Tag Archive for 'accountability'Page 11 of 11

13
Feb

Shoshone Take Land Dispute to UN

Native Group Takes Land Dispute to UN, by Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 (IPS) - Feeling cheated and betrayed by Washington for nearly 150 years, a Native American tribe is now looking to the United Nations for help in protecting its ancestral lands.

“Where else do we go?” Carrie Dann, a leader of the Shoshone people of the United States, told IPS in an interview about why her people have gone to the U.N. to demand justice.

Dann and other Shoshone leaders maintain that the U.S. government has used a series of illegal tactics to gain control of their ancestral lands, including seizures of livestock and the imposition of heavy trespass fines.

They charge the U.S. government with trying to sell or lease their land to big corporations involved in gold mining and other excavations in the area, which has disrupted not only their traditional way of life, but also caused enormous damage …

Published on
February 13, 2006
  0 Comments 982 views

12
Feb

Reinventing Accountability for the 21st Century

December 9, 2005. Simon Zadek, chief executive of AccountAbility, introduces a new debate on openDemocracy that explores a new generation of accountability mechanisms focussed on the horizontal, not the hierarchical.

Democracy is above all about being able to hold governments to account. Elections are crucially important for doing this, but by no means the only accountability mechanism required for a flourishing democracy. This requires that all centres of power and influence, including business and indeed civil society and labour organisations, can be held to account by citizens and their (also accountable) representatives. Throughout history, progressive social movements have pushed for more appropriate, and more effectively enforced accountability as the bedrock of their democratic demands. And how this has been done has changed over time, sometimes relying more on the law, sometimes relying on public pressure and ideas and sometimes, sadly, through violent means.

Today, there appears to …

Published on
February 12, 2006
  0 Comments 661 views

01
Feb

Water privatization, and the World Water forum

DEVELOPMENT: New Scuffles Over Water, By Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Feb 1 (Tierramérica) - There are many who predict that future wars will be over water supplies, but the wait won’t be long for witnessing some intense skirmishes, expected in March at the 4th World Water Forum between those who favour and those who oppose privatisation of this essential resource.

Every day around the world, 2,000 to 5,000 people die from causes related to water shortages or poor water quality, and one billion people do not have ready access to water. The investments needed to ensure universal access are huge, and although governments assume most of the costs, private sector participation in water services is growing exponentially.

The World Water Forum in Mexico is the fourth, following those held in Morocco (1997), Netherlands (2000) and Japan (2003). They are organised by the World Water Council, created in the mid-1990s by representatives from the …

Published on
February 1, 2006
  0 Comments 2,517 views

20
Jan

Betchel vs. Bolivia: The People Win

Article By Democracy Center, COA - The Cochabamba water revolt - which began exactly six years ago this month - will end this morning when Bechtel, one of the world’s most powerful corporations, formally abandons its legal effort to take $50 million from the Bolivian people. Bechtel made that demand before a secretive trade court operated by the World Bank, the same institution that coerced Bolivia to privatize the water to begin with.

Faced with protests, barrages of e-mails, visits to their homes, and years of damaging press, Bechtel executives finally decided to surrender, walking away with a token payment equal to thirty cents.

That retreat sets a huge global precedent.

The Cochabamba Water Revolt

In January 2000 the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia woke up one morning to discover that their public water system had been taken over by a mysterious new private company, Aguas del Tunari. The World Bank had coerced Bolivia to …

Published on
January 20, 2006
  1 Comment 1,861 views

19
Dec

Colombian police back off as Indians grab land

CALOTO, Colombia (Reuters) - The Colombian police, hardened in combat against Marxist rebels, have given up trying to throw a determined group of Nasa Indians off farms they grabbed nearly two months ago in a drive for land rights.

Long ignored by government and targeted by both far-right paramilitary outlaws and Marxist rebels, Indians in the southern province of Cauca showed signs of a new militancy five years ago, when they launched a program of passive resistance against combatants in Colombia’s 41-year-old guerrilla war.

Emboldened by their partial success in using only ceremonial sticks and stubbornness to drive away armed fighters, the Indians of Cauca have now launched a bid to force the government to hand over land they say it promised them in 1971.

About 2,000 Indians chose the symbolically charged date of October 12-Columbus Day, which commemorates the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and the beginning of European settlement …

Published on
December 19, 2005
  0 Comments 866 views

Video activism and the Chiapas Media Project

In the following presentation, Claudia Magallanes-Blanco from the University of Western Sydney talks about the role of video activism as a world-wide tool for empowerment and the Chiapas Media Project, a collaborative effort based in Mexico that provides indigenous Zapatistas in Chiapas and peasants in Guerrero with training and equipment to produce their own videos.

Since forming in 1998, CMP has distributed over 6000 videos, including: Zapata’s Garden, a film that looks at the society the Zapatista’s are building; …


I Am A Defender of the Rainforest

Known as ‘Soy defensor de la selva’ in Spanish, I am a Defender of the Rainforest is an award-winning documentary that was filmed, edited, and directed by members of the Sarayaku community in southern Ecuador.

The film shows how the …


Underreported Struggles #19, October 2008

In this month’s Underreported Struggles: 400,000 Guatemalans Reject Development Model, Philippines Indigenous People Unite for the Land, Riot Police Target Algonquin Blockade, Chagos Islanders Denied the Right of Return, and 17 other stories …


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