A new report released today, October 13, by environmental organization Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) illustrates the importance of enforcing local community and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, featuring struggles of groups and communities from all continents.

The report includes cases from FoE Cameroon, Malaysia, Philippines, France, Colombia, Honduras, Uruguay and Costa Rica, on experiences of national struggles to resist corporate injustice.

Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International Coordinator of the Forests and Biodiversity Programme, and also one of the persons responsible for the publication (available here: http://www.foei.org/recursos/pub...) said that community rights allow us to protect traditional knowledge and ownership, as well as our natural resources.

“By enforcing their rights communities can overcome local struggles and win. For instance with community-based forest governance local people can help protect their forests as well as the climate,” said Rojas.

The cases featured show the courage of local resistance. The report includes cases such as that of the Subanon indigenous communities in
The Philippines, who successfully worked together to halt a damaging mine; and the struggle of the Sarawak people in Indonesia, who avoided being displaced by a mega-dam as a result of having their case heard, thanks to legal support.

A conflict which we have heard from recently is that of the Nigerian communities of Ogoniland, who resist oil corporation Shell, responsible for environmental destruction and human rights abuses in Niger Delta.

According to FoEI’s report, the oil corporation has faced “over three decades of resistance in the region” since the local communities –affected by pollution caused by the exploitation of oil and gas- have been “violently repressed” by the police and military forces.

As a result of this, the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) was created. The movement was led by Ken-Saro Wiwa. It has called massive peaceful demonstrations to expose corporate abuse.

The Guardian newspaper recently published legal documents of the nineties that prove the coordinate work between Shell and the Nigerian repressive forces.

Classified memoranda became public, as well as faxes, witnesses’ declarations and other documents that show the company “regularly paid” the military to stop the peaceful movement of protest against pollution.

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