- A new report evaluates the state of human rights among Indigenous peoples in five tropical forest countries: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Indonesia.
- One of the key findings is that governments in these countries are prioritizing the expansion of the energy sector, infrastructure, mining and logging, and the development of industrial agriculture close to or inside Indigenous territories, while loosening oversight of land grabbing and illegal deforestation.
- Indigenous peoples have had to adapt their resistance and fight to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to avoid having their rights violated even further.
“One of the good things about living here is that it is — or at least it was, before the pandemic — possible to coexist and share ideas, sips of coffee and food bites with the very people you write about and work with.” This is how anthropologist Thais Mantovanelli, a researcher at the Instituto Socioambiental, an NGO that defends Indigenous and environmental rights in Brazil, describes her life in Altamira. This municipality in the Amazonian state of Pará is ripe with land ownership conflicts and violence.
Link to full report: http://Indigenous rights take a hit under cover of pandemic, new report says