"Violated Collective Rights: Regional: The multidimensional impact of extractive and infrastructure projects" 19 December 2021

Cartography of 102 cases of violation of collective rights in six Latin American countries, and analysis of how communities have defended their territories.

Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples and local communities have inhabited and possessed rights over ancestral territories in Latin America for several centuries. This translates into a bond that transcends the material and is linked to their development and their collective identity.

In 2019, in order to generate useful tools that enable communities to counteract the criminalizing of community members and the nullification of their rights, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) launched a regional study to document the collective impact generated by extractive and infrastructure projects when they violate rights over territory.

The study shows that when a collective territory is impacted, multiple rights are violated simultaneously, with short and long-term repercussions. Thus, murder, threats, displacement, water pollution or the destruction of ecosystems are not simply isolated events, nor do they affect only one person or family: an attack on an individual is an attack on the entire community and other surrounding areas. [...]