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Preparations are now well advanced for the forthcoming, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth, which is to be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia this year from April 20 – 22.

International support for the conference is growing, news of the event was warmly received at the World Social Forum which was held at Porto Alegre in Brazil in January where participants gave firm support to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change as the next key step in the struggle against climate change.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change will be in line with the World Social Forum’s aim to develop “a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies.” The World Social Forum’s underlying theme for the 2010 events is the global crisis theme, according to the WSF, “understood not just as an economic crisis, but also as an environmental, food, energy, civilization and humanitarian crisis.”

Below is the draft declaration of the rights of Mother earth, which is the latest proposal to emerge from the working groups in the run up to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change.

We, the peoples of Earth:

gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth gives us life, nourishes and teaches us and provides us with all that we need to live well; (more…)

By Jessica Davies

On Sunday 28 February, a major conflict took place in the Chiapan community of Mitziton, when around one hundred members of the evangelical ‘Army of God’, widely seen as a paramilitary group, attacked Other Campaign supporters in the community. Over 200 police attended, in ten police lorries, and the road between San Cristobal and Comitan was closed for many hours. Each side took three members of the other side
hostage, and several people received bullet wounds from the guns of
the Army of God or were beaten up. Huge fires were lit, and
ambulances were prevented from getting in to treat the wounded.

A statement from the community assembly tells how Other Campaign adherents were tied to   poles blindfolded and left like this for twelve hours, “they were brutally beaten and tortured while they poured gasoline over them, saying ‘we are going to burn you alive’ ”. Agents of the State
Preventive Police “were already in place, but when they heard the
shots did nothing. They only approached when the aggression was
over”. Government officials who were present “did nothing, (more…)

On Monday 22^nd and Tuesday 23^rd of February in Mexico City, political figures, academics, social scientists, security experts, and activists from at least six countries came together for the Winds of Change: Drug Policy in the World conference sponsored by the Mexico City-based Collective for an Integrated Drug Policy (CUPHID). Coming as Mexico’s war on drugs turns bloodier by the day, the conference unsurprisingly concluded that current prohibitionist policies are a disaster.

“The principal conclusion is that we need a more integrated drug policy based on prevention, scientific evidence, and full respect for human rights,” summarized CUPHID president Jorge Hernandez Tinajero. “It remains clear that, yes, there exist alternatives to the current strategy.”

In a press release after the conference, CUPHID emphasized the following points:

The so-called war on drugs has failed and, without doubt, we need “winds of change” to advance toward alternative policies to address the problematic of drugs across the globe.

The prohibitionist paradigm has been ineffective, and furthermore, for the majority of countries it has implied grave violations of human rights and individual guarantees, discrimination, and social exclusion, as well as an escalation of violence that grows day by day, ever broadening the scope of impunity for organized crime.

Drugs are never going to disappear. Thus, a more realistic drug policy should focus on minimizing the harms associated with drug use — overdoses, blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS, and violence. This concept is known as “harm reduction,” and must be the backbone of any drug policy. (more…)