The power of law and the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment
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ERS - Amazon

The Amazon School for Human Rights and Environment was inaugurated with a 1-month pilot course in November 2001, in Macas, Ecuador for nine indigenous and mestizo students from Ecuador and Colombia. The intensive course included workshops in contemporary Amazon environment and development issues, economic, social and cultural rights, strategic campaigning and advocacy, media messaging, and internet use.

The Amazon School was a joint project of the Centro de Derechos Economicos y Sociales (Quito) and EarthRights International from 2001-2005. The purpose of the school was to build capacity of indigenous and mestizo leaders from the Andean-Amazon countries in human rights and environment issues. EarthRights International continues to work in the Amazon region through our Amazon campaigns.

 
Features
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5.4.07 -- Gathered in Los Angeles to denounce Occidental Petroleum are: Darryl Hannah; Q’orianka Kilcher, ERI Legal Director Marco Simons; Oxy plaintiff Apu Tomás Maynas; indigenous leader Petronila Chumpi; Lily La Torre; Benjamin Bratt; Atossa Soltani; María Ramos; ERI alumnus Andrés Sandi; Benjamin Schonbrun; and other activists.  Photos: Antoine Bonsorte .

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At a press conference on May 4, Indigenous communities from the Peruvian Amazon told Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) to clean up its toxic waste from their tropical rainforest or face a major lawsuit. The ultimatum, on the eve of the Westwood-based oil major’s annual general meeting for shareholders, came as a new technical report revealed that 30 years of Oxy’s polluting had left indigenous Achuar children with illegal concentrations of lead and cadmium in their blood, at levels known to cause permanent developmental problems.

The Achuar nation celebrated a historic indigenous triumph yesterday over the oil industry after blockading Peru’s largest oil facility in protest over the devastating toxic contamination of their Amazonian rainforest homeland.  More than 800 Achuar elders, women, and children joined the peaceful blockade, which lasted nearly two weeks, shutting down power to most of the region’s oil production facilities and blocking airport, river, and road access to the region. The protest came after two years of failed talks with Peruvian government officials over the daily discharge of more than one million barrels of “formation waters,” an untreated toxic by-product of the oil drilling process, directly into the rainforest.

At a workshop organized by ORAU, the regional indigenous federation for the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon, and OIRA, the indigenous organization for the Atalaya area within the Ucayali, the leaders discussed the pending oil drilling by Repsol and its partner, US-based Burlington Resources. Repsol has the oil concessions to some 1.5 million hectares of indigenous land, mostly in Amazonian rainforest, while Burlington is the minority partner in those concessions, known as Block 57 and Block 90.

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