for the same amount of heat.

As such, the greater efficiency of the stoves, both helps to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation, another accelerant of climate breakdown.

To donate to the Guatemala Stove Project, please click here. It costs CAD$300.00 to build a stove for a family and every dollar helps. The Guatemala Stove Project is a great expression of practical solidarity and if you can support it, please do!

To see the 2-minute Global TV “Everyday Heroes” segment on Tom, click here.

You can also follow the Guatemala Stove Project on Facebook here.

PBI-Honduras seeks volunteers, apply by August 31!

By
Brent Patterson
-

 

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project is seeking field volunteers.

Key qualifications include a fluency in Spanish, a commitment to at least 12 months of field work, and an ability to work in a horizontal structure where decisions are made through consensus.

PBI-Honduras will cover the following costs: a round trip ticket to Honduras and back, accommodation and medical insurance, an honorarium of about $285 CAD per month for personal costs and repatriation once you have finished your contract.

Key dates include:

Deadline for applications – August 31

Interviews – September 15 to October 6

Online training – October 6 to December 31

In-person training in Valladolid, Spain – January 12-18, 2020

In 2018, eight international volunteers accompanied members of six organizations and one human rights defender working on business and human rights, land rights, indigenous rights, freedom of expression, support to victims, women’s rights and LGBTI rights.

Volunteers are based in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

All the information on how to apply to be a field volunteer in Honduras can be found here.

Please help spread the word!

PBI-Colombia seeks volunteers, apply by October 11!

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has opened the call to select volunteers who would join the field teams in Colombia starting in July/August 2020. Volunteers are based in Bogotá, Barrancabermeja and Apartadó.

The deadline to apply is October 11.

Following that, key dates include:

Between November 2019 and January 2020 – interviews with candidates.

February, March and April 2020 – an online training program that seeks to provide candidates with a greater knowledge of the situation in Colombia and the work of the team.

June 6 to 13, 2020 (tbc) – an intensive training session in Spain.

PBI-Colombia notes, “The people selected at the end of the training/selection meeting will join our teams in the second half of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, as established from the project based on our human resources needs.”

Last year, twenty-seven PBI-Colombia volunteers accompanied members of thirteen organizations and two individual human rights defenders working on business and human rights and forced disappearances.

Earlier this year, Javier Ignacio Hoyos from Canada joined the PBI-Colombia team.

Javier says, “I applied to PBI Colombia because I value its principles, I believe in its mission and I admire its work over the last decades.”

He adds, “I sincerely believe that by accompanying these people and communities in their day to day work and protecting their spaces for action, I will in a small way be part of the collective construction of a more peaceful, fair and inclusive society.”

All of the information on how to apply can be found here.

The Global Climate Strike and Colombian human rights defender Hernán Bedoya

By
Brent Patterson
-

The United Nations has highlighted that human rights defenders play an important role in helping to avert further climate breakdown.

The Global Climate Strike on September 20 and September 27 is an opportunity for people around the world concerned by climate change to acknowledge that role and the risks land and environmental defenders face.

On July 30, the Global Witness report Enemies of the State? highlighted that 164 land and environment defenders were killed in 2018.

That report specified that in 2018: 24 land and environment defenders were killed in Colombia, 16 in Guatemala, 14 in Mexico, 4 in Honduras, 2 in Kenya, and 1 in Indonesia.

That report notes that among the key resource sectors that are driving the violence against human rights defenders is agribusiness.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has reported, “Unfortunately, because current palm oil production methods often cause the destruction of carbon-rich tropical forests and peatlands, it is a major contributor to global warming.”

In 2012, the top palm oil producing countries included Colombia, Honduras and Guatemala. Colombia is the fourth-largest producer globally and the largest in Latin America.

Danilo Rueda is with the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, an organization accompanied by the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project.

In an interview with PBI-Colombia, Rueda says, “Palm oil means death because of the violence it brings with it and because of the environmental damage it causes. Because big business, hand in hand with Colombian and international policy, is destroying water sources and flora and fauna by depleting the forests. This is capitalist logic, which favours the accumulation of capital, and in the long term, the effects are highly negative.”

The death of Afro-Colombian land rights activist Hernán Bedoya has been linked to the expansion of the palm oil industry in that country.

The Guardian has reported, “Bedoya was shot 15 times on 5 December [2017] while he was riding his horse to the vet in Pedeguita y Mancilla, Chocó.”

That article explains, “A year before he died, Hernán warned the palm oil companies planned to plant another 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres), which would be impossible unless he and more than a dozen other campesinos were dispossessed.”

And it notes, “[Hernán – a] leader of the opposition to palm oil plantations – was assassinated by a gang linked to agribusiness and narco-traffickers. …[His son believes] his father’s death was ordered by a politician, who secures land for businesses with the hired muscle of the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.”

The writing in the PBI-Colombia photo included at the top of this article reads: “Sin olvido (we will not forget you) Hernán Bedoya”.

Hernán has not been forgotten and his story will be remembered and recounted by PBI-Canada during the Global Climate Strike next month.

A 4-minute video featuring Hernán shared by the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, Frontera Invisible and Transport & Environment can be seen here.

 

PBI-Colombia accompanies CAHUCOPANA family farmers in reparations process

By
Brent Patterson
-

On August 15, the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Projected posted, “Last weekend, PBI accompanied CAHUCOPANA in the Northeast Antioqueño in the first steps of implementing the Comprehensive Reparations Plan, in the presence of the Victims Unit.”

PBI-Colombia has previously explained that more than three hundred family farmers formed the Humanitarian Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace of the Northeast Antioquia (CAHUCOPANA) in 2004.

With respect to the Comprehensive Reparations Plan noted in the PBI-Colombia post, Julia Zulver from the University of Oxford has explained, “Colombia’s unprecedented reparations programme guarantees financial, land restitution, and holistic benefits for millions of victims [of country’s half-century long internal conflict].”

Her JusticeInfo.net article further notes, “The Victims’ Unit and the Land Restitution Unit were created as the institutions in charge of meting out the various reparations guaranteed under the Law [Ley 1448 de 2011].”

But her June 2018 article also significantly cautions, “With only 7% payment to date, the government faces the challenge of making good on promises to its citizenry, undermining the potential for building lasting peace.”

She specifies (with the numbers available last year) that more than 8.6 million Colombians have registered with the Victims Unit as victims of the armed conflict, while only 580,415 people have received payments.

Notably, with respect to land restitution, Zulver notes that less than a third of those eligible to apply have registered with the Land Restitution Unit.

Frances Thomson has written in Forced Migration Review, “There are numerous reasons for the lack of applications.”

Thomson notes lack of trust in the authorities, absence of awareness or limited understanding of the law, as well as difficulties accessing the relevant institutions for various reasons, including travel distances and costs.

She then highlights, “But perhaps the most urgent threat to the restitution process is the attempt to crush it using violence. At least 72 land restitution claimants and leaders have been murdered, and thousands more have received threats against their lives.”

And Thomson specifies, “Paramilitary ‘successor groups’ are responsible for the majority of crimes against land claimants and restitution leaders, as is well documented and widely acknowledged.”

PBI-Colombia has noted, “CAHUCOPANA has been lobbying to raise awareness of the neo-paramilitary presence and the absence of guarantees for leaders and farmers in Northeastern Antioquia.”

It adds, “The FARC’s departure has produced a vacuum that is being filled by other armed groups, which threaten the communities and the construction of genuine peace.”

PBI-Colombia has accompanied CAHUCOPANA since 2013.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies the Peaceful Resistance of Cahabón in its struggle against dams

By
Brent Patterson
-

On August 13, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted on its Facebook page, “This weekend we accompanied the Peaceful Resistance of Cahabón, visiting new communities that joined the resistance.”

That post adds, “With them they strengthen their fight for the defense of the territory.”

PBI-Guatemala has previously noted, “Many of these communities are suffering intensely the environmental impacts caused by the Renace company dams.”

In October 2016, BBC Mundo reported on community opposition to the controversial “Renace hydroelectric complex, which consists of four power plants” on the Cahabón River.

On February 21, 2017, Telesur reported, “Dozens of Indigenous Q’eqchi Mayans came from several towns along the Cahabon River, in the northern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz, to the capital, to protest against hydroelectric projects carried out by the Spanish group Cobra, owned by Real Madrid’s President Florentino Perez.”

That article highlighted, “Indigenous leader Bernardo Caal Xol told reporters that the firm has left about 50 communities without water, whose survival directly depended on the Cahabon River, among many other negative environmental impacts.”

PBI-United Kingdom has posted, “In August 2017, PBI provided security support to the good-faith consultation in which the 195 communities of the Cahabón River overwhelmingly rejected the Oxec hydroelectric projects, which threaten to seriously disrupt local ecosystems and water supplies.”

And in November 2018, Caal Xol, a Mayan Q’eqchi’ community leader, was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison.”

Telesur notes, “It was Caal Xol who filed three lawsuits against the Oxec construction company at different institutions, including accusations for failing to consult the local population, and illegally cutting down 15 hectares of trees.”

Telesur has also reported, “The communities claim the Oxec and Renace hydroelectric projects are illegal because the local Indigenous Q’eqchi’ peoples were not properly consulted and informed about it, as established by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.”

A May 2018 interview with Caal Xol conducted by PBI-Guatemala and published by PBI-UK in English can be read here.

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied the Resistance since July 2017.

PBI-Mexico accompanies Tlachinollan’s 25th anniversary gathering

By
Brent Patterson
-

On August 9, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project tweeted that it is accompanying the “Words of life” forum in Tlapa, Guerrero.

Earlier this week, the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Centre tweeted, “This Friday, August 9, we will hold a forum in the city of Tlapa called ‘Words of life, paths of hope’, to recover the memory of the historical struggles in our state that have left a trail of violence that bleeds us [due to the pattern of impunity that persists against the perpetrators].”

This forum marks the 25th anniversary of the organization. PBI-Mexico has accompanied Tlachinollan for 16 years (since late 2003).

PBI-Mexico has previously explained, “The organization since its founding has sought to promote and defend the rights of the Na savi, Me’phaa, Nauas, Nn´anncue and Mestizo peoples of the Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero.”

That post highlights, “Tlachinollan works to defend and protect the collective rights of indigenous peoples; economic, social and cultural rights; civil and political rights; women’s rights; and especially the cases for which it provides legal representation.”

On August 9, La Prensa reported, “The Mexican State is indebted to the indigenous peoples, since their rights do not even appear in the most important norm of the country, which is the Constitution, said specialists.”

“That is why these peoples continue to be considered and treated as ‘second-class citizens’, says Abel Barrera Hernández, director of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Centre, an organization that accompanies indigenous and rural communities in the Guerrero mountain.”

“The director of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Centre ensures that native peoples are willing to talk and make agreements, as long as the initiatives guarantee them the basic floor of what development means to them.”

That La Prensa article adds, “Explicitly recognizing the territorial rights of indigenous peoples and making a significant investment to the countryside so that communities recover their self-sufficiency and food sovereignty are, according to Barrera Hernández, two actions that the Mexican State must undertake to start paying off its historical debt with this sector of the population.”

In this overview for their 25th anniversary forum, Tlachinollan says, “These two and a half decades have been of many learnings and multiple challenges. We have understood that the defenders of the front line are the men and women who fight hard to survive in the countryside and in the peripheries of the city.”

They add, “We owe them and for them we fight.”

#25AñosTlachinollan

The Global Climate Strike and the crucial role of human rights defenders

By
Brent Patterson
-

The United Nations recently highlighted that human rights defenders play an important role in helping to avert further climate breakdown.

Hopefully that role can also be acknowledged as millions of people around the world join the Global Climate Strike on September 20 and September 27.

That acknowledgement would provide a global spotlight that could help save the lives of defenders working to protect the land, water and air.

On July 30, the Global Witness report Enemies of the State? highlighted that 164 land and environment defenders were killed in 2018.

That report specified that in 2018: 24 land and environment defenders were killed in Colombia, 16 in Guatemala, 14 in Mexico, 4 in Honduras, 2 in Kenya, and 1 in Indonesia.

Now, the report The supply chain of violence highlights that, “Between 2002 and 2017, 1,558 people in 50 countries were killed for defending their environments and lands.”

Between 2014 and 2017, the report notes that the most deaths in the mining sector were in Colombia (25 people) and that the most deaths related to water and dams were in Guatemala (12 people) and Honduras (12 people).

The report further explains that environmental defenders include “community activists, members of social movements, lawyers, journalists, non-governmental organization staff, indigenous peoples, members of traditional, peasant and agrarian communities, and those who resist forced eviction or other violent interventions.”

It notes that the key resource sectors that are driving the violence against human rights defenders are:

1) agribusiness (which includes palm oil plantations, a major contributor to global warming),

2) logging (deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads),

3) mining and extractive industries (gold mining drives deforestation of the tropics which would otherwise absorb large amounts of greenhouse gases),

4) water and dams (hydroelectric dams release about a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases worldwide every year), and

5) poaching (just as climate change puts 20-30 per cent of species at risk of extinction).

The report concludes, “People are dying to protect their livelihoods, along with the forests, lands and ecosystems that are essential for all our futures.”

The UN says, “Human rights and the environment are intertwined; human rights cannot be enjoyed without a safe, clean and healthy environment.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council also recently adopted this resolution that stresses that human rights defenders must be allowed to do their work free from insecurity in recognition of the important role they play in supporting countries to fulfil their obligations under the Paris climate agreement.

Peace Brigades International-Canada believes that human rights defenders are essential actors in promoting environmental and social justice. It is vital that countries respect human rights norms in order to avert further climate breakdown.

Look for details here as details become available on the Global Climate Strike marches and rallies taking part in communities across Canada.

PBI-Kenya accompanies human rights defenders in Nairobi’s informal settlements

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project accompanies human rights defenders in Nairobi’s informal urban settlements.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has highlighted, “Living conditions are shocking and intolerable [in these settlements]. Residents often live without water and sanitation and are in constant fear of eviction.”

Our Annual Review notes that in 2018, “Four international volunteers accompanied members of two grassroots organisations and twenty-nine human rights defenders working in the Nairobi’s urban settlements and the Mount Kenya region.”

Nairobi’s informal settlements include Mathare, Kibera and Dandora. A crucial issue in these settlements is the extrajudicial (police) killings of young people.

France 24 recently reported, “After appeals to the police from victims’ families went largely unheeded, activists formed justice centres … in order to document the executions and report them to human rights organisations.”

PBI-Kenya works with the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC).

The MSJC report Who Is Next? A Participatory Action Research Report Against the Normalization of Extrajudicial Executions in Mathare (May 30, 2017) reported that the police killed 803 young people in Mathare between 2013 and 2015.

Now, Human Rights Watch reports, “In 2018 alone, Kenyan human rights groups documented at least 267 cases of extrajudicial killings by police.”

That report also found that in 2018 and 2019 police shot dead at least 21 people in Nairobi’s Dandora and Mathare neighbourhoods.

And on August 6, The Guardian posted this 12-minute video with the caption, “Promising student Carilton Maina was shot by the police in Nairobi.”

It adds, “As part of The Guardian‘s special focus on Kibera, we met residents of Africa’s largest slum to explore their deep distrust of the police and find out what Maina’s, and other recent deaths, can tell us about the dramatic rise in extrajudicial killings across Kenya.”

To respond to this issue, PBI-Kenya together with the MSJC, the Ghetto Foundation and Saferworld began a two-year project in April 2018 titled Ushirikiano Mwema kwa Usalama (Good relationships for safety) to tackle the normalization of extrajudicial killings in the Nairobi constituencies of Mathare, Kamukunji and Embakasi North.

PBI-Kenya has also joined with other groups to create an online platform called Missing Voices, with the aim of providing facts and figures around extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances and contributing to increased visibility for these issues.

And PBI-Kenya developed a Toolkit for WHRDs in Nairobi’s Urban Settlements.

As noted on its website, “The purpose of this Toolkit, is to provide WHRDs [women human rights defenders] in Nairobi’s urban settlements, and those in similar environments, with knowledge, information and relevant tools useful for improving their understanding on security and protection.”

PBI-Kenya has also partnered with Indigenous communities that have experienced historical forced displacement and are struggling to gain access to their ancestral lands, and refugees who have been forced into exile for defending human rights in their home countries and who continue their struggle for human rights while exiled in Kenya.

You can follow the work of PBI-Kenya via its Facebook page.

PBI-Colombia accompanies Cahucopana in area with Canadian gold mines

By
Brent Patterson
-

On August 4, the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project posted, “This Sunday we accompanied the Cahucopana organization in Puerto López (Bajo Cauca, Antioquia) who conducted a workshop with social leaders in the area in order to determine protection and self-protection measures.”

PBI-Colombia has previously explained, “More than three hundred family farmers from Northeastern Antioquia decided in 2004 to create the Corporación Acción Humanitaria para la Convivencia y la Paz del Nordeste Antioqueño (Cahucopana).”

That post adds, “According to the plans in Proyecto Visión Colombia 2019, the mining area in Northeastern Antioquia will be the principal mining district for increasing access by multinationals and reducing artisanal mining.”

That includes mining by corporations based in Canada.

This rabble article from February 2017 notes, “According to the Colombian National Agency of Mining there are 27 Canadian companies operating in the country with 42 mining titles for copper, silver and gold.”

In March 2019, Mining.com reported, “Antioquia Gold of Calgary has announced the successful start of production at its Cisneros gold mine 80 km northeast of Medellin, in Antioquia. [The mine] has now reached the planned commercial rate of 500 t/d.”

Furthermore, the website for Toronto-based Continental Gold says it “is the most advanced large-scale gold mining company in Colombia and is presently developing it’s 100%-owned Buriticá project in Antioquia for scheduled production in 2020.”

This Financial Post article reports on attacks that have been experienced by Continental Gold in Colombia, including at its Buriticá and Berlin sites.

That article highlights, “[Toronto-based] Gran Colombia’s workers have also faced a terror campaign from a right-wing paramilitary that extorted its workers, and in at least one case murdered a worker from one of its mines.”

BNN Bloomberg has explained, “Illegal mining is a massive problem around the world, particularly in Latin America. Organized crime groups make a lot of money because they can launder their money more easily than by moving drugs.”

Beyond paramilitary and guerilla violence, there has also been community opposition.

The Financial Post has reported, “In 2017, one of [Gran Colombia’s] mines faced protests by a local mining collective that lasted 42 days.”

PBI-Colombia has explained, “Thousands of families from the region have lived off artisanal mining for centuries, mainly gold mining. …The arrival of large companies became a reality at the end of 2010, when 70 [small-scale artisanal] mines were closed and 118 people were detained in relation to informal mining in the area.”

PBI-Colombia has a team of volunteers based in Apartadó, Antioquia and has accompanied Cahucopana since 2013.

PBI-Colombia is currently seeking additional volunteers. For more on that, please click here. The deadline for applications is October 11.

1...441442443...452Page 442 of 452