Latin America

The ninth session of the UN’s Forum on Minority issues took place on the 24th and 25th November, at the Palace of Nations in Geneva. The subject was “Minorities in situations of humanitarian crises.”

The Cuban government hopes that the next president of the United States, Donald Trump, maintains the policy of dialogue “on the basis of respect,” said diplomatic sources on Thursday.

Representatives of Cuba and the United States meet Wednesday in Havana to define actions to “advance the process of improving bilateral relations” with high-level visits and new agreements, the Cuban Government reported Tuesday.

In an historic win for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota and the environment, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, a permit to drill underneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River—officially halting construction on the Dakota Access pipeline.

The Colombian Congress ratified the new peace deal earlier this week, which the Government and the FARC signed last week and which began to be implemented on Thursday to put an end to the domestic armed conflict that the country has experienced for over half a century.

US President Barack Obama will neither attend nor send a high-level delegation to Fidel Castro’s funeral in Santiago Cuba. Instead he will leave the country’s representation in the hands of a security adviser and the unofficial ambassador on the island.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro signed an agreement on Tuesday that authorizes the tourist industry to charge for services in US dollars, as an “exceptional” measure under the currency exchange scheme in effect since 2003.