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	Brazil: Campaigners welcome court rulings in favor of indigenous land rights by Stephen Corry Survival International   Aug. 2017   Indigenous activists and human rights campaigners around the world celebrated Brazil’s Supreme Court ruling unanimously in favor of indigenous land rights.   In two land rights cases, all eight of the judges present voted for indigenous land rights and against the government of Mato Grosso state, in the Amazon, which was demanding compensation for lands mapped out as indigenous territories decades ago.   Although ruling on one further case was postponed, this outcome has been seen as a significant victory for indigenous land rights in the country.   An international campaign was launched after President Temer attempted to have a controversial legal opinion on tribal land recognition adopted as policy.   The proposal stated that indigenous peoples who were not occupying their ancestral lands on October 5, 1988, when the country’s current constitution came into force, would no longer have the right to live there. This new proposal was referred to as the “marco temporal” or “time frame” by activists and legal experts.   If the judges had accepted this, it would have set indigenous rights in the country back decades, and risked destroying dozens of tribes. The theft of tribal land destroys self-sufficient peoples and their diverse ways of life. It causes disease, destitution and suicide.   In response to the ruling, Luiz Henrique Eloy, a Terena Indian lawyer, said: “This is an important victory for the indigenous peoples of these territories. The Supreme Court recognised their original [land] rights and this has national repercussions, because the Supreme Court indicated that it was against the concept of the time frame.”   APIB, Brazil’s pan-indigenous organization, led a protest movement, under the slogan “our history didn’t start in 1988.”   The measure is being opposed by Indians across Brazil. Eliseu Guarani from the Guarani Kaiowá people in the southwest of the country said: “If the time frame is enforced, there will be no more legal recognition of indigenous territories… there is violence, we all face it, attacks by paramilitaries, criminalization, racism.”   Survival International led an international outcry against the proposal, calling on supporters around the globe to petition Brazil’s leaders and high court to reject the opinion.   While the ruling does not end the possibility of further attacks on tribal land rights in Brazil, it is a significant victory against the country’s agribusiness lobby, who have close ties to the Temer government.   Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “If the judges had accepted this proposal it would have set back indigenous rights in the country by decades. Brazil’s indigenous peoples are already battling a comprehensive assault on their lands and identity – a continuation of the invasion and genocide which characterized the European colonization of the Americas. We’re hugely grateful for the energy and enthusiasm of our supporters in helping the Indians fight back against this disastrous proposal.” http://bit.ly/2BdKolL   http://www.survivalinternational.org/news Visit the related web page
	Towards a recognition of the Right to Land and other Natural Resources by Geneva Academy, ESCR-Net, agencies   May 2017   Zambia’s peasants at risk of becoming squatters on their own land – UN expert warns   The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, today cautioned that many Zambian peasants are at risk of becoming squatters on their own land as Zambia is turned into Southern Africa’s food basket.   “The push to turn commercial large-scale agricultural into a driving engine of the Zambian economy, in a situation where the protection of access to land is weak, can risk pushing small-holder farmers and peasants off their land and out of production with severe impacts on the people’s right to food,” Ms. Elver said at the end of her first official visit to the country.   The expert drew special attention to the fact that in the Zambian dual-model of land tenure tenants on state land enjoy the full protection of their property rights. “However,” she noted, “landholders under customary tenure, affecting around 85% of the land, mostly in hands of peasants, are essentially occupants or users of land and their property and land rights remain unprotected.”   “This situation is particularly alarming since small scale farmers represent 60% of Zambians and at the same time produce 85% of the food for the population,” Ms. Elver pointed out. “These people are generally amongst the poorest of the population, 40% of them live in rural areas and suffer from extreme poverty.”   “Many peasants are forced to work as contract farmers for the larger commercial industrial farms in adverse conditions, or are obliged to sell their products at undervalued prices to monopoly type multinationals who buy farmers’ product for export,” the expert explained.   The Special Rapporteur heard testimonies of comparatively successful small-scale farmers who were still forced to sell their animals in order to pay for their children to go to school. Many small-scale farmers have their children working from as early as the age of six to secure their families’ livelihood.   Ms. Elver noted that the growth in the agriculture sector in Zambia in the last decade has not been inclusive but limited to large scale farmers, leaving the small scale farmers behind. “The agricultural sector has failed to make a dent on poverty levels in the rural areas and as such the model for the strengthening of the agricultural sectors need to be altered,” she said.   “It is imperative that national strategies incorporate human rights principles that include the protection of their access to land and other productive resources in order to protect the county’s traditional food system, small holder farmers and their livelihoods,” the Special Rapporteur urged.   Access to adequate and nutritious food continues to be a challenge across most of the country, with women and children in the rural area faring worst. Many children and their families only eat only one meal of not necessarily nutritious food per day.   A recent study has found that severe acute malnutrition in Zambia comes with a 40% mortality rate, five times the global average due to lack in access to adequate health services as well as to therapeutic foods.   The expert was alarmed to find out that around 40% of children under five are stunted with this figure reaching above 50% in some of the rural provinces, and even higher in refugee camps and the most marginalized rural areas, while the country was enjoying impressive economic growth rates of over 6 per cent per year.   “This is not tolerable since the effects of under-nutrition are irreversible, and lack of access to adequate and nutritious food is having a detrimental effect on future generations and must be addressed as a matter of urgency,” she stressed.   The country’s agricultural development model based on intensive commercial farming has increased rates of deforestation and to bio-diversity loss. It has also increased the use of agro chemicals, including glyphosate, which have a scientifically proven adverse impact on human health, in particular on children.   “It is vital that development plans and policies take into account the true cost of industrial farming methods primarily for its people, but also on soil and water resources, as well as the social and economic impact on people rather than focusing only on short term profitability and economic growth,” Ms. Elver said. http://bit.ly/2qmTurF   May 2017 (Geneva Academy News)   The Right to Land and Other Natural Resources, by Dr Chistophe Golay and Dr Adrianna Bessa, summarizes key findings linked to the recognition of the right to land and other natural resources in the context of the current negotiation of a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (UN Declaration) at the UN Human Rights Council. It also presents the protection of this right that exists under international law, addresses its individual and collective dimensions, and describes its core elements.   ‘The recognition of this right is of fundamental importance to billions of rural people worldwide’ stress Chistophe Golay and Adrianna Bessa.   Peasants and other people working in rural areas, such as small-scale farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists, hunters and gatherers, have always used and managed land and other natural resources (water bodies, marine eco-systems, fisheries, pastures and forests) to ensure the sustainability of their livelihood systems and food supplies, to have a place to live in security, peace and dignity, and to develop their customs, traditions and cultural identities.   ‘These customary practices have been acknowledged as individual and collective rights by states’ underline the authors, Christophe Golay and Adriana Bessa.   The right to land and other natural resources has been recognized for rural women and indigenous peoples in international human rights law.   The right to land and other natural resources should be defined as the right to physical and economic access to land and natural resources, which are sufficient in quantity and adequate, so that peasants and other people working in rural areas can enjoy an adequate standard of living, have a place to live in security, peace and dignity, and develop their customs, traditions and cultural identities. This right may be exercised alone, in association with others, or as a community.   ‘Negotiators should also define states’ obligations in relation to the right to land and other natural resources, including the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil this right’ recalls Golay. ‘States must also ensure that the right to land and natural resources is enjoyed without any discrimination, and on the basis of equality between women and men, and that it is implemented in a sustainable way for both present and future generations’ he concludes.   http://www.geneva-academy.ch/news/detail/50-towards-a-recognition-of-the-right-to-land-and-other-natural-ressources http://www.escr-net.org/ http://www.fian.org/ http://business-humanrights.org/en http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RuralAreas/Pages/4thSession.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RuralAreas/Pages/3rdSession.aspx Visit the related web page
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