- The Belo Monte Dam in Brazil: “Development” vs. Indigenous Communities In every corner of the world, we see unfathomably huge hydroelectric dams that destroy entire ecosystems and indigenous livelihoods. The notorious Three Gorges Dam in China has its rivals on all other continents, from the proposed Grand Inga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the James Bay Project in Canada.
- 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.
- 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.
- World Habitat Day Is About People: Their Struggles, Their Strategies As I shared in an earlier post, Global Networks Unite on Forced Evictions, WITNESS, our partner the Habitat International Coalition and 6 other networks working on housing and land rights have organized World Habitat Days - six weeks (16 September - 31 October) to bring attention and activism to forced evictions, land grabbing and activists at risk.
- Forced Evictions Training in Rio: Social Activism as Samba Whether it was talking social movement strategy and video action plans or singing samba underneath the stars, an overwhelming energy of solidarity and brotherly and sisterly love pulsed through WITNESS’ video advocacy training in Rio.
- 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.
- 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.
- Communities in Rio de Janeiro Blame Olympics for Evictions Communities in the West Zone (Zona Oeste) of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil have been earmarked for eviction and removal by the City Hall in preparation for the 2016 Olympics. Recently, at least two of them, 'Vila Harmonia' and 'Vila Autódromo', have witnessed the presence of tractors, government staff and police.
- Interview: Brazilian NGO CONAM on Resisting Evictions Many poor communities in Brazilian cities are at risk of eviction due to the rising demand for space in urban centers and the onslaught of development projects underway in preparation for upcoming megaevents like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics (read more on how Brazilian civil society is fighting back in this post).
- Brazil: Megaevents and Forced Evictions For the past 20 years, the roughly 450 families that live in Vila Autódromo, a low-income community in western Rio de Janeiro, have been fighting off eviction.
- New Collaboration with YouTube on The Power of Human Rights Video This is the first in an occasional blog series about human rights video. We are pleased to be collaborating with Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics at YouTube on the series. The original post, written by Sameer Padania (former Hub Manager at WITNESS) and Steve appeared on YouTube’s blog . As always, we welcome […]
