Femicide and Impunity: A humanitarian crisis in Central America, and a growing problem worldwide
by La Vía Campesina
FEMICIDE AND IMPUNITY: A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN CENTRAL AMERICA, AND A
GROWING PROBLEM WORLDWIDE [1]
[2]El Salvador has had the highest rate of femicide in the world, with
2, 250 femicides between 2010 and 2013. Guatemala has the third and
Honduras the seventh highest rate of femicides. In Guatemala, only 2% of
murdered women's cases were investigated in 2013 and likewise in
Honduras less than 2% were investigated. For cases that somehow make it
to court in Guatemala, 90% of defendants are not convicted. It is much
the same in El Salvador. In 2014 alone, between January and October,
over 300 bodies of young women between the ages of 12 and 18 years old
have been found in unmarked common graves.
Femicide is the violent and deliberate murder of a woman, and is a
crime, but many national governments do not specifically define such
murders as a crime in their criminal codes. Thus, femicide is difficult
to prosecute through the justice system of many states. Stories of
thousands of women and girls who have been murdered and then discarded
like rubbish in alleyways, city streets and dumpsters continue to make
headlines. The victims of femicide often show signs of torture, rape, or
breast and genital mutilation and dismembered body parts.
The acute epidemic of femicide in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala is
related to historical patterns of violence and abuse in Central America,
where death squads and civil wars have left a legacy of violence,
intimidation and ongoing impunity. But it is also linked to the
prevailing history of patriarchal norms that have existed for centuries
in almost all of our societies across the globe that presume that women
are the property of men to be treated and disposed of according to the
whims of men. In Latin America these patriarchal norms are often
described as machismo.
It is difficult to effectively implement proposals or laws aiming to
eliminate violence, exploitation, and abuse of girls, adolescents, and
women. In El Salvador a law on femicide came into effect in 2012. The
law was the result of years of women's struggles and mobilizations that
led to a landmark legislation to address gender-based violence enacted
by former president Mauricio Funes. El Salvador's law on femicide, which
carries a prison sentence of 20 to 50 years, requires judges to
establish proof that the death of a woman is motivated by hatred or
contempt based on gender. But there are many judges who don't take
femicide seriously and don't want to deal with this crime and apply the
law correctly.
Public awareness campaigns that show the incremental scale of verbal,
emotional and physical violence women face before femicide occurs are
necessary. In addition, actions to demand respect for the human rights
of women and an end to impunity are necessary.
La Via Campesina's Global Campaign to End All Forms of Violence Against
Women is aimed at increasing public awareness of the roots causes of,
and all the types of expressions of, violence against women, and to
demand an end to impunity.
We urge all of our member organizations to take action and write
petitions, send letters, organize protests to pressure the departments
of justice of the governments of our countries to end impunity to put
the murderers in jail and to do justice for these thousands of women and
thus for all women.
NO MORE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN! ¡NOT ONE MORE DEATH!
WE STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPUNITY AND FOR THE LIVES OF WOMEN!
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/women-mainme...
[2] http://viacampesina.org/en/images/stories/women/photo8scaled.jpg
10 years
The new edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter is now online! - Peasant agroecology is the key for humankind and the planet!
by La Vía Campesina
[ESPAÑOL ABAJO - FRANÇAIS CI-DESSOUS]
_EN AGROECOLOGY AND CLIMATE_ [1]
The new edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter is now online!
PEASANT AGROECOLOGY IS THE KEY FOR HUMANKIND AND THE PLANET!
Agroecology has existed for many years, and much has been written about
it already.
For long it was considered as archaic and not really adapted to "modern
progress".
It is now making a big comeback. But who will reap the benefits?
IN THIS EDITION OF NYÉLÉNI LEARN MORE ABOUT AGROECOLOGY AND ITS ROLE IN
TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE!
_Click here to download the english edition_ [1]_ _or read it directly
in the website at www.nyeleni.org [2] !
For any further information, please contact info(a)nyeleni.org
PLEASE CIRCULATE IT TO YOUR CONTACTS!
_ES __A_ [3]_GROECOLOGÍA y _ [3]_CAMBIO CLIMÁTICO_ [3]
LA NUEVA EDICIÓN DEL BOLETÍN NYÉLÉNI ES AHORA EN LÍNEA!
_ _
La agroecología campesina, clave para la humanidad y para el planeta
La agroecología existe desde hace décadas y se ha escrito mucho sobre
ella.
Durante muchos años se ha considerado arcaica y poco adaptada al
"progreso moderno".
Ahora resurge con fuerza. Pero, ¿quién va a beneficiarse de este
resurgir?
¡En esta EDICIÓN de Nyéléni, APRENDA MÁS SOBRE LA AGROECOLOGÍA Y SU
PAPEL FRENTE AL CAMBIO CLIMÁTICO!
_Haga clic aquí para descargar la edición en español_ [3]_ _o lea el
boletín directamente, en el sitio web www.nyeleni.org [4]
Para más información, póngase en contacto con info(a)nyeleni.org
¡POR FAVOR, DIFUNDIR A SUS CONTACTOS!
_FR _ [5]_L'AGROÉCOLOGIE ET LE CLIMAT_ [5]
LA NOUVELLE ÉDITION DU BULLETIN NYÉLÉNI EST MAINTENANT EN LIGNE!
_ _
L’AGROÉCOLOGIE PAYSANNE, CLEF DE L’ HUMANITE ET DE LA PLANETE!
L'agroécologie existe depuis des décennies et fait objet d'une nombreuse
littérature et articles.
Elle a été longtemps jugée comme archaïque et peu adaptée au « progrès
moderne ».
Elle revient aujourd'hui sur le devant de la scène. A qui va profiter ce
retour ?
DANS CETTE ÉDITION DE NYÉLÉNI, VOUS APPRENDREZ PLUS SUR L'AGROÉCOLOGIE
ET SON RÔLE FACE AU CHANGEMENT CLIMATIQUE!
.
_Cliquez ici pour [5]__télécharge l'édition française [5] _ou lisez le
bulletin directement sur le site www.nyeleni.org [6]
Pour toute information complémentaire merci de contacter
info(a)nyeleni.org
FAITES CIRCULER CE BULLETIN!
Links:
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[1] http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=62
[2] http://www.nyeleni.org
[3] http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=63
[4] http://www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?page=working.es
[5] http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=64
[6] http://www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?page=working
10 years, 1 month
Position Paper of La Vía Campesina:Environmental and Climate Justice Now!
by La Vía Campesina
CLIMATE CHANGE AND AGROFUELS
POSITION PAPER OF LA VÍA CAMPESINA:ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
NOW! [1]
Published on Wednesday, 03 December 2014 21:54
_WE CONTINUE ORGANIZING, MOBILIZING, AND BUILDING ALTERNATIVES TO
REDRESS THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND DEFEND MOTHER EARTH._
[2]We, La Vía Campesina, indigenous people, small farmers, youth,
migrants, rural workers, agricultural day laborers, fisherfolk,
artisans, alongside our allies in the struggle for profound social
transformations, are coming together in Lima for the COP 20 to reiterate
once again our commitment to feeding the people of the world, to
organizing, mobilizing, struggling and building alternatives that cool
down the planet, not just for our own benefit but for all those who
share Mother Earth.
Very recently, civil society witnessed again how the people of the world
continue defending ourselves and rejecting the false solutions of
capital and its institutions who claim to take us into account. With
2014 being International Year of Family Farming, the World Bank and its
allies in the United Nations (UN) tried selling the world what they
termed "Climate-Smart Agriculture" as some sort of new product that
would put the brakes on the climate crisis once and for all. However, on
the streets of New York and within the Climate Summit itself, we
unmasked this fallacy and informed public opinion what "Climate-Smart
Agriculture" is all about: more industrial agriculture, more World Bank
financing and support for the capital of the few, more contamination and
plundering of natural resources, more exploitation of lands,
territories, peoples and workers. Above all else, it is part of the same
green economy proposal based on less justice and less ecology.
In the United States of Sandy (2012) and Katrina (2005) - where the poor
suffer most the intensification of each hurricane, flood, drought, and
forest fire - we added our voice as organized small farmers, blacks,
indigenous, migrants, fisherfolk, women and youth to the largest street
demonstrations in the history of climate change. There, once again, we
demanded: Environmental and Climate Justice Now!
Before New York, we were in Venezuela for the Social PreCOP Meetings of
2014. There, we contributed to the Margarita Declaration [3] which was
later submitted to government representatives from 40 nations, including
the countries that make up the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of
the Americas (ALBA). Those countries that share our perspective will be
taking the PreCOP message to the formal Conference of the Parts (COP 20)
in Lima, Peru, and will be supported in the streets by our Peruvian
organizations and their local, national, regional, and international
allies.
We will be mobilized on the streets of Lima to participate in the
People's Summit on Climate Change, raising our voices as we did in Rio
(2012 [4]), Durban (2011 [5]), and Cancun (2010 [6]), and will demand
that as part of the preparations of a draft for the first binding
agreement since Kyoto - to be signed in December 2015 during the COP 21
in Paris, France - that all signatory states fulfill their commitments
and promises to reduce carbon emissions and global warming to 2 degrees,
as has been recommended by the scientific community in order to avoid a
climate debacle of catastrophic proportions.
Summits come and summits go, each with its own historical weight and
significance, while we in La Vía Campesina continue to build the social
base necessary to achieve our principal demand - food sovereignty, the
recognition and protection of our people, our lands, our territories,
and an end to all attempts at privatizing humanity's commons. In
addition, we make special mention here of the increase in forced
migrations caused by the climate crisis. If there is one thing that
truly symbolizes the human tragedy of climate change, it is the roughly
50 million human beings that today live between the countries that
expelled them, and the nations that reject them.
Present in Peru, we reiterate:
* The green economy does not seek to put an end to climate change or
environmental degradation. Instead, it looks to generalize the principle
that those who have money can continue to pollute. To date, they have
used the farce of carbon credits to continue releasing greenhouse gases.
Now there is talk of biodiversity credits. That is, companies will be
able to destroy forests and ecosystems so long as they pay someone who
promises to conserve biodiversity somewhere else. Tomorrow they will
likely invent credits to trade and destroy water, landscapes, and clean
air.
* The payment for environmental services is being used to displace
indigenous people and small farmers from their lands and territories.
The mechanisms most being promoted by governments and companies are REDD
and REDD Plus, which they affirm will reduce greenhouse gas emissions
caused by deforestation and forest degradation. These mechanisms are in
fact being used to impose, with derisive payments, management plans that
deny rural families and communities their right to access their very own
lands, forests, and watersheds. In addition, these projects guarantee
companies unrestricted access to collective forests, increasing the
likelihood of biopiracy. They also impose contracts on communities for
periods of over 20 years, limiting community control over lands that are
leased by indigenous and small farmers in a process that will most
likely result in these communities losing the resources they depend on
for survival. The basic idea behind the so-called environmental services
is to take control of people's natural resources and then reach into new
areas.
* Another green economy initiative is to convert plants, algae, and
all organic residues into a source of energy to substitute fossil fuels:
what they call "the use of biomass". These "agrofuels", as we call them,
have already caused millions of hectares of lands once covered in
forests or food crops to be converted into lots for feeding machinery.
If the use of biomass for energy becomes widespread, we will see life in
the oceans reduced even further because many marine species will be left
without anything to feed on. We will also see our soils unable to
recover their organic material, essential for conserving fertility and
protecting against both erosion and draught, and witness our animals
starve as crops and feed become more rare and expensive. Water will also
become rarer, be it because of agrofuel production or because our soils
won't have the capacity to absorb and retain water because soil organic
matter will be missing.
* Then comes "climate-smart agriculture", which aims only to impose a
new Green Revolution on people - this time including transgenic crops -
and suggests we give up our demands for effective mechanisms to defend
ourselves against climate change, accepting instead insignificant
payments that work just like REDD. This proposal also seeks to impose
production systems on us that are highly dependent on agrochemicals,
such as direct seeding accompanied by aerial spraying of RoundUp -
defined by its promoters as "low-carbon agriculture". In short, they
will force us to do their type of agriculture, and we will lose control
of our territories, our ecosystems, and our watersheds.
* One of the most perverse false solutions promoted during
international negotiations is that which calls for restricted access to
and use of irrigation waters. Based on the pretext that this water is
scarce, they propose that it be concentrated on "high-value crops". That
is, that irrigation be saved for export crops, agrofuels, and other
industrialized crops instead of to water the crops that feed our people.
* The promotion of technological fixes that are in no way real
solutions is part of the agenda and discussions that took place in Rio.
Among the most dangerous are geoengineering and the acceptance of
transgenic crops. To date, no geoengineering solution has proven itself
capable of addressing the climate problem in any significant way. On the
contrary, some forms of geoengineering (such as ocean fertilization) are
considered so dangerous that they have been prohibited internationally.
For us to accept transgenics, they promise to create crops that are
resistant to drought and heat. The only crops they offer, however, are
those resistant to their herbicides which, in fact, has now brought
about a return to the market of highly toxic herbicides such as 2,4,-d.
* The most ambitious plan, described by some governments as "the
greatest challenge", is to place a price on all of nature (including
water, biodiversity, landscapes, wildlife, seeds, rain, etc.) so as to
privatize (using the excuse that conserving nature requires money) and
later charge us for its use. This is what they call the Economics of
Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), and is in fact the final assault on
life and nature, as well as on the means with which our people survive
as workers, farmers, hunters and fisherfolk.
* We call on civil society to pressure governments so that they remove
all barriers to decentralized, community-controlled renewable energy
solutions including solar, wind, and tides and that these receive
funding for the design and implementation of said energy systems. At the
same time, we must educate people about the benefits of community-based
energy systems, the preservation of small farmer systems based on
agroecology, a sustainable environment, as well as economies that are
healthy, local, dignified, and just.
Once again we present our proposals, in contrast to the false solutions
sold by the culprits of the climate crisis. In Peru, as we have done in
other COP Summits, we affirm:
* We must transform the world's industrialized, agro-export food
system into a system based on food sovereignty, on the return of land's
social function as producer of foods and sustainer of life, based on
local production, processing, and distribution. Food sovereignty allows
us to end monocultures and agribusiness, foment small farmer systems of
production characterized by greater intensity and productivity,
increased economic opportunities, better care for the soils, and a
healthy diversified harvest. Small farmer and indigenous agriculture is
also the way to cool down the earth: it has the capacity to absorb, or
avoid, up to 2/3 of the greenhouse gases released annually.
* 20% of arable lands worldwide are currently in the hands of small
farmers and indigenous people. With just 1/5 of all arable lands, our
families and communities produce over half the world's foods. Ours is
the most secure and efficient way to overcome hunger in the world.
* To secure food for all and the restoration of climate balance,
agriculture must return to the hands of small farmer communities and
indigenous people. For this to occur, integral agrarian reforms are
urgently needed that are truly transformative, putting an end to the
extreme and increasing land concentrations that are negatively affecting
humanity. These agrarian reforms will provide the material conditions
for agriculture to fulfill its role as humanity's caretaker, which is
why the defense of small farmer and indigenous agriculture is a
collective responsibility. In the immediate future, it is necessary to
halt all transactions, concessions, and transfers that result in further
land concentration and grabbing and/or the displacement of rural
communities.
* Small farmer and indigenous systems of agriculture, hunting,
fishing, and herding help care for food and the planet and, as such,
should be adequately supported by unconditional public funding. Market
mechanisms - such as carbon credit and environmental services schemes -
should be dismantled right away and replaced by real measures such as
those mentioned above. Putting an end to contamination is the
responsibility of all, and no one can evade this buying up the "right"
to destroy.
* The only legitimate use of what international entities and companies
call "biomass" is as food for living beings and the restoration of soil
fertility. The emissions released as a result of energy misuse should be
reduced at the source, bringing and end to wasteful consumption. We need
renewable energy sources that are decentralized and controlled by the
people.
We of La Vía Campesina, small family farmers, landless workers,
indigenous and migrant communities - men and women - stand in direct
opposition to the commodification of nature, of our territories, of
water, seeds, foods, and human life. We reiterate what we said at the
People's Summit of Cochabamba, Bolivia: "Humanity is facing an historic
decision - we can continue along the path that capitalism created, based
on predation and death, or set about on the path of harmony with nature
and a respect for life".
We repudiate and denounce the green economy as one more masked attempt
to cover up increased corporate coveting and food imperialism across the
globe. It is a brutal way for capitalism to try washing its hands, and
offers nothing but false solutions such as "climate-smart agriculture",
carbon trading, REDD, geoengineering, transgenics, agrofuels, biocarbon,
among other market solutions to the environmental crisis.
Our challenge is to reestablish another way of relating to nature, and
between peoples. This is our right and responsibility, and for this
reason we will continue the struggle to do so, calling on all people to
keep up the endless fight for food sovereignty, for integral agrarian
reforms, for the return of territories to indigenous people, for an end
to capital's violence, and to restore agroecological small farmer and
indigenous food systems.
NO TO THE FALSE SOLUTIONS OF GREEN CAPITALISM!
SMALL FARMER AGRICULTURE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
AND CLIMATE JUSTICE, NOW!
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-clim...
[2] http://viacampesina.org/en/images/afiche%20ingles%20COP%202.jpg
[3]
http://www.precopsocial.org/sites/default/files/archivos/margarita_declar...
[4]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-clim...
[5]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-clim...
[6]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-clim...
10 years, 1 month
