A worker's hands injured by long hours of coffee harvesting. Lilo Clareto / Repórter Brasil
By Daniel Camargos
Eight months after slave labor was discovered at the Cedro II farm in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Starbucks and Nestlé-controlled brand Nespresso — both of whom had quality certified the farm — said they would stop sourcing coffee there.
Raising alarm about human rights violations and the global climate crisis, activists from around the world are traveling to Washington, DC for the first annual Indigenous Peoples March, which will kick off at 8 a.m. local time on Jan. 18 outside the U.S. Department of the Interior's main building.
A Honduran migrant caravan heading to the U.S., as it is stopped at a border barrier on the Guatemala-Mexico international bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas state, Mexico, on Oct. 19. PEDRO PARDO / AFP / Getty Images
By Todd Miller
Less than a mile south of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Sasabe, Mexico, a Guatemalan man named Giovanni (whose first name is used to protect his undocumented status) propped up his feet while an EMT applied antibiotic ointment to his feet in the shade of a cottonwood. Giovanni left his home country because of a catastrophic drought and was attempting to unite with his brothers who were already in Dallas. After trying to cross the border into the Arizona desert, his feet were ravaged: discolored, covered in gashes and tender red blisters. One toenail had been ripped off. Across the arroyo or dry wash, were about 30 more prospective border crossers, primarily Guatemalan, some awaiting a similar medical checkup, others stocking up on water and food.
Wangan and Jagalingou cultural leader Adrian Burragubba visits Doongmabulla Springs in Australia. The Wangan and Jagalingou are fighting a proposed coal mine that would likely destroy the springs, which are sacred to the Indigenous Australian group. Wangan and Jagalingou
By Noni Austin
For tens of thousands of years, the Wangan and Jagalingou people have lived in the flat arid lands of central Queensland, Australia. But now they are fighting for their very existence. Earlier this month, they took their fight to the United Nations after years of Australia's failure to protect their fundamental human rights.
Cherri Foytlin hangs up a sign about the Bayou Bridge pipeline resistance near the site of construction in Plaquemine, Louisana. Jen Marlowe
By Jen Marlowe
Chants of "St. James needs an evacuation route!" came from the dozen-plus activists gathered at Louisiana Radio Network on July 18. The activists were part of the L'Eau Est La Vie ("Water Is Life") camp, in Rayne, Louisiana. They want to stop the construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana from St. Charles to St. James, through the Atchafalaya Basin.
On Tuesday, Harvard researchers published a study estimating that approximately 5,000 deaths can be linked to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The same day, ABC canceled Roseanne Barr's eponymous show Roseanne after Barr sent a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to former President Barack Obama. Cable news covered Barr's tweet and her show's cancellation 16 times as much as the deaths of U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico.
Children fishing in Tamil Nadu, the Indian region where protests took place partly over concerns of a copper smelter's impact on fish. Abhishek.cty / CC BY-SA 4.0
A protest of a controversial copper smelter in the Tamil Nadu state on the southeastern tip of India took a violent turn Tuesday when police opened fire on demonstrators, killing at least nine, Reuters reported.
Throughout history, cultures have created different patterns of meaning. | Honghe Hani Rice Terraces in Yunnan Province, China. Jialiang Gao / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
By Jeremy Lent
What do all these ideas have in common—a tax on carbon, big investments in renewable energy, a livable minimum wage and freely accessible healthcare? The answer is that we need all of them, but even taken together they're utterly insufficient to redirect humanity away from impending catastrophe and toward a truly flourishing future.
The meetings of the United Nations Human Rights Council take place in the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room of the Palace of Nations. Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0
A day after 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a historic regional treaty protecting nature defenders, a United Nations (UN) rapporteur proposed taking environmental rights to the global level.
