Asserting Our Rights to Our Lands, Forests and Waters

This piece was authored by Indigenous Peoples Rights International.

Indigenous Peoples make up only five percent of the total global population, yet they occupy, own and manage about 20 to 25 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Most of these are forests and pristine environments, which make up 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.

Land defenders

Indigenous Peoples are being driven away from their lands and homes even as the world is marching into a climate change catastrophe—one that many scientists believe is nearly impossible to reverse.

The first peoples, the Indigenous Peoples, are bearing the brunt of this climate and environmental crisis. Many of them live in the very forests that are being made to disappear.

Indigenous Peoples’ leadership should be centered and valued as we respond to the environmental crisis humanity is facing.

Pledge your support to land defenders and water protectors here.

Brazil: Indigenous Peoples fight for their forest

In Brazil, when former president Jair Bolsonaro ignored the plight of Indigenous Peoples and even opened the forests—where they lived—for resource extraction like mining, agribusiness, and commercial logging, local communities fought back.

Indigenous Peoples, especially women, were at the forefront of seeking justice for the “genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide” under Bolsonaro’s administration.

This helped turn the tide against Bolsonaro and brought back President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the 2022 elections.

The Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) will further strengthen its partnership with ANMIGA (National Articulation of Indigenous Women Ancestrality Warriors). The partnership will focus on reducing violence against Indigenous women, provide more protection to Indigenous women in the frontline, and bolster their leadership.

Cambodia: The Bunong people fight for their land

In Cambodia, women from the Bunong Indigenous group are recovering their land which had been grabbed by a rubber plantation company under the guise of demarcating it—reducing their almost 8,000 hectares of land to less than 1,000 hectares. The Bunong people were earlier displaced from their ancestral land when the Cambodians built a dam reservoir on it.

Mexico: The Maya protect their way of life

In Mexico, the Indigenous Maya in Homún, Yucatán protested the establishment of a mega-farm of 49,000 pigs, which would pollute their territory, waters, ecosystem, and threaten their way of life. This industrial agribusiness was undertaken without the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous Maya and any environmental impact assessment. The community organized community actions and sued the pig farm, resulting in a court decision to suspend the project. However, the project still threatens the community as it has not yet been canceled.

A core group in Mexico, composed mostly of women from different Indigenous Peoples’ groups and support organizations—formed with IPRI’s support—documented this community struggle and raised this case, among others, at the global forum on Business and Human Rights in 2022.

IPRI’s fight for Indigenous rights

Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) is the only Indigenous-led, global nonprofit with a mission to end the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples and facilitate access to justice to victims of rights violations, including Indigenous women. IPRI supports frontline Indigenous environment and human rights defenders for their protection and actions. It partners with Indigenous organizations in countries where criminalization of Indigenous Peoples is severe, through human rights documentation, community mobilizations, solidarity actions, and policy advocacy.

Through its engagement with the United Nations (UN) and human rights bodies, it raises more attention and action on criminalization and violence of Indigenous Peoples.

IPRI’s Legal Defense and Sanctuary Fund supports Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous women who are victims of violence or are facing legal cases as they confront their government(s) or business corporations that grab their lands and territories, their forests and waters, and violate their rights.