Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the time of COVID-19: the dangers for indigenous peoples and for tropical forests
A new report evaluates the state of human rights among Indigenous peoples in five tropical forest countries: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Indonesia. One of the key findings is that governments in these countries are prioritizing the expansion of the energy sector, infrastructure, mining and logging, and the development of industrial agriculture close to or inside Indigenous territories, while loosening oversight of land grabbing and illegal deforestation. Indigenous peoples have had to adapt their resistance and fight to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to avoid having their rights violated even further.
