By Cory Champer
Press Release
GENEVA (7 July 2015) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, today urged the Government of Belize to ensure respect for the rights of the country’s Maya people to non-discrimination and traditional property.
“Under international human rights standards, indigenous peoples have the right to use, develop and also to control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership,” Ms. Tauli-Corpuz emphasized.
On June 29, 2015, President of the UN General Assembly, Sam K. Kutesa, hosted the High-Level event on Climate Change at UN headquarters in New York.
Rigoberto Juárez, detained in March, 2015 for his activism in opposition to a proposed dam of a sacred river in Santa Cruz Barillas, Guatemala by the Spanish corporation, Hidro Santa Cruz, remains unjustly imprisoned in Guatemala City.
UMass Boston’s Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) and Suffolk University Law School’s Indigenous Peoples Rights Clinic are pleased to announce a year-long, statewide project, Massachusetts Native Peoples and the Social Contract: A Reassessment for Our Times. Supported by a grant from Mass Humanities, the two organizations will host four roundtable discussions and listening sessions in areas of the state with substantial Native American populations.
Photo by Robin Oisín Llewellyn
An incident on Maya land in southern Belize has sparked a passionate national debate in Belize over the role of race, ethnicity, and democracy in Belizean society.
Photos: 1. Oil palm trees extend into the distance in Bajo Aguan, Hondruas, credit ICIJ. 2. The clubhouse where peasants gather in La Confianza. The peasants have operated La Confianza since forcibly seizing it from the Dinant Corporation during the ongoing land conflict in Bajo Aguan, credit ICIJ 3. Honduran police agents detain peasant leaders from Bajo Aguán at a protest in the capital, Tegucigalpa, credit Coolloud.
By Zoe Rand
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.