Latin America

As one of the world’s emerging economic powerhouses, Brazil is vigorously pursuing one of the key economic objectives on the U.N.’s development agenda: South-South Cooperation.

Biofuels are an alternative energy source that can drive local development by generating jobs, know-how and technology. But they can also cause social damage, as locals fear in the case of industrial-scale exploitation of babassu palm trees, which grow abundantly in the wild in central and northern Brazil.

For the first time, a representative of the indigenous communities in Peru’s Amazonas region is sitting in Congress: Eduardo Nayap, an Awajún leader who played a central role in the lengthy protests against laws that opened up native territories in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies.

The trade union federation that ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak used to repress labor movements and mobilize regime support for sham elections during his 30-year rule has been disbanded, striking a powerful blow to the old order.

A Venezuelan municipality where the main industry is oil refining, and that has an import-export “free zone”, is set to become a plastic bag-free area.

Shahdul Huq, a Bangladeshi national living in Japan for more than 20 years, last saw his daughter almost three years ago when he lost his ‘spouse visa’ following divorce from his Japanese wife.

“Open the door! Open the door, you SOBs!” Policemen dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and carrying “what I suppose were high-power rifles” broke down the door of the home of Efraín Bartolomé, a poet who lives on the south side of the Mexican capital. They had no warrant.

Indigenous people in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia are again preparing to make the long march to La Paz, 21 years after their first such protest. They have vowed to make the trek in defense of their lands, which they say are threatened by plans for a highway to be built with the backing of the Brazilian government.