Concerns about human rights and the environment are constantly swirling around the community and mine.
The Marlin Mine now produces more than 300,000 ounces of gold a year.
Critics of the mine in Guatemala and international experts are calling on the government and Goldcorp to accept the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR and suspend operations at the mine. It's a risky stance for local people to take: Amnesty International has noted cases of beatings and death threats against members of the San Miguel Defense Front(known by its Spanish initials, FREDEMI). Community members also report shootings and attempted shootings against mine critics. Aniceto López, a coordinator who works for FREDEMI was beaten in February 2011, along with Miguel Ángel Bámaca, a farmer and public health promoter.
The insecurity is "the worst thing affecting our community now," says Bámaca, who was also shot at late at night in July 2010, just outside his home. Like many other FREDEMI members, he is not comfortable publicly identifying his attackers. He says those who wish him ill "know what we do, where we live, when people meet...they know everything," Bámaca says."Who will help us?" The government, the courts, the police, they are not helping."
Adding to concerns about the environment and security, the ethnic Maya Mam people living in the area consider industrial mining as a form of disrespect for their religion and culture, which worships nature and Mother Earth. "Our spirituality, our vision is that there is harmony between nature, people, and God, we are together and there is balance in our lives," says Maudilia López, an indigenous woman who works for the Catholic church in San Miguel Ixtahuacán. "This mining activity puts our cultural values in danger."
After the IACHR issued its precautionary measures urging the government to suspend operations at the Marlin Mine, the government initially agreed to do so, then later claimed it did not have enough evidence of environmental damage and human rights violations. Oxfam America has been collecting signatures on an electronic petition urging the government to suspend mining at the Marlin Mine and investigate the human rights violations and environmental problems linked to the mine.
]]>On Monday August 29th, Melini and Maldonado received anonymous threatening letters at their office. The threats were made following a presidential candidates’ debate on oil and mining issues in Guatemala convened by CALAS and moderated by Melini. CALAS has also recently denounced an attempt by the Guatemalan government to illegally approve a license for gas exploitation in an important Guatemalan protected area called “Punta de Manabique”.
Violence and tensions in Guatemala have intensified in the run-up to the country’s presidential elections on September 11. Large-scale mining operations in particular have been the source of protest, violence, and human rights violations since the early 2000s.
CALAS has sought to promote informed debate about the costs and benefits of oil and mining in the country and to promote greater respect for the rights of indigenous communities.
In 2009, Melini was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. “I won’t be intimidated by these threats,” Melini said in a statement. “I will continue the struggle to defend human rights and protect Guatemala’s environment.”
Oxfam America has provided financial support to CALAS since 2005. The organization is a key partner in the global Right to Know/Right to Decide campaign for reform of the extractive industries.
“The ongoing threats against Yuri Melini and other human rights and environmental activists in Guatemala are completely unacceptable,” said Keith Slack, manager of Oxfam America’s oil, gas and mining program. “All Guatemalans have a right to express their opinion about mining and other kinds of development activity without fear of threats or violence.”
Oxfam America calls on the Guatemalan government to ensure Yuri Melini’s and Rafael Maldonado physical safety and to thoroughly investigate the origins of these threats.
Update - October 28, 2011During August and September 2011, Oxfam America supporters sent more than 12,000 emails to the president of Guatemala in support of Yuri Melini. On October 4, Melini sent the following letter in response to this outpouring of support :
"On behalf of the Guatemalan Center for Legal, Social and Environmental Action (CALAS) I would like to profoundly thank Oxfam America for its demonstration of solidarity and support, particularly for the urgent action carried out by the offices in Central America (CAMEXCA) and Washington, DC on behalf of Rafael Maldonado, our legal coordinator and myself, in the face of death threats of which we were the targets last August.
We sincerely appreciate the support that Oxfam’s supporters provided us, as well as actions by the president of Oxfam America, such as the letter sent to the US Ambassador in Guatemala, which demonstrated the interest and concern for our security and physical safety and that of the entire CALAS team.
This action and the other gestures were a strong backing and support to our work as human rights defenders and to our work in defense of the rights of communities to be informed and to decide on extractive industries in their territories, particularly because these activities put at risk the environment and communities’ present and future quality of life.
Sincerely,
Dr. Yuri Gionvanni Melini, Director General, CALAS"
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The macroeconomics of the rising price of staples are complex, but its effect on the lives of three women interviewed by Oxfam America is simple: they feel it every day.
For María Antonia León, or “Toñita”, life has never been easy. She remembers a time when she earned $3 to $4 a day selling tamales, pastries and snacks from her food cart and was able to buy weekly staples to feed her family of five. With this income, she could get six pounds of beans, half a pound of cheese, half a pound of cream, four pounds of rice, eggs, a chicken, and other basics.
“Before, with $20, I was able to fill a shopping cart. Now I can’t… I spend $40 and it’s not enough. I can’t even fill a shopping basket because everything is so expensive. Beans are $2.50, and cooking oil for 15 days is $2. We just can’t manage. This current crisis is really tough,” says Toñita. She doesn’t know how she will find the money to buy shoes or clothes.
But Toñita has now found a way to provide her family with nourishing food: Inspired by Saving for Change, she has started a garden and is raising chickens for their eggs. Saving for Change is an Oxfam program that encourages women to use the capital generated through their savings groups to participate in projects that help them achieve a sustainable livelihood. One such project seeks to promote women’s production capacity, entrepreneurial, and self-reliance skills by helping them establish vegetable gardens.
With her garden, Toñita has a new means to feed her family and avoid paying the high prices at the market. The cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and mustard greens she is growing are providing her family with the vitamins and proteins they weren’t getting before. And now she is teaching other women in her community how to do the same thing. The best part is she sells her extra produce at below market prices to her neighbors facing similar difficulties.
Ana Elizabeth Barrera works at a market in the city of Santa Tecla. She cooks and sells prepared foods, and therefore intimately knows the issue of rising food prices. Ana Elizabeth has seen the price of staples climb steadily over the past five years, but notes an accelerated rise of 60 to 70 percent in the past year, most notably with oil, rice, beans and sugar.
“Six to eight months ago I would invest $100 for oil, rice and other basics, and today I am spending between $150-160 which buys the same amount. Consequently, I have to raise my prices, which means that sales have gone down,” says Ana Elizabeth. She has lost 40 percent of her clientele and has had to let go one of her two employees.
Iris Madrid finds herself in a vulnerable position after losing her job a few weeks ago. Although her income was modest, it was stable and allowed her to buy basic items for her home and support her three children. Now, without a salary and facing rising food costs, she depends on her mother who sells beauty products via catalog.
“If there is detergent, then there is no soap. Or if we have soap, then we have no detergent. If we have beans, then we won’t be eating cheese. If we have cheese, we won’t be eating beans… It hurts because when you have children and they ask you for something, you can’t give it to them,” explains Iris. There are days when all they eat are the mangos from the tree outside her house.
Saving for Change is a program that is growing every day. Since its launch in 2005, it has grown to more than 488,000 members in five countries. The hope is that it will continue to grow and reach people like Ana Elizabeth and Iris, like it has reached Toñita.
]]>Since the “precautionary measures” were issued by the IAHRC one year ago, mining has continued at the Marlin Mine, run by Goldcorp, despite local concerns about pollution and negative effects on the culture of 18 different Maya communities near the mine.
“The affected communities care the most about three fundamental things: water, the forest, and soil,” says Yuri Melini, Director of the Center for Environmental, Social and Legal Action (CALAS), speaking at a public event in Guatemala City. “They depend on these resources to live.”
People in communities near the Marlin Mine, in the western highlands of San Marcos, are reporting problems with access to drinking water and pollution, displacement from farming land, and threats and intimidation directed at people who openly criticize the mine.
Lack of action on the part of the government to comply with the precautionary measures led a delegation of representatives from civil society groups, including residents of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, the site of the Marlin Mine, to meet with the Minister of Energy and Mining Alfredo Pokus. “The Ministry of Energy and Mining has found no legal basis upon which to suspend the mine,” Pokus reported, and added that his ministry “is very concerned about the situation and has placed a delegate to supervise the area, 24 hours a day.”
"Oxfam is urging the government of Guatemala to comply with the precautionary measures,” says Juliana Turqui, Oxfam America’s program officer based in Guatemala. “The government had proven unable to control the negative impacts of mining activity, or prevent greater damage to the local population. We think that the suspension of the mine will alleviate the tense situation, and will help to guarantee better living conditions, security, and of protection of the human rights of the people in San Miguel Ixtahuacán.”
Sign our petition, which we will hand deliver to the Guatemalan Government.
]]>The film screening was part of an effort led by Oxfam and its partners in Chalatenango to help the women participants in Saving for Change groups to improve their entrepreneurial skills and ability to manage small businesses, as well as small-scale agricultural activities and ability to advocate for better policies to address major economic issues related to agriculture and food.
Other activities during the week included cultural acts, such as theater and folklore dances, organized by the women themselves. This is a remarkable accomplishment. For the first time, women felt empowered enough to organize community activities by themselves and for themselves. It’s an example of how teaching women to save and manage their own funds in a Saving for Change group also builds self-esteem.
The documentary, titled Vamos al Grano, described the food price crisis in 2009. The women in the audience noted that the prices in Latin America have not dropped much since then. “The price of a 20 pound sack of beans has gone up to $30, $35; before, it was $10,” says Juana Morales, one of the participants. “This year [2010-2011] the prices have gone up more than ever.” She explains that the high prices are caused by heavy rainfall, which ruined the crops.
All the women who came to view the film are experiencing similar challenges in providing adequate nutrition to their families. The Saving for Change program is helping women to go beyond saving and small investments to improve their small-scale agricultural production through water management, improving soil through organic fertilizer and other means, and better seed selection. Oxfam’s partners in Chalatenango are training women leaders who are then passing on their knowledge to a wider group of Saving for Change members. Discussing the larger economic issues related to food production and supply will help the women to push for better policies at the local and national level that will help small-scale food producers like them to get the help they need to adequately feed their families, and improve their incomes.
Oxfam is currently funding partner organizations CORDES, CCR, and ADEPROCCA to work with 575 women from Saving for Change groups in Chalatengango to improve their food production capacity, start small businesses, and learn to project their concerns and needs on to local and regional government.
“Saving for Change goes beyond just saving and lending money,” says Milagro Maravilla, Oxfam’s Program Coordinator for Saving for Change in Central America. “It’s a perfect way to start organizing women, and that’s what we’ve been doing alongside the savings activity for three years now. It was inspiring to see how they took the lead in organizing these activities, instead of just participating in events organized by national or local organizations. And now that there is such a force of empowered women, Oxfam is helping them with the necessary skills to take themselves a step ahead economically, and to advocate for their rights.”
]]>"El Salvador is a country with one of the highest rates of femicide (the killing of women) in the world, according to the United Nation’s Population Fund,” said Carolina Castrillo, director of Oxfam America’s Central America, Mexico, and Caribbean regional office. In fact, over the past three years, the number of femicides in El Salvador has increased from 28 to 46 a month.
That is one reason why, on Nov. 25, legislators voted to approve (by a 75-9 margin) the Special Integral Law for a Life Free of Violence for Women. "The penalty for femicide will be between 30 and 50 years of imprisonment," said Mariela Pinto, chair of the Committee for Family, Women and Children’s Affairs in the legislative assembly. The new law also provides penalties—such as fines and jail sentences—for other crimes, such as pornography, psychological abuse, and negative or hateful messages.
An important and innovative aspect of this new law is that it addresses gender-based violence from a prevention perspective and broadens the definition beyond domestic violence. (Gender-based violence also can occur in public spaces, workplaces, etc.) Effective January 1, 2012, the law will be binding in the public sphere, such as ministries and the media. This means government institutions, such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health, as well the Public Attorney’s office and the National Prosecutor’s office will be bound by law to do their part in the prevention of violence against women and children.
"Some institutions already are taking steps in this direction," says Mélida Guevara, program coordinator for Oxfam America’s gender program in the region. "For our Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence [an initiative of Oxfam America in collaboration with nine Salvadoran organizations], the Ministry of Education is a very important ally, in incorporating gender-based violence and its prevention within school curricula.”
“We also signed an agreement with the Sub-Ministry of Local Development,” she continues. “This coming year, we will bring theater and performance art, as well as training in basic gender concepts and the prevention of gender-based violence, to communities within which the ministry already works. But it takes much more coordination effort and work to change habits, roles, and beliefs. If we talk about a culture of prevention, we talk about changing the way we have been doing things for decades, even centuries. And that entails a long process, in which we all have to do our share.”
The new law is a product of two different proposals, one of which the female assembly members authored. These members participated in an intensive certificate course on gender-based violence, another initiative of the Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence. The Feminist Alliance, an alliance of several Salvadoran feminist organizations in El Salvador, authored the other proposal. The assemblywomen’s proposal stressed prevention; the proposal from the Feminist Alliance stressed penalization. The proposals complemented each other and came to make one multi-faceted law—a major victory for Salvadorans.
“This is a remarkable achievement,” said Guevara. “The Campaign’s certificate course for the assemblywomen, which resulted in the proposal, dates from 2008. It required constant work with the assemblywomen and their advisors from all the different parties. First, the women themselves had to be sensitized and find each other in a cause that goes beyond ideology. Then, as the course went on, we could see them become more and more committed, and start to advocate for gender equity as part of all the government bodies in which they take part.”
Over, the coming year, Oxfam America and its local partners will be among many civil society organizations working on a widespread education effort to teach Salvadorans, civil society, and government players about the law’s contents and the sort of conditions that need to be created to make effective implementation possible.
]]>As in every good story, there is suddenly an element of evil. At the sound of a growl, Little Red Riding Hood freezes. The wolf has been lying in wait behind her:
"Ah, little girl, where are you going?” asks the wolf.
"I'm on my way to my grandma's house,” she innocently replies.
"And why are you all alone?” persists the wolf, gnashing his teeth as if savoring his innocent prey.
"Because my mommy and daddy have taught me to take care of myself,” says Little Red Riding Hood.
Fairytales reflect reality
The performance is part of the “Ruta del Arte,” an innovative program designed to teach young people about gender-based violence and how to prevent it. It was created by the Escena X theatre troupe, which is working with the Salvadoran Women’s Association, with funds from Oxfam America. All are part of the Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence, initiated by Oxfam America and several other civil society organizations in El Salvador in 2005.
This innocent fairytale is not so magical for many children who are bullied, or are victims of gender-based violence in El Salvador. María Enma Landaverde from the Santa Tecla Women's Association is convinced that social violence is rooted in domestic and other forms of violence in Salvadoran society, and that it is important to teach children to stand up for themselves and understand when they are being abused.
The fairytale continues with Little Red Riding Hood being harassed by the wolf and a woodcutter, who are offering gifts to try to persuade her to go with them.
"If you come with me I'll give you a cell phone,” the wolf says to her.
"I'll give you a DVD,” promises the woodcutter.
But Little Red Riding Hood refuses their offers. The entire audience backs her up, telling her not to let them touch her.
Leaning against one of the pillars of the school building is Juana Silvia Flores de Domínguez, vice principal of El Progresso School. She is already familiar with the nationwide Campaign for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, its motto: "Between you and me...a different life."
"Here, gangs are less of a problem than domestic violence, and families neglecting their children. Some of the kids come to school unwashed, wearing dirty clothes, and hungry...” she says of the kindergarten and first grade children. "We also have cases of girls who come in with bruises on them, and when the teacher asks how they got them, they say that their fathers hit them."
With the help of the students, Little Red Riding Hood resists the wolf and woodcutter’s advances and discusses some issues raised with her audience.
"What sort of violence are we talking about?” Little Red Riding Hood asks a boy, about 10-years-old.
"Physical violence,” he answers.
"If someone touches our private parts, what sort of violence are we talking about?” she asks. "Sexual violence!" her audience replies in unison, demonstrating that the children are learning the lessons.
The Art Route will continue its awareness-raising program over the next six months and reach more than 50,000 children and adolescents in 57 schools.
]]>With prices going up, she has had a hard time keeping her business running. “When I started, I didn’t have to invest much… But everything is so expensive now and I didn’t know where to get the money. The interest rates at a bank are so high. I couldn’t afford it," she says.
“And then we started this [savings] group. Now I’m happy because I took a loan to buy paraffin. I’m able to make my candles again, and I’m selling again.”
Ten years ago, leaders of 189 countries met at the UN and promised to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. They agreed to a roadmap setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals for 2015 -- the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of these goals is to promote gender equality and empower women. One measure of progress towards this goal is to look at the number of women working and earning money.
With paying jobs scarce in many poor countries, earning wages is particularly challenging for women. While many would like to start their own businesses, they lack capital and it is hard to find money to borrow. Without credit, they are unable to take advantage of economic opportunities and stay close to home and take care of their children.
Oxfam’s ‘Saving for Change’ program helps women organize themselves and pool their savings to form a small fund. From this fund, the members can take out loans, which they normally use to start small-scale businesses, deal with emergencies, or improve their quality of life. The program serves poor women in rural and semi-urban areas who do not have access to conventional micro-credit institutions. Savings can be as little as $1 a week and loans as small as $25, or less.
Sandra, like Rocío, also lives in Guatemala and recently joined a Saving for Change group. “Before, I had to go elsewhere to get a loan, and that was so difficult. But now we have our savings and can get our loans. And it’s our own money,” she says. Sandra took a 50 quetzales ($6) loan to buy wool for making Guatemalan cloth. She hasn’t sold it yet, but when she does she expects to make 200 quetzales ($25).
These amounts sound small, but they make a substantial difference in the women’s lives. Take Elena Miranda, who now owns a bakery in Chalatenango, El Salvador. “I took a loan to buy a machine to make bread and pastries… at only one percent interest. Within two months I could pay half of it back… With this business, I cover all the daily household expenses,” she explains.
Saving for Change is based on the group members’ own savings. They borrow no external capital. It teaches women how to manage their fund, and within a year the groups are able to continue their activities on their own. By the end of 2010, Saving for Change aims to reach 10,000 people in El Salvador and Guatemala. That is 10,000 empowered women who are one step closer to lifting their families out of poverty.
]]>For the past ten days, Oxfam has been responding to the flooding in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas.
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Amid the clatter of sewing machines and the swish of scissors, those words—“yes we can”-- have been inspiring a team of Salvadoran seamstresses to ignore the naysayers, set aside their fears, and prove that with hard work and a bit of organization they can change their lives.
The women are members of a small workshop in the community of Cantón Los Potrerillos, one of five such workshops scattered across the Department of Chalatenango, El Salvador, that formed recently to take advantage of a sudden opportunity: the need for thousands of school uniforms in a plan announced by the government.
Oxfam and its local partner, the Association for the Entrepreneurial Development of Producers and Traders, known by its Spanish acronym ADEPROCCA, knew just who should be tapped: people hungry for work--sewers from the savings groups established a couple of years before. Oxfam helped initiate the groups through its Saving for Change program. Offering people guidance on how to save small amounts of their own money and make loans to each other, Saving for Change can serve as a launching pad for small businesses and individual independence.
All told, 49 women and one man from Chalatenango answered the government call. Their participation in some of the 360 savings groups in the area prepared them, in part, for the challenges ahead. With the help of Oxfam and ADERPROCCA, the sewers organized themselves into five workshops and bid on the national project, securing work in their communities and neighboring ones.
In just six months, the workshops cranked out 5,000 uniforms.
But it took some daring for the women to imagine themselves as competitive seamstresses, going after projects that demanded careful resource management and the production of large volumes of high-quality goods. One of the first steps was to master their fear.
“They will put you in jail if you ruin the fabric,” warned the naysayers.
“You will get fined,” said others.
“There is not much fabric. There will not be enough.”
Listening to all of that, Orbelina Alberto faced the yardage before her with trepidation. But confidence soon flowed.
“When we started, we were a bit scared to cut the fabric,” she said. “But when we delivered (an order) to the first school, then we realized everything went fine.”
Alberto is one of the seamstresses in the Cantón Los Potrerillos workshop. Its leader is 33-year-old Javier Sosa, the sole man who started with the project and who has been working as a tailor for more than half his life.
Until now, Sosa had never had a chance to work on an order of this size—and the challenges were daunting at times. Being the most experienced in the workshop, Sosa had to guide the others and correct them repeatedly, all of which led, inevitably, to some tension. But gradually, the sewers learned each other’s ways of working and all of them stayed focused on their objective: to meet their deadline and deliver uniforms of high quality.
But Sosa doesn’t deny the pressure he felt.
“We had to make trips to measure them all (the students). It gives you a headache,” he said.
Alberto, it turned out, had a knack for calming everyone’s nerves—and found herself stepping into the role of production organizer and cost controller. And when the group ran out of money for materials—they needed thread and zippers to finish the job—they turned to their local savings group for a loan of $100, which they have since paid back.
“It’s not only people in San Salvador who can do it, we can to,” said Sosa of all that his workshop has accomplished. “We can, too.”
For the sewers, the opportunity to participate in these workshops, to earn a regular income, and to boost their self-esteem has been life-changing.
The name of the workshop to which Maria Hemindia Zelaya belongs says it all: New Hope. Zelaya is a 41-year-old mother who won the bid for manufacturing uniforms at six schools around Caserio Los Alas. Another seamstress in the workshop secured the bid for two more schools and since January, the 10 women in the group have made 542 uniforms and plan to double that number.
Different tasks rotate among members of the group and on average, each woman has been earning between $200 and $250 a month.
For Zelaya, that means she now has the resources to pay for her son to go to college, which costs $45 a month plus $5 in transportation.
“New Hope means that we have today, with this program, the hope of not going back to unemployment,” says Zelaya
And with the income that Élida Cerros is earning, it means her family can stay together. Her husband, who has seasonal employment only, working in a corn field, had been mulling the necessity of emigrating to find more work. Now, the family can stay where their roots are—and that has brought Cerros great peace of mind.
“I’m happy for having a job because I have him (her husband) at home and he helps me with the child,” said Cerros. “He provides the corn and the beans and I am working. We pass it well now.”
Income isn’t all that the women have gained through this initiative. As important is what they have learned about how to stand up for their rights—especially when dealing with the directors of the schools.
Factories in the cities of Chalatenango and San Salvador were also bidding on the uniforms with prices that made it hard for others to compete against. But the seamstresses knew that price wasn’t the only consideration schools had to weigh—locally-based operations and the capacity to produce a high volume of goods were also part of the criteria for a successful bid. And the women made that case—successfully.
“They learned to demand their rights as being members of the community,” says Evelyn Salvo, program coordinator for ADEPROCCA. And today, the seamstresses of Chalatenango are not the same women they were a year ago.
“Now they have a voice,” says Salvo. “Today, each of them has something to say. They have delivered uniforms and got paid for it. They have discovered that they are capable.”
]]>In the department of Baja Verapaz the situation is critical. Guatemala's so-called dry corridor runs through this department, where a severe drought precipitated a food emergency last September.
"They lost last year's harvest because of the drought" explains Gloria Gonzalez of the Association of Community Health Services (ASECSA), referring to the small-scale farmers in the communities of Cubulco, Rabinal, and Salamá. "This winter started well. They planted new crops and were confident that they would do well. But now they've lost those crops as well. We estimate that six in ten farmers have lost their harvests."
ASECSA, with the support of Oxfam, is helping those affected with free clinics and food supplies, especially in Cubulco, where the population is still cut off. The only way of reaching this community is via a 300-metre hanging bridge which collapsed in the rains. Help is arriving by motorboat, but the population is afraid to go outside because of the risks posed by the Chixoy River, which has swollen considerably.
In the municipality of Champerico in the south-east of the department of Retalhuleu, the situation is also worrying. This coastal area was flooded when the Samala River basin overflowed, destroying harvests, killing livestock, and contaminating water sources. The Community Coordinating Association for Health Services (ACCSS) has been working in this region since the flooding caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and in May, just weeks before the rains began, it completed a project to train 20 water, sanitation, and hygiene-promotion leaders. They soon had an opportunity to put their newly-acquired knowledge into practice.
" The leaders were able to get to work and take immediate action,” says Lisa Donado of the ACCSS. “They performed evacuations, asked us for chlorine and aluminum sulfate to treat water, contacted the Ministry of Health about fumigation, and they dug channels to drain off the floodwater."
However, a great deal of rehabilitation work still needs to be done. ACSS estimates that just in the communities where they are working there are at least 500 contaminated wells and flooded latrines. "We're currently putting together a rehabilitation plan for the 10 worst-affected communities", she adds. "The most urgent tasks are to drain and clean the wells and latrines, repair communal water tanks, and promote hygiene."
In El Salvador, Oxfam has a warehouse holding pre-positioned supplies, which enables a rapid response. Within 24 hours of the declaration of national emergency, Oxfam and its partners were assisting the affected communities, providing water and sanitation, installing water tanks, and distributing buckets, diapers, and mattresses.
Oxfam has raised US$415,000 for the immediate response and rehabilitation work.
]]>Lawyers for the National Roundtable on Metalic Mining in El Salvador reacted to the initial hearing, saying that the proceedings ignored the essential role of local communities in determining whether mining projects can or should go forward, and the environmental risks associated with such projects.
Pacific Rim applied for the operating license in 2005 to open a mining project in the department of Cabañas, in the north of the country. It is suing for losses incurred on investments made during exploration work. Pacific Rim filed the suit based on the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), specifically chapter 10 on investments and chapter 12 on dispute resolution.
The economic and investment focus of the dispute was heavily criticized by Luis López, a lawyer for the National Roundtable on Metalic Mining in El Salvador. "Environmental issues and the rights of the local communities are not being discussed," he says. "This operating license is being treated as just another permit, without taking into account the fact that this country is very small and densely populated, and those issues [the environment and people’s rights] will only be addressed as secondary issues."
That is why the Roundtable, with the support of Oxfam America and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) will be sending an 'amicus curiae'-- a friend of the court brief-- to the ICSID. This is a way for organizations and people directly affected to get involved in a case of this kind, between a transnational company and a government. "With the 'amicus curiae' we're going to introduce new elements that will have to be taken into account, such as the environmental issue" says López. "We want all aspects of the dispute to be discussed."
A second hearing is scheduled for August, when both parties will produce further evidence to support their positions. The dispute is expected to be settled in August or September of this year.
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