ChevronTexaco Oil Company (CGC) will continue seismic operations in Sarayacu territory against the wishes of the Kichwa of Sarayacu. Spokespersons for the Kichwa say that allowing CGC to drill is a violation of their human rights. The Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez supports oil operations on Kichwa land.

During a meeting last week attended by over 400 hundred indigenous Ecuadorians, the Kichwas restated their objection to oil operations on their land. The community will present a new demand to the Ecuadorian Government to maintain the petroleum block on Sarayacu land.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. said on August 11 that he has been negotiating with Peabody Western Coal to continue operations on the Black Mesa Coal Mine near Kayenta, Arizona. The Tribe, which is currently involved in a $600 million lawsuit against the mining company, recently passed a resolution backed by tribal grassroots groups to end Peabody’s use of a specific aquifer by the end of 2005. Shirley criticized the resolution, warning that the mine’s closure would cost the tribe $35 million per year and hundreds of jobs for Navajo workers.

At least seven Penan communities in Miri and Limbang have erected blockades across roads used by logging companies. The logging companies have been encroaching on traditional forests, causing pollution and a host of other problems. Several reports were filed in 2002 regarding the deteriorating conditions of the communities as a result of the logging activities. The Reports have been largely ignored by the government, leading the communities to take matters into their own hands.

Campaign Update:

In an attempt to provide easy access to impartial information about the deforestation of the Amazon, The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has launched a new website. This site provides information based on the digital records of satellite images, including LANDSAT images and maps of the deforestation. The site allows to spatially localize areas of drastic tree loss; an aide that will permit a more comprehensive analysis of the factors behind deforestation and help develop policies to protect against further forest loss.

At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Indigenous leaders from the Achuar, Shuar, and Zapara peoples have been staging protests outside the international headquarters of Burlington Resources in unified opposition to the company’s oil exploration and extraction policies in their territories. Purchaser of the oil concession referred to as Block 24, Burlington Resources owns blocks in the primary rainforest of the southern Ecuadorian Amazon, overlapping with the ancestral territories of the Achuar, Shuar, and Quichua peoples.

Approximately seven hundred Kosovo Romani, Ashkaelia and Egyptian refugees -- including around three hundred and fifty children - have been living in a "collective center" in the Orizari municipality of the Macedonian capital Skopje, sheltered under short-term, temporary ‘surrogate protection’ since being ethnically cleansed from Kosovo in 1999.

On May 6, program director Paula Palmer met Sea Turtle Restoration Project's Doug Israel and Global Response members Crystal Law, Philip Paul and Bill Bernthal at United Nations headquarters in New York City, where they delivered over 1,100 letters addressed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights issued an order of precautionary measures in favor of the Sarayacu indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Commission ordered the Ecuadorian government to put in place all the necessary measures to protect the life, safety, and territories of the Sarayacu people. 

A Landmark Agreement Recognizing the San’s Intellectual Property Rights

On March 24, 2003, a small group of people gathered in the Kalahari Desert of far northern South Africa to observe a momentous occasion. After years of negotiations and uncertainty, representatives of the San peoples of southern Africa joined representatives from South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to celebrate the signing of a benefit-sharing agreement for a drug being developed from a traditional mainstay of the San diet – the seemingly humble Hoodia plant.