Human Rights News

For more than 50 years, Earth Day has been a celebration of protecting the planet and the array of life, including us, that it supports. Though that common goal seems…

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte has issued an order to lift a nine-year moratorium on granting new mining permits in the Philippines. The order is expected to ease the entry…

In a ruling that could strengthen Indigenous land rights claims across Brazil, the nation’s Supreme Court has sided with the Guarani Kaiowá, allowing the possible reopening of a case involving their territory claim.

Mongabay starts publishing today a series of data-driven multimedia stories on Brazil’s Indigenous people living in urban areas, including the metropolitan centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília, showing that Indigenous people are much closer to most Brazilians than they realize

The Wallace Global Fund’s Ellen Dorsey says philanthropic foundations need to do more, including divesting from fossil fuels and focusing less on building their own endowments.

“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here…

Stretching along the narrow spit of land that connects the Malay peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region is home to a confluence of animals and…

A new report reveals that investing in securing the land rights of Indigenous and tribal communities across Latin America and the Caribbean could cut carbon dioxide emissions at low costs…

Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…

In the past decade, the term “Just Transition” has gained more widespread understanding among climate campaigners and environmental advocates. A Just Transition is the idea that the shift toward low-carbon…

It started with the water changing color. Soon after that, the fish began to die. When the villagers bathed, they became itchy and covered in sores like an allergic reaction.…

For the past 18 months, Mongabay has investigated allegations of widespread abuses by palm oil companies in Brazil, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for…

JAKARTA — The framework for resolving land disputes involving palm oil companies in Indonesian Borneo has largely failed, allowing conflicts to fester for a decade or more, with very few…

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a 19 million acre reserve in the northeastern corner of Alaska that's renowned for its beauty and wildlife. ANWR also holds great cultural…

“One of the good things about living here is that it is — or at least it was, before the pandemic — possible to coexist and share ideas, sips of…

Impunity still reigns when it comes to the murders of human rights defenders around the world, according to the Front Line Defenders organization, in its global analysis of 2020. The…

KALINGA, Philippines — On Nov. 12, 2020, Typhoon Vamco cut across the northern Philippines, flooding more than 60 cities and towns in the Cagayan Valley. Millions of dollars’ worth of…

One of the dominant trends in conservation over the past 20 years has been growing recognition of the contributions Indigenous peoples have made toward conservationists' goals of protecting biodiversity, wild…

For at least the past 20 years, conservation has been wrestling with some of the darker aspects of its historical relationship with local communities: legacies of colonialism, institutional racism, lack…

The Naso Tjër Di people of Panama now have a protected territory of their own. The creation of the 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca, as it’s called in Panama, came as a…

JAKARTA — Conflicts over land flared up across Indonesia in 2020, as Indigenous and rural communities tried to hold off pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies ramping up their expansion…

A Malagasy law enforcement officer was hacked to death by a mob during a confrontation over illegal logging 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital, Antananarivo, on Jan. 20. Two…

Dear President Biden, Congratulations to you and Vice President Harris on your historic election. We pray for the success of your administration and your efforts to confront the COVID-19 pandemic,…

An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the…

Mileva "Gara" Jovanović's family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest…

JAKARTA — U.S. agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge are buying palm oil from mills in Indonesia that have been publicly linked to land and human rights violations and…

Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.

Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.

Smallholders and family farms, Indigenous people, rural women, youth, and landless rural communities are being squeezed into increasingly smaller parcels of land or forced out entirely as global land inequality…

JAKARTA — A coalition of NGOs has documented rampant labor abuses in five oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the commodity. The palm oil…