Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (General)

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PODER has launched a new open data platform to address the lack of transparency and advance corporate accountability of the private sector in Latin America by monitoring companies, corporative elites and their government counterparts

Colombia's Constitutional Court reviewed a tutela action case (action seeking protection of constitutional rights) which looked into whether the mining operations of the company Drummond had violated the rights to life, to a healthy environment, to privacy and to health of a citizen and his family living near the Pribbenow open-pit mine, located in La Loma, municipality of El Paso, department of Cesar, in the North of Colombia.  Based in the United States, Drummond develops and processes coal in both the US and Colombia.

Ninety-year-old Eduardo Navia brought this tutela action seeking to receive disability payments from the State. He had undergone heart surgery in May 1998 and January 2008, with both surgeries limiting his ability to work. Relying on a certification of disability issued by the Social Security Agency (ISS) Section of Bolivar on September 14, 2007, he applied for disability benefits to the ISS on October 5, 2007. The ISS determined his date of disability to be March 6, 2007, but denied his application claiming that he had failed to comply with the requirements of Art.

The Saramaka people, descendants of self-liberated African slaves, have been living on their traditional territory in Suriname since the early 1700s. This non-indigenous community lives in a traditional way by fishing, hunting and woodworking, and their relationship with the land is more than economic, but also spiritual and cultural. In 1986, Suriname adopted a new Constitution specifying that all non-titled lands and natural resources belonged to the State.

On January 4, 2014, more than fifty thousand Ogoni people from Niger Delta communities celebrated the 21st anniversary of the Ogoni struggle for justice (Ogoni Day).  The mobilization,  was organized by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and coincided with the launching of “Land in the Struggle for Justice: Social Movement Strategies to Secure Human Rights”, an ESCR-Net publication

On 14 October, ESCR-Net submitted a collective letter to the Consultative Group of the UN Human Rights Council. Anticipating the upcoming appointment of several new mandate-holders to the UN Special Procedure , the letter addressed the criteria for the selection of new experts to serve as mandate-holders.

On 10 October, 2013, ESCR-Net sent an Urgent Action appeal in response to the recent murders, arbitrary detentions, intimidation and threats against leaders of the shack-dweller movement and ESCR-Net member, Abahlali baseMjondolo and called on the Government of South Africa to uphold its human rights obligations.

IELSUR, ESCR-Net and the NGO Coalition for an OP-ICESCR organized an open public event and workshop on strategic litigation under the OP-ICESCR on August 14-15 in Montevideo.  Leading domestic organizations in Uruguay attended the event.

To promote human rights in the informal settlements in Kenya's largest cities, the Nairobi Peoples Settlement Network has established a street theater troupe.

 

Recycling activities in Colombia have traditionally been carried out by extremely poor and marginalized sectors of society, who collect materials from landfills or inorganic waste from the streets to transport and sell them as recyclable material to intermediary informal warehouses of the national and multinational industry from refuse deposited on the street and sell it to warehouses for modest sums.