Defending peoples' collective rights

Defending territories and peoples’ collective rights

Injustices against defenders of territories, and violations of peoples’ collective rights and human rights, are committed daily around the world.

The current political economic system, with its ever greater demand on and competition for natural resources, has led to an increase in land grabbing, exploitation of nature and attempts to privatise and control shared and community-managed assets.

The peoples, communities, leaders, political subjects and communicators who defend their territories, lives and livelihoods are enduring unlawful detentions, threats, harassment and raids of their offices and homes. Murders, disappearances and torture are alarmingly common.

The perpetrators of these abuses typically operate on behalf of governments and/or transnational corporations, often with the support of State actors, including the police and military, or paramilitary forces and hired individuals/groups. An example is the murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres in March 2016. At all levels, transnational corporations and international financial institutions manipulate laws, to legitimise violations of peoples’ rights and land grabbing, assuring a legal cover and guarantee of impunity.

What do we understand by “territory”?

The concept of “territory” refers to any space that is socially constructed. Social construction of territory occurs through the dynamic spiritual, cultural, physical and social relationships which humans have with and within a certain space.

The social construction of land includes how it is managed, who controls common goods and access to those goods, and how labour is divided. Many indigenous peoples and local communities hold traditional and ancestral relationships with land.

The body is also a territory and can be a space of resistance. For example, in opposition to exploitation through labour, sexual exploitation, and commodification.

Friends of the Earth International works to protect defenders of peoples’ rights, territories and communities, and to strengthen collective resistance to human and environmental rights violations, as laid out in the 2003 Cartagena Declaration.

Through our Internationalist Solidarity System (ISS) we ensure that defenders of territories and peoples’ rights, together with their communities and social movements, have the capacity to pursue a system change agenda, aimed at protecting the environment and securing collective rights. Through the ISS, we can respond rapidly to violations and mobilise internationalist support for threatened communities, according to their needs and wishes. We support national groups to prevent violations, and fight against corporate and State interests that are complicit in such crimes. We advocate for an internationally legally binding treaty on transnational corporations and human rights.

Why “internationalist” solidarity?

Working on internationalist solidarity is the possibility to accompany struggles against injustice in any part of the world, feeling them as our own causes. We, as individuals, play an important role in organising ourselves for the transformation of our societies in pursuit of system change. Solidarity means standing up and mobilising against all forms of oppression, such as patriarchy, racism, colonialism, and against the violence exercised against our peoples that aim to take away our capacity to organise and struggle.

Concretising this solidarity means acting in an articulated way among social movements and organisations to demand social, environmental, economic and gender justice and to defend the sovereignty of peoples around the world. It means organising ourselves to raise our voices, denounce injustice and support in concrete ways those who suffer injustice, oppression, persecution and rights violations.

Friends of the Earth International believes that the only way to tackle the interconnected global crises of climate, biodiversity, food, economy, care, and values, is through system change, grounded in internationalist solidarity.

Friends of the Earth International values the recent advances in the international recognition of individual human rights and collective rights. However, despite progress in creating legal frameworks to address rights, violations continue and are even increasing due to the current global model of production and consumption that is imposed by neoliberal economic globalisation.

We promote the concepts of environmental rights and environmental justice, and work for the recognition of new, collective rights:

The right to a sustainable livelihood
The right to a clean and healthy environment
The right to water
The right to food safety and security
Collective rights
The right to know
The right to decide
The right to resist
Rights for environmental refugees
The right to claim ecological debt
The right to environmental justice

This publication (and boxes below) explain the concepts behind these new rights, along with examples of human and environmental rights abuses experienced worldwide.

Environmental rights

Environmental rights mean access to the unspoiled natural resources that enable survival, including land, shelter, food, water and air. Our vision also includes political rights like rights for indigenous peoples and local communities, the right to information and participation in decision-making, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to resist unwanted developments.

Environmental rights are human rights, as people's livelihoods, their health, and sometimes their very existence depend upon the quality of and their access to the surrounding environment as well as the recognition of their rights to information, participation, security and redress.

Collective rights

Individual human rights do not guarantee adequate protection for indigenous peoples and other minorities exhibiting collective characteristics. These groups face particular threats to their livelihoods, environments, health and security, and their very survival may depend upon the recognition and protection of their collective rights.

Collective rights guarantee the development and preservation of ethnic minorities' cultural identities and forms of organisation, and territorial heritage. Some existing legal instruments recognise these rights, including Article 169 of the International Labour Organization and the political constitutions of several nations including Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The right to know

People have the right to play an active role in protecting their environments, and access to information is key to securing this right. There is a great deal of secrecy surrounding the activities of corporations and their financial backers. Governments too often collude with these schemes to keep illegal, unethical or simply unpopular projects and processes away from public scrutiny. In response, communities and individuals are calling for information disclosure when activities impact the environment or people.

The right to resist

When people’s environments and human rights are threatened, they have the right to safely express their discontent through protest. The right to freedom of opinion and expression is a well-established civil and political right in both national and international law, and is fundamental to the concept of democracy and the respect of human dignity.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Article 3 maintains that: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Nonetheless, environmental and human rights activists all over the world are often denied these rights when their ideas and actions conflict with the status quo. Their lives may be put at risk when they offer resistance.

Internationalist solidarity

Defending territories and peoples’ collective rights