Global Forest Coalition participates in the Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Peoples’ Integration

The Global Forest Coalition (GFC), an NGO with over 120 member organisations, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities worldwide, will be present at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Peoples’ Integration in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil from February 22-24, 2024.

Inés Franceschelli, GFC’s focal point for Latin America and the Caribbean and executive director of Centro de Estudios Heñói in Paraguay, joins the delegation of over 1,500 participants from 15 countries that will gather in this Latin American city on the shared border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

“We join hundreds of women political leaders, social movements, artists and land defenders to build together a political platform that will allow us to strengthen our struggles for land rights, in defence of the rights of women and Indigenous communities throughout the region,” said Franceschelli from Asunción, Paraguay.

The meeting’s thematic points include anti-imperialism, defence of democracy, sovereignty, peoples’ rights, respect for diversity, anti-racism, popular feminism, anti-colonialism and the struggle for peace.

“The Latin American and Caribbean organisations that are part of GFC have been articulating for more than a decade joint actions to expose the impacts of extractivism, carbon markets, large monocultures and climate colonisation that they want to impose on us from the Global North. We also put on the table concrete proposals to confront the climate crisis, with real solutions in defence of forest ecosystems, women, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendants. These days of integration allow us to articulate strategies against climate and patriarchal denialism,” she emphasised.    

The coalition will present proposals to the working group on “Food crisis and hunger”, whose main topics are food sovereignty and agrarian reform, as well as to the group “Offensive of capital against the commons. The action of transnational corporations, false solutions and the corporate capture of the energy transition.”

This effort of continental articulation aims to discuss the future of regional integration based on the vision of popular movements of the continent in the face of the serious threats arising from the advance of neoliberalism and repressive violence in the region.

19 Feb, 2024
Posted in Forests and Climate Change, Unsustainable Livestock Production, Supporting Community Conservation, Gender Justice and Forests