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Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

News Article

McGovern (D-MA) and Pocan (D-WI) 94 members of congress through a dear colleague letter urging Trump administration to push for peace in Colombia!

News Article

As Pope Francis wrote five years in Laudato Si’ (#139), the range of these issues, from deforestation to migration and overcrowded cities, suggests that “we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis, which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”

News Article

IRTF full-time volunteer Quin Galvin participated in a recent Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective to Colombia to learn from social leaders in the movement for environmental justice. This delegation brought about the realization that our work as environmental actors goes beyond the individual-actions approach that dominates our understanding of "how to be environmentally conscious," and how participating in collective work towards environmental justice is the only way towards collective liberation. Traducción en Español aqui también.

News Article

“It looked like a war,” said one eyewitness as 1,000 National Police and Military Police violently dispersed a peaceful 88-day encampment of water protectors in October 2018. Eight injured, one killed. One year later, seven Guapinol River defenders were imprisoned and, in March 2020, still sit in pre-trial detention. What’s going on? A large-scale open-pit iron oxide mine threatens their water source and way of life in the Aguan Valley near the Atlantic Coast of Honduras. Carlos Leonel George, an ex-prisoner incarcerated for resisting the mine, says that violence will escalate if the company continues with the open-pit mine because “…without that water they won’t have a way to live. It’s not a joke for them. It’s about survival.” Juana Zúniga, a leader in the Guapinol community and wife of political prisoner José Abelino Cedillo, explains why residents have organized their resistance: “We fight so we don’t have to emigrate from our country. If we cease to fight against the mining company, there are 3,500 people who would have to leave the community.” Reinaldo Dominguez, ex-political prisoner and community activist, looks out over the construction site in the distance and tells the reporter, “We live in fear every day.” #FreedomForGuapinol

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