IRTF News

Haitian Bridge Alliance v. Biden, a pending federal class action lawsuit, asserts that the U.S. government’s actions at Del Rio were part of a larger strategy that was intentionally designed to send a message of deterrence to other Black immigrants: the United States will not protect you and will deport you back to danger. To perpetrate these human rights abuses, the U.S. used the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext. Invoking an obscure public health statute called Title 42, the Biden Administration fully embraced a Trump-era policy that claimed the unprecedented authority to prevent the entry into the country of people seeking humanitarian protection. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Haitian Bridge Alliance have released a new report unveiling the full scope of the abuses that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, and in some cases are ongoing.

In a historic advance, the Inter-American Development Bank has designed a responsible exit plan to accompany their divestment from two controversial large dams in the Yichk'isis micro-region of Guatemala. The Bank’s decision stems from a complaint affected Mayan communities filed in 2018 before the IDB Group's Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism. In resolving the complaint, the accountability office concluded that IDB Invest failed to comply with the bank’s operational policies and safeguards in the framework of project financing, and opened the possibility of a withdrawal of investment. Affected Mayan communities celebrate the decision, while acknowledging that the Bank has several challenges left to confront.

The LGTBIQ community in Honduras demanded Monday the approval of a gender identity law and compliance with a ruling issued in 2021 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), which condemns the State for the death of a transgender woman and activist. On the occasion of the International Day of Trans Visibility, which is celebrated every March 31, the lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual, intersex and queer (LGTBIQ) collective in Honduras requested in a statement to the Government of Honduras to address the needs of transgender people. Trans people face daily "situations of violation of rights, stigmatization, discrimination, violence and hate crimes because of their gender identity and expression", according to LGTBIQ organizations.

The LGTBIQ community in Honduras demanded Monday the approval of a gender identity law and compliance with a ruling issued in 2021 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), which condemns the State for the death of a transgender woman and activist. On the occasion of the International Day of Trans Visibility, which is celebrated every March 31, the lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual, intersex and queer (LGTBIQ) collective requested in a statement to the Government of Honduras to address the needs of transgender people. Trans people face daily "situations of violation of rights, stigmatization, discrimination, violence and hate crimes because of their gender identity and expression", according to LGTBIQ organizations.

For 20 years, Fair Trade has empowered farmers and workers in countries around the world with protections against the harsh realities of agricultural work. Within the last two years, that has also come to include the United States. This National Farmworker Awareness Week (March 24-31), it’s important to recognize and appreciate the estimated 2-3 million U.S. men and women who work the fields to feed us every day. By purchasing produce with the Fair Trade Certified™ sticker, we all have the power to make the world a better place to live and work for them.

Lupita López Dearcia Comitán is a farmworker in Sonora, Mexico. She’s forty-four years old, has five children, and just so happens to grow the cucumbers you put in your salad last night. It’s a job she has a lot of pride in. Most people don’t know that cucumbers grow on vines like tomatoes, requiring constant care to ensure that the plant grows in the proper direction. It’s a technique called “training”, and Lupita has the practice down to a science.

This blog post comes from Celina Lima, the newest Fair Trade Campaigns fellow who is studying International Development and Social Enterprise at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). This summer, she travelled to Guatemala and Nicaragua as a fellow for our organization, to learn about coffee cooperatives and how Fair Trade Community Development Funds affect their members’ livelihoods. The following is the first of a series of blog posts of Celina’s journeys to the mountains of Central America.

Q REPORTS (EFE) The Latin American economy will grow 2.3% in 2022, estimated this Thursday the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which lowered its outlook for the region three-tenths compared to those calculated six months ago, due to the negative effects of the Ukraine war on the global picture.