The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is to be briefed on the effects of mercury contamination on indigenous peoples of Bolivia as a direct result of intensive mining, it was announced Friday.
Groups of native Brazilians are to appear before the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN) to condemn the increase of illegal mining and violence in their communities, including death threats, raids, and forced displacements, the Missionary Indigenous Council (CIMI) announced this week.
Environmentalist organizations have called on the Venezuelan government to take action in view of the damage caused by illegal mining in an area near the Colombian border.
A scientific report released Monday by the organization MapBiomas showed that 65% of mining activities carried out in the Brazilian Amazon basin were not legal.
The coronavirus has spread rapidly through the Yanomami indigenous reservation in northern Brazil and more than a third of its 27,000 people could have been exposed, according to a report produced by their leaders.
Some gold, diamond and bauxite mines in the Venezuelan Amazon are largely controlled by criminal gangs who exploit, beat, and even kill workers, a United Nations investigation has found. Venezuelan security and military forces fail to prevent crimes and have participated in some violence against miners, the UN human rights office said in a report on Wednesday.
The number of invasions of indigenous lands in Brazil has jumped in the first nine months of President Jair Bolsonaro's administration, a Brazilian Catholic Church agency said on Tuesday. The Missionary Indigenous Council said illegal miners, loggers and tappers of natural resources are involved in most of the invasions.
United States Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Venezuelan state-run ferrous metals mining Company, Minerven, and its President, Adrián Antonio Perdomo on Tuesday for promoting “illicit” gold operations that have continued to prop up the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.
Chinese companies present a pattern of violations of human and environmental rights in Latin America, according to a report revealed by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).