16 August 2019: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Human Rights Office signed a cooperation agreement on protecting environmental and human rights. The agreement responds to the growing threats to individuals and communities defending their environmental and land rights in many parts of the world. While seeking to increase support for national implementation of human rights-based environmental policies, the partnership aims to also promote global recognition and acceptance of the human right to a healthy environment.

Mansa, Punjab, India - With a scarf around her head and a bottle of cold water in her backpack, Kiranjit Kaur goes door to door as the sun beats down on Kotra Kalan village, calling on women to join an upcoming meeting about farmer suicides.

Two years ago she set up the Kisan Mazdoor Khudkushi Peedit Parivar Committee, an organisation to support families of suicide victims, bringing together widows and relatives of impoverished farmers who - struggling with crippling debt - killed themselves in Punjab, the breadbasket of India.

According to reports from the organization Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the indigenous communities of the Miskitu ethnic group, from Nicaragua, could be on the verge of extinction because they are in a serious situation of abandonment and vulnerability because of the constant invasion of their territories.

Abraham Domico’s assassination comes a few days after the murder of two guards on the hands of irregular groups linked to drug trafficking.

The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) confirmed Wednesday the assassination of another indigenous leader in the department of Antioquia, located in the central northwestern part of the country.

Despite centuries of persecution, indigenous groups still manage or have tenure rights over at least a quarter of the world’s land surface. Often inhabiting these lands as far back as memory extends, they share a deep and unique connection to their environment.

It is estimated that 104 environmental activists have been killed in the Philippines since 2016.

A report from the international watchdog organization, Global Witness, has called the Philippines the “deadliest country in the world” for land and environmental defenders.

Dolene Miller, Elba Rivera and Francisca Ramirez have spent years defending the territories of the indigenous peoples, farmers and Afro-Nicaraguans. Here are their stories.

HAVANA TIMES – Defending their lands and the environment has cost the lives of many women around the world, especially in Latin America. The year 2017 was an especially lethal one for activists from 22 countries, according to denunciations filed last year by the British organization Global Witness.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Borey Kang Meng construction site in the capital’s Dangkor district on Monday to demand the developer honour its promise to divide the site into plots and give them land titles.

One protester from the 140 families locked in the dispute said they had sent a letter to Kaing Yu Meng, the director of Leang Heng Trading and owner of the Borey Kang Meng gated community, demanding he explains why it was taking so long to distribute plots and issue the land titles.

• Last week on May 4, two bodyguards were wounded when armed gunmen tried to storm a meeting of Afro-Colombian activists that included 2018 Goldman Prize winner Francia Márquez.
• The community leaders had been meeting to discuss future actions following a massive land rights protests last month in Colombia’s Cauca region in which one protester was killed by armed forces.
• In March and April, Afro-Colombian activists participated in an indigenous-led protest with 20,000 people against the government’s environmental and social policies.

• The now-concluded investigative series “Indonesia for Sale” examined the corruption underpinning Indonesia’s land rights and climate crisis in unparalleled depth.
• The series was a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an investigative journalism initiative founded at Earthsight in 2017.

SANTIAGO: With songs like “We’ll Beat the State,” Chilean rappers Wechekeche Ni Trawun are on a mission to support the Mapuche indigenous people’s fight for justice and land rights.

Before the Spanish arrived in 1541, the Mapuche – or “people of the earth” in the Mapudungun language – controlled a territory that stretched 500km south of central Chile’s Biobio River.

Oxfam is a global movement of people working together to end the injustice of poverty.

That means we tackle the inequality that keeps people poor. Together we save, protect and rebuild lives. When disaster strikes, we help people build better lives for themselves, and for others. We take on issues like land rights, climate change and discrimination against women. And we won’t stop until every person on the planet can enjoy life free from poverty.