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	New land law threatens millions of livelihoods in Myanmar by International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs   Dec. 2018   New land law threatens millions of livelihoods in Myanmar.   Millions of people may soon become trespassers on their own land due to a newly amended land use law in Myanmar. The Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law covers almost a third of the country's territory, most of which is located in traditional indigenous/ethnic areas.   IWGIA is greatly concerned that the rapid implementation of the amended law may increase land conflicts and grievances rather than solve them. We therefore call on the government to immediately halt the implementation of the law.   In a public announcement on the 30th of October, the government of Myanmar stated that anyone currently using Vacant, Fallow and Virgin (VFV) land without permission from the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Central Committee must apply for a permit by March 2019, or they will be considered trespassers. The offense is punishable with up to two years imprisonment and/or 500,000 Kyat (313 US dollars) fines.   Many flaws in the current law   The VFV land management law was formulated under the former quasi-civilian government in 2012 to allow the government to take possession of unregistered land across the country. Last month, the current government enacted their own amendment of the law, granting the Central Committee powers to take action against those who use vacant land without first obtaining the committee's permission.   However, the boundaries of VFV lands are not clearly defined and there are millions of people who do not know if their land is considered VFV land or if they even need to register their land. And if they do know, many may face several hurdles including a lack of access to administration services.   'We fear that millions of people will be affected by the enactment of this law as many are not made aware of this process and will have difficulties with applying for the permissions within the given timeframe', says Ke Jung from SHANAH organisation.   The law can ignite old conflicts   In 2011, Myanmar's military dictatorship was officially replaced by a form of democracy, with the miliatray retaining anumber of seats in parliament. Since then, the scale of land rights conflicts has been decreasing, with stakeholders opting for a peaceful resolution to their grievances.   Most significantly, in 2015, a nationwide Ceasefire Agreement was reached with a number of the country's ethnic armed groups. This was an step forward given the sensitive nature of land rights and Myanmar's long history of oppressing indigenous peoples and other minorities.   However, millions of people remain displaced and many fear that these displaced persons may now face steep penalties for using land in their current locations and lose rights to lands in their places of origin.   'Land rights are fundamental for most indigenous peoples livelihood, and we fear that the limited timeframe for the current process will make indigenous peoples trespassers on their own land and potentially reignite old land disputes' explains IWGIA's Senior Advisor on Land Rights in Asia, Signe Leth.   IWGIA calls for a halt of the implementation immediately   As a consequence of the rushed implementation of the VFV land law, IWGIA has signed and shared a letter of concern with diplomatic missions. This letter includes the four following recommendations:   Prevent the imprisonment and eviction of innocent individuals and communities; immediately halt the implementation of the 2018 amended law. Halt the allocation of all VFV lands to the private sector. Consider abolishing the VFV land management law altogether.   Consult with farmers, ethnic nationalities and civil society organisations to establish a just and effective land governance framework in line with the National Land Use Policy.   * For more see: http://bit.ly/2PGsVaj Visit the related web page
	Deterioration of Indigenous Rights Conditions in Brazil by IPS, Pulitzer Center, agencies   Apr. 2019   Brazil: indigenous people rally in capital to protest new Government policies undermining their rights.   Thousands of indigenous people have descended on Brazil's capital Brasilia to protest against a widespread assault on indigenous rights and territories by the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.   Indigenous people from all over the country are expected to join the annual demonstration, which organizers say has taken on new significance after Bolsonaro - who has repeatedly called into question the existence of indigenous reserves took power in January.   'We are defenders of the land, we are defenders of the Amazon, of the forest. The white man is our finishing off our planet and we want to defend it', said Alessandra Munduruku, a representative from the Munduruku tribe who had travelled from the Amazonian state of Para to join the 'Free Land' protest camp near Brazil's congress.   Elected with the help of powerful agribusiness and evangelical lobbies, Bolsonaro has vowed to freeze demarcations of new indigenous reserves, revoke the protected status of others, and free up commercial farming and mining on others such as the landmark Yanomami territory.   The Yanomami reserve is Brazil's biggest and has long suffered from the presence of illegal goldminers, known as garimpeiros, whose interests Bolsonaro has also promised to protect.   Bolsonaro and his agriculture minister, Ricardo Salles, have both publicly attacked Brazil's environmental protection agencies and what they call 'an industry' of environmental fines.   Indigenous leaders are incensed by the Bolsonaro government's decision to transfer responsibility for demarcation of indigenous reserves to Brazil's agriculture ministry, which is controlled by members of a powerful farming lobby that has long opposed indigenous land rights. They also object to a decision to hand control of Brazil's cash-strapped indigenous agency Funai to a new ministry of women, family and human rights presided over by a conservative evangelical pastor.   Sarah Shenker, a campaigner from the non-profit group Survival International, said there had been a recent increase in invasions of indigenous lands such as the Uru-eu-wau-wau reserve by land-grabbers, loggers and farmers who felt emboldened by Bolsonaro's rhetoric.   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/24/brazil-indigenous-people-bolsonaro-protest http://www.dw.com/en/indigenous-communities-in-brazil-protest-threats-to-land-and-services/a-48506378 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/04/deforestation-of-brazilian-amazon-surges-to-record-high-bolsonaro http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/01/indigenous-people-first-victims-brazils-new-far-right-government/   Mar. 2019   Deterioration of Indigenous Rights Conditions in Brazil   Maria Lourdes Alcantara, Professor of medical anthropology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo, reflects on the threats to indigenous communities in Brazil after the new President right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, assumed power.   Dismantling of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI)   After the passage of the constitution of 1988, FUNAI - the federal body representing indigenous peoples - became primarily responsible for the demarcation of indigenous lands; as well as ensuring that indigenous issues corresponded to the appropriate ministries.   Soon after becoming responsible for the demarcation of land, FUNAI began to suffer serious setbacks due to pressure from rural lobbying groups strongly linked to the interests of corporate agribusiness..   The first legal measure that President Bolsonaro signed into effect was the transfer of FUNAI to the Ministry of Family, Women and Human Rights, which is headed by controversial Minister Damares Alves, whose declarations demonstrate his lack of knowledge on indigenous rights and display his racism.   In addition to this transfer, the responsibility of boundary demarcations has been assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture. Rural groups have historically opposed the demarcation of indigenous land. Bolsonaro is fulfilling his campaign promise of "zero demarcations of indigenous lands".   Within the Ministry of Agriculture, the Special Secretariat of Funding (SEAF) is responsible for demarcating indigenous lands and granting environmental licenses to extractive projects with environmental impacts. According to the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, both offices would be moved to a government body in the as-yet-to-be-created National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) linked to SEAF..   Along with the unconfirmed creation of a government body that joins the departments of Agriculture, Human Rights, Environment, Defence and Justice, with the Civil House and Institutional Security Cabinet, the interests of the mining and energy sector will further influence the already complex and burdened demarcation procedure.   According to the Socio-environmental Institute, mining occurs in 25% of indigenous lands in the Amazon. The requests to conduct mining affect indigenous lands of all kinds. At least 56 of the indigenous lands have had over 60% of their land designated for mining.   According to Marcio Santilli, former FUNAI President and Director of the Socio-environmental Institute, the results of ministerial restructuring are the paralysis of land demarcation procedures and further reliance on the judiciary.   The Danger of Revising Indigenous Lands   In addition to the inaction plaguing land demarcation, the other major threat is the revision of lands already demarcated, as in the case of Raposa Serra do Sol. According to Special Secretary of Funding Luiz Antonio Nabhan Garcia, the largest landowner in the country is the Indian." Because of this, he aims to find gaps in the demarcation law to revise titled lands.   The process of demarcating indigenous land takes an average of 10 to 15 years and can take up to more than 20 years. If previous governments showed a flagrant apathy when legalising indigenous lands, elites and politicians of the current administration have made it clear that we [they] do not want more indigenous lands.   This point is very delicate since both legislation and the Constitution are being violated, judicial power has been disregarded, and anthropologists and the indigenous population have been discredited; all of which is generating direct confrontation that is without precedent, with the result being serious setbacks for human and indigenous rights.   http://www.iwgia.org/en/brazil/3320-serious-deterioration-of-human-rights-and-indigenous-rights-conditions-in-brazil http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/bolsonaro-draws-battle-lines-fight-over-amazon-indigenous-lands http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/operation-anti-indian   Nov. 2018   Indigenous Leaders call for new Global Agreement to Protect Amazon. (IPS)   Leaders of Amazon's indigenous groups are calling for a new global agreement to protect and restore at least half of the world's natural habitats.   The Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (or COICA), an activist group, has prepared a proposal that will be presented to the secretariat, government bodies, and NGOs during the ongoing 14th Conference of the Parties (COP-14) UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Egypt.   COICA was founded in 1984 in Lima, Peru, and coordinates nine national Amazonian indigenous organizations in promoting and developing mechanism to defend the self-determination of Indigenous peoples and coordinate the actions of its members on an international level.   COICA's proposal invites more input and involvement of indigenous communities in conservation efforts and policy-making that addresses biodiversity loss, as the parties negotiate on defining the terms of the post 2020 global framework on biodiversity that is to be adopted in Beijing, China in two years.   The proposal resulted from a COICA summit held last August with indigenous leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, and Venezuela.   'Nearly 80 percent of the world's biodiversity is found on the lands of tribal peoples and that the majority of the most biodiverse places on Earth are tribal peoples territories', said Juan Carlos Jintiach, a representative of COICA.   'Tribal people have been contributing and sustainably using the resources on their lands for thousands of years and it's not possible to create policies that will be effective without their input'.   In the declaration, the indigenous delegations invite States and other entities to include ancestral knowledge in policies that address conservation, and is planning to start bilateral negotiations with different actors in an effort to create a fair ambitious agreement for 2020.   COICA wants to work with other players behind a common goal to protect and restore half of the planet before 2050.   COICA is also pushing for a dialogue with the governments of the Amazon region to include the joint vision of the indigenous confederations through an alliance and commitment to protect the region, its biodiversity, its cultures, and sacredness to protect the rainforest and its biological corridor.   An agreement to protect a biological corridor that possesses over 135 million hectares of areas and is distributed between Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia is being promoted among the three countries.   The corridor will cover zones from the Amazon, the Andes Cordillera, and the Atlantic Ocean and is one of the regions of major biodiversity in the world and indigenous groups believe that their input and perspectives are important for the effectiveness of the agreement.   'Guaranteeing indigenous territorial rights is an inexpensive and effective of reducing carbon emissions and increasing natural areas', stated Tuntiak Katan, Vice President of COICA.   Indigenous communities are also expressing deep concerns about statements on environmental policies and indigenous issues made by Brazil's President-Elect, Jair Bolsonaro, during his campaigns.   Bolsonaro will assume office in January, he has supported a weakening of protections for the Amazon. As a result, less land will controlled by indigenous and forest communities and more will be open to agribusiness, miners, loggers and construction companies.   Nov. 2018   14 per cent more land deforested in Brazil's Amazon rainforest during 2017/18 than the previous year. (News agencies)   The destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest reached its highest level in a decade this year, government data has shown, driven by illegal logging and the encroachment of agriculture on the jungle.   Satellite images for the 12 months through the end of July 2018 released this week showed that 7,900 square kilometres of forest were cleared in the Amazon. That was a 13.7 per cent increase from the same period in the prior year.   Deforestation is a key factor behind global warming, accounting for around 15 per cent of annual emissions of heat-trapping gases, similar to that of the transportation sector.   Brazil's environment minister Edson Duarte said that illegal logging was the main factor behind the increase in deforestation in the Amazon. He called on the government to increase its policing of the jungle.   Brazil's Climate Observatory, a network of non-governmental organisations, said that the increase also caused by Brazil's growing commodities sector as farmers sought to expand.   Marcio Astrini, from the local office of Greenpeace, said the Brazilian government had not done enough to fight deforestation and recent policy moves such as ones reducing areas under federal protection fuelled environmental destruction.   Both groups said they were worried that deforestation would increase further during the government of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, due to take office in January.   He has sharply criticised the Brazilian environmental protection agency, and the agriculture sector is one of his main political bases.   Scientists consider the Amazon as one of nature's best protections against global warming, as it acts as a giant carbon "sink" by absorbing the gas. The jungle is also rich in biodiversity, hosting billions of species yet to be studied.   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/24/bolsonaro-backers-wage-war-on-the-rainforest http://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-promises-exploit-amazon-rain-forest/   Sep. 2018   Uncontacted tribes at risk amid 'worrying' surge in Amazon deforestation. (Reuters)   Ilegal loggers and militias cleared an area three times the size of Gibraltar in Brazil's Amazon this year, threatening an "uncontacted" indigenous tribe, activists said on Tuesday.   Satellite imagery collected by Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a Brazilian advocacy group, detected about 4,600 acres (1,863 hectares) of deforestation this year in the Ituna Itata indigenous land in northern Para state.   "This situation is very worrying," Juan Doblas, senior geo-processing analyst at ISA, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.   "There is a series of risks, not only to indigenous territories of uncontacted tribes, but also to other indigenous territories in the area."   Brazil's uncontacted tribes, some of the last on earth, depend on large areas of unspoiled forest land to gather the food they need to survive.   They are particularly vulnerable when their land rights are threatened because they lack the natural immunity to diseases that are carried by outsiders, rights groups say.   South America's largest country is grappling with scores of deadly land conflicts, illustrating the tensions between preserving indigenous culture and the pressures for economic development.   ISA filed a complaint in April to federal and state authorities about forest destruction and illegal logging in the area during the rainy season, which is unusual, said Doblas.   "It was a sign that something very serious was going to happen," he said. "It was a preparation for the invasion."   The environmental protection agency Ibama responded by sending in patrols in May, which temporarily halted the logging, he said, adding that ISA plans to file another complaint this week, using updated data and satellite images. Visit the related web page
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