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Two Years After Forced Eviction, Community Fights for Compensation in Rio de Janeiro
Yesterday marked two years since government bulldozers arrived at the Restinga community in Rio de Janeiro to demolish the homes and small shops belonging to 153 families.
December 18, 2012
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Mexico: Peoples’ Tribunal Confirms “Gross Violations” in Dam Projects
Communities harmed by dam projects in Mexico won an important victory. A panel of international experts serving as judges for the Mexico chapter of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) recognized a pattern of "gross and systematic human rights violations" in the construction of dams throughout Mexico over the past 40 years. More than 185,000 people have been forcibly evicted.
November 9, 2012
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Dam-Affected Communities in Mexico Take Government to Peoples’ Tribunal
On November 5-6, many of our local partners fighting forced evictions in Mexico will travel to the small town of Temacapulín, in Jalisco state, to tell their stories to an international panel of judges representing the Mexico chapter of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT).
November 2, 2012
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Major Victory for Activists Fighting the La Parota Dam in Mexico
After nearly 10 years of campaigning to save their homes and lands, our partners from the CECOP network in Mexico are celebrating a significant victory on the path to the definitive cancellation of the La Parota dam project. If built, the dam would forcibly evict at least 25,000 campesinos and small farmers from their lands and negatively impact an additional 75,000 people due to environmental changes downstream and throughout the region.
October 4, 2012
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VIDEO: Meet Elisângela, the Other Face of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Legacy
Elisângela wasn't home when they arrived. Her 17-year-old daughter called her cellphone, frantic, to break the news: "There are several men from the municipal government here at our door; they're saying they're going to demolish our house." Elisângela raced home to try to negotiate, to no avail. In a few hours, the home she and her family had spent years building was now a pile of rubble.
June 21, 2012
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NYTimes Reports on Forced Evictions in Rio, But Serious Questions Remain
In December, we brought you a Video the Government of Rio de Janeiro Didn't Want You To See and showed you how our partner activists in Rio were confronting Olympics organizers on the forced evictions of poor communities in Rio ahead of the 2016 Olympics.
March 5, 2012
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New Video the Government of Rio de Janeiro Doesn’t Want You to See
Roughly 170,000 people are either at risk, or have already been subjected to, forced evictions throughout the 12 Brazilian cities gearing up to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.
December 14, 2011
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Mexico Partners Use Video to Pressure Governor, Influence Media, Document Protests
A few weeks ago, I met our forced evictions campaign partners in Mexico and we traveled together to Temacapulín, a small community in the mountains of Jalisco state that has been fighting its own eviction for several years due to the construction of the El Zapotillo Dam.
December 2, 2011
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Join the Call: No More Evictions for Rio 2016 Olympics
We’ve joined forces with our local partners in Rio and Amnesty International to call on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to address the complaints of hundreds of poor families that have been (or are at risk of being) forcibly evicted from their homes under the pretext of the XXXI Summer Olympic Games to be held in Rio in 2016.
November 15, 2011
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What do the World Cup and Olympics Have to do with Human Rights Violations?
Sometimes, quite a bit. Did you know that in Beijing alone, over 1.25 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes to make way for Olympics-related development in the lead-up to the 2008 Games?
October 20, 2011
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New Videos: Four Communities on Forced Evictions in Rio
As part of our ongoing campaign on forced evictions in the name of development, I was just in Brazil to meet with our partners and plan our upcoming video advocacy workshop in Rio de Janeiro.
June 20, 2011
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Act Now to Stop the Eviction of 25,000 People in Mexico
Our partners in Guerrero, Mexico, need your help. For the past eight years, they have been fighting to defend their homes and communities against the threat posed by the planned construction of a new megadam in the region. If built, the La Parota Dam would displace at least 25,000 people from their lands and negatively impact an additional 75,000 people.
May 27, 2011
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Stopping the Construction of a Dam to Prevent Your Home from Being Flooded
The roughly 300 families that live in Temacapulín – a tiny town nestled between four green hills along the Verde River in the state of Jalisco, Mexico – have been fighting against big odds for the past five years for the basic right to stay in their homes.
April 12, 2011
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Mexico: Children Protest La Parota Dam
Six weeks ago we completed our first video advocacy training in Mexico as part of our global campaign on Forced Evictions. The workshop took place in a charming convent in Mexico City and, for nine intense days, we and our partners at HIC worked with 11 activists/leaders from four local communities whose rights are either being compromised or violated by large-scale dams and other mega-development projects (see photos of the training here).
March 15, 2011
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Dams and Human Rights: Using Video to Resist Evictions
It's International Day of Action Against Dams and, as we kick off our global forced evictions campaign supporting dam-affected communities at risk of eviction in Mexico, this post looks at how video and visual imagery have helped propel campaigns to protect human rights in different dam-resistance struggles around the world.
March 14, 2011