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Article

10 Jul 2018

Author:
Juan Auz, Open Global Rights (UK)

Ecuador: Indigenous leaders resist rights abuses by business through legal empowerment

"Legal empowerment allows indigenous Ecuadoreans to fight multinationals", 05 Jul 2018

Environmental conflicts that hinge upon extracting natural resources from local communities...are rising all over the world... [T]he ongoing health of Ecuador’s environment is mostly due to the assiduous agency of indigenous peoples of the Amazonian region—made possible by increasing civil society efforts on legal empowerment... Ecuador's main export commodity is oil, representing about 35% of the state's general budget...[T]he government announced in 2011 a plan to open three million hectares of well-preserved rainforest to new oil drilling, a manoeuvre that affected...indigenous nationalities...China plans to invest at least $250 billion in Latin America over the next decade...[We] have always resorted to legal empowerment as a powerful tool that enables local communities to...use...law to galvanize positive change, especially...as a complement... to...indigenous movement. In Ecuador...ordinary judicial system has questionable impartiality and independence... That is why we...use[d] regional and international human rights mechanisms to denounce both China and Ecuador... As activists, we must deeply understand the political, economic and cultural context of the country and its influence within the community...Only then, can we wisely select the correct tools and strategies with the people to create effective change.