News on Land

Earlier this year, Transparency International Uganda partnered with the Daily Monitor newspaper and a local TV station to document the situation.

Corruption in land governance is the abuse of power for private gain while carrying out the functions of land administration and land manage­ment. When land governance systems are weak, corruption thrives.

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Officials in Brazil's largest state are facing mounting pressure to crackdown on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest where thousands of workers are destroying ecologically sensitive land, according to the Amazonas state prosecutor's office.

Since 2007, thousands of miners have descended upon Apui in northwestern Brazil in the so-called "New El Dorado" hoping to strike rich but in the process destroying 14,000 hectares of jungle by cutting down trees and poisoning rivers with mercury.

The future looks bright for farmers in West Bengal after India's Supreme Court ordered a carmaker to return the 400 hectares of land

San José del Guaviare, Colombia – Flying over the gateway to the Amazon in Colombia’s Chiribiquite National Park, the scene below is a paradise of nature untouched. Rivers snake through dense forest, carving pristine beaches from the banks, while the only breaks in the treeline are from the rocks that soar up over the park.

Hace unas cuantas décadas que en Uruguay no son comunes las reflexiones en economía política fuera de la órbita del pensamiento dominante.

In a joint initiative between the Land Portal Foundation and the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) called Enhancing Land Portal as an Effective Tool for Strategic Promotion and Campaigning Around SDG Land Monitoring Initiatives, the Land Portal  is looking for a Consultant to review and develop content on land and the SDGs as well as presenting it online in a clear and communicative way.

Dr. Othello Brandy, chairman of the Liberia Land Authority (LLA), on Tuesday told a gathering of civil society organization (CSOs) that the country may likely go revert to serious crises if the Draft Land Rights Act is not passed by the current lawmakers before the end of their tenures.

“If the act is not passed, it means only a few people will continue to have rights over your land, including the right to say what they do and not do with the land, because the tribal title that you hold for your land does not give any legitimate ownership right to you,” Brandy warned.

 

Unlike the interests of big oil companies, the Wampis revere the sanctity of the forests and mountains in which they live.

On November 29, 2015, the Wampis nation, an Indigenous community of Peru, declared plans to become an autonomous government. Now, Peru's first self-governing Indigenous community has won a major victory toward having their autonomy officially recognized.

KOIDU, Sierra Leone, May 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A dispute over a bridge in eastern Sierra Leone thought to span diamond deposits has divided a local community with a foreign mining company accused of illegally mining the area after volunteering to rebuild the overpass.

The Congo Bridge in Koidu, the capital of Kono District, was deemed by local authorities to be in danger of collapsing after years of illegal small-scale mining around the base.

 

The Father Ring Parish Hall in Punta Gorda will be the venue for a lecture on the CCJ’s judgement in the Maya Leaders Alliance case that was brought against the Attorney General of Belize. The initiative is a collaboration between the National Garifuna Council and the Impact Justice Project. Sandra Miranda is the President of the National Garifuna Council.

SANDRA MIRANDA

 

ADDIS ABABA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Aworar Meka had been living and working at the Reppi rubbish dump in Addis Ababa for only one month when tragedy struck.

A giant landslide at the 50-year-old dump, the Ethiopian capital's only landfill site, hit his neighborhood on March 11, destroying dozens of homes and killing at least 115 people.