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For Immediate Release
June, 15 2016, 12:15pm EDT
Contact:
NYC and National: Helena Wong, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, World March of Women - US Chapter, (917) 270-0322, helena@ggjalliance.org
Sha-Grogan Brown, GGJ, (540) 445-0819, sha@ggjalliance.org
Los Angeles: Aracely Barboza, Communities for a Better Environment, (323) 637-3608, aracely@cbecal.org
Albuquerque: Beva Sanchez-Padilla, SouthWest Organizing Project, (210) 394-5536, beva@swop.net
#JusticeforBerta June 15 Global Day of Action: End US Military Aid to Honduras
NYC: Honduras Consulate, 255 W 36th St, June 15, 12pm EST Albuquerque: Menaul and Louisiana, June 15, 5pm EST Los Angeles: Contact press contacts for details
Today, June 15th marks the global day of action calling for justice for Berta Caceres, an indigenous Lenca woman and environmental justice and indigenous land rights leader in Honduras who was assassinated earlier this year. Her organization COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) called for this global day of action where people all over the world will be holding demonstrations and protests at Honduran consulates and embassies. Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) and the World March of Women-US chapter (WMW) will be leading demonstrations in New York City, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, denouncing the role of the US State Department in creating the conditions for Berta's murder by supporting the current Honduran government.
Berta was murdered on March 3, 2016, gunned down in her own home, because of her fearless and tireless work against the repressive Honduran state, whose military receives significant financial support from the U.S, and the extractive and hydroelectric industries destroying her ancestral land and waters. Over 20 years ago, she co-founded COPINH, a grassroots organization of workers, women, Indigenous people and farmers. Caceres was leading the successful campaign to defeat one of Central America's biggest hydropower projects, the Agua Zarca Dam in the Gualcarque River basin. Three of the five men arrested in connection with Caceres' assassination work for either the DESA Corporation, the dam builders, or the Honduran military that has been guilty of beating and harassing Caceres and other indigenous and environmental activists. Several other COPINH activists have also been killed for their resistance against Agua Zarca Dam. DESA, the Honduran military and the US government are all implicated in these assassinations. Since Caceres' death, the repression and harassment and targeting of human rights defenders has only increased, and her family is calling for an independent and transparent investigation into her murder.
GGJ and the WMW-US Chapter stand in solidarity with the family of Berta Caceres and COPINH in their calls for #JusticeforBerta. GGJ and the WMW-US Chapter demand that the US State Department put pressure on the Honduran government to allow for an independent investigation into the murder of Berta Caceres, led by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and call for the termination of US military training and aid to Honduras and the immediate and definitive stop to the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam.
"From June 15th to the RNC and DNC in July, we will continue with our message of an immediate end to US military aid and training to Honduras. The US government must stop spending public resources to kill indigenous, environmental, human rights and LGBTQ activists and to harm poor and working communities, and instead deal with the tragic and senseless violence in our own country and serious societal problems, including failing schools, racial and gender injustice and increasing economic inequality," says Helena Wong, National Organizer with GGJ and the WMW-US Chapter coordinator.
In this elections period, it is imperative that US elected officials respond to the direct and negative impact that US foreign policy has on frontline communities all over the world, causing recurring harm, like in the case of thousands of Central American children fleeing their countries only to be deported back to US-backed violence.
Today, June 15th, we join the COPINH and thousands of people around the world to say #JusticiaParaBerta!
Petition calling for these demands here: https://bit.ly/Justice4Berta
FB page for the NY Action:https://www.facebook.com/events/1897800743780119/
FB page for the Albuquerque action: https://www.facebook.com/events/965430240221757/
FB page for Global Actions:https://www.facebook.com/events/482138155315119/
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"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil," said WFP executive director Cindy McCain. "Yet funding is failing to keep pace."
Nov 22, 2024
The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
In the WFP 2025 Global Outlook, the agency emphasized that protecting more than 100 million people from devastating hunger in the coming year would require a relatively small investment—$16.9 billion, "roughly what the world spends on coffee in just two weeks."
That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
In total, the WFP found that 343 million people in 74 countries are acutely food insecure—a 10% increase from last year.
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
Among those are 1.9 million people who "are on the brink of famine," including those in Gaza, where access to food has been decimated in the last 13 months by Israel's near-total humanitarian aid blockade, repeated forced displacements, and U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave. Many people in Gaza are now eating just one meal per day, and the United Nations this week warned of a "stark increase" in the number of households facing severe hunger in the southern and central parts of the territory.
More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
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People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
The U.N. also reported on Thursday that 25.6 million people in the DRC—or 1 in 4—now suffer from "crisis or worse" levels of hunger, driven partially by fighting between armed groups.
"In such a fragile context, the cost of inaction is truly unthinkable," said Peter Musoko, WFP country director and representative for DRC. "Together, we need to work with the government and the humanitarian community to increase resources for this neglected crisis."
Across Asia and the Pacific, WFP said the hunger crisis facing 88 million people is caused largely by "increasingly frequent climate disasters."
In Afghanistan, approximately 12.4 million people faced acute food insecurity last month, linked to the "devastation caused by heavy rainfall and flooding."
The severe impact of Typhoon Yagi in Myanmar led to "even more displacement" and food insecurity, compounding the effects of an escalating civil war, and nearly 6 million people in eastern Bangladesh were also affected by severe flooding this year.
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With the United Nations' annual climate summit scheduled to end Friday in Baku, Azerbaijan, green groups denounced the latest draft finance deal, which would direct the Global North to provide just $250 billion per year to help developing countries with emission cuts and adaptation—far below the $1.3 trillion campaigners demanded.
Although the figure represented progress from Thursday, when there was a placeholder "X" for the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance, Oil Change International global public finance manager Laurie van der Burg still stressed that "this text is an absolute embarrassment. It's the equivalent of governments handing the keys to the firetruck to the arsonists."
There is a broader goal to raise $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance, but that would include funding from private sources.
"The vague $1.3 trillion investment target is not to be relied on and the $250 billion goal is not debt-free. Previous suggestions to end fossil fuel handouts and make polluters pay have all been axed," Van der Burg noted. "This amounts to a cop-out for polluters and allows rich countries to dodge their responsibilities by relying on the private sector and even developing countries to cover the bill, creating a debt trap for countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis."
She was far from alone in calling out developed nations, which previously failed to deliver on a 2009 pledge of $100 billion annually for poorer countries impacted by the climate emergency by 2020.
"With a paltry climate finance offer of $250 billion annually, and a deadline to deliver as late as 2035, richer nations including E.U. countries and the United States are dangerously close to betraying the Paris agreement," Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said from Baku.
Parties to the 2015 Paris agreement hope to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with a target of 1.5°C. However, a U.N. analysis revealed last month that the world is currently on track for 2.6-3.1°C of warming by 2100.
"The central demand coming into COP29 was for a strong, science-aligned climate finance commitment, which this appalling text utterly fails to provide" Cleetus highlighted. "Wealthier nations seem content to shamefully renege on their responsibility and cave in to fossil fuel interests while unjustly foisting the costs of deadly climate extremes on countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis."
Jess Beagley, policy lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of over 200 health professional and civil society groups, warned that "if COP29 agrees on the text shown to us today, it would sign a death sentence for millions."
The alliance's executive director, Jeni Miller, pointed out that "many of the countries most impacted by climate change are already paying more to service their international loans than the combined budgets for their health systems and education, with devastating impacts on people's health and well-being."
"It is unconscionable that wealthy countries are proposing a climate finance deal that could worsen the debt burden of countries facing the brunt of a climate crisis they did not cause," Miller asserted. "As people around the world experience firsthand the devastating impacts of heat, storms, floods, and droughts, the failure of developed countries to step up to their responsibilities is completely unacceptable, not to mention profoundly shortsighted."
Oxfam International's climate justice lead, Safa' Al Jayoussi, took aim at the summit's host, saying: "This is a shameful failure of leadership. The COP29 Presidency's top-down 'take-it-or-leave-it' approach has sidelined progressive voices. All while rich countries boycott climate justice by refusing to pay up and putting only false solutions on the table."
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Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said that "our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face. No developing country will fall for this. What trick is the presidency trying to pull? They've already disappointed everyone, but they have now angered and offended the developing world."
"The figure of $250 billion is about 20% of what developing countries have asked for. Are we really settling for a fifth of the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis?" he continued. "It seems that building an ambitious climate finance outcome in Baku is not the ballgame this presidency is playing."
The U.N. climate summits often run into overtime, but there are concerns that COP29 talks could collapse entirely, given that there must be unanimous support for final deals. There are also fears that rich countries may fail to deliver on any pledge—again—especially with the return of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who ditched the Paris agreement during his first term.
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The lone Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress said Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "must be arrested" in compliance with warrants issued by judges on the International Criminal Court, a response that contrasted sharply with that of the Biden administration and allies of President-elect Donald Trump.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), one of Congress' most outspoken opponents of Israel's war on Gaza, said in a statement that the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were "long overdue" given the gravity of the accusations against them.
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The ICC also approved an arrest warrant for Hamas military leader Muhammad Deif, whom Israel claims to have killed in an airstrike in southern Gaza last month.
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The Democratic congresswoman said the "historic arrest warrants cannot bring back the dead and displaced, but they are a major step towards holding war criminals accountable."
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Tlaib was among a number of progressive U.S. lawmakers who backed the ICC's decision as the Biden White House, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and likely members of the incoming Trump administration lashed out at the court and threatened retaliation—underscoring the country's outlier status as its allies affirmed their support for the ICC and said they would abide by its warrants.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Thursday that the ICC's decision represents "an important step to hold these war criminals accountable for their grave crimes against humanity and war crimes."
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Omar denounced bipartisan calls for sanctions against the ICC as "shameful" and praised the court's staff for pushing to "uphold human rights, accountability, and the rule of law."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also voiced agreement with the ICC's decision to issue the warrants, saying late Thursday that the court's charges against Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif "are well-founded."
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In his statement Thursday, Sanders said that "Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif have all launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and all three have caused unimaginable suffering within the civilian population."
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