2008 Grantee Successes

The Fund’s grantees are changing the world for the better, every day.  Here are just a few of their accomplishments in 2008:

• In May 2008, Bufete Juridico Popular (People’s Legal Clinic) won convictions of five former paramilitary members for massacring twenty-six people in Río Negro, an indigenous village in Guatemala, in 1982. The defendants were sentenced to 780 years each in prison.  The convictions followed more than eight years of trials and hearings, and are a critical and long-awaited victory in the fight for accountability for mass killings and torture of indigenous people because of their opposition to the World Bank-funded Chixoy dam. 


• In Liberia, two years of persistent activism by the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) led the Liberian government in March 2008 to create a special court to handle rape cases and other cases of violence against women. During the recent civil war, the rape of girls and women was widespread, and impunity for such crimes persists throughout the country. With the regular courts backlogged, rape cases were taking years to move through the system, and AFELL expects this new, dedicated court will increase prosecutions, speed justice, and help end impunity for violence against women.


• Through its advocacy and organizing work in India, Vidhayak Sansad has virtually stopped the practice of bonded labor in Thane district (population 9 million)—a remarkable feat.  There are currently tens of millions of bonded child and adult laborers in India—often born into this form of slavery—who work in agriculture, brick kilns, construction, carpet weaving, and other industries. Vidhayak Sansad also compelled the national government to outlaw child labor in brick kilns and is currently working to promote enforcement of this law.


• Amidst the chaos of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Fund grantees’ documentation and testimony led to arrests, indictments and convictions of warlords and military officials for human rights abuses.  The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted General Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo of the Patriotic Force of Resistance in Ituri on child soldiering charges, among others.  Six warlords were arrested for using child soldiers.  Three high-ranking military officials were convicted of raping minors.  Fund grantees testified before the UN, and helped the ICC get first-hand testimony of victims of sexual violence.


• Mêmes Droits pour Tous / MDT (Equal Rights for All) won a precedent-setting victory in July 2008 when it secured a legal judgment against the Guinean state for unlawful detention. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, MDT sued the government on behalf of a man sentenced for eight months but jailed for more than three years. The 100 million Guinean francs ($20,000 USD) judgment is an important victory in the struggle to reform the justice system.


• In Mexico, the Asociación Jaliscience de Apoyo a Grupos Indígenas / AJAGI  (Jalisco Indigenous Support Association) won a major victory in March 2008 when a judge in Guadalajara found that the government had forged documents claiming community consent for a planned highway project, and ordered the government to cease and desist construction. AJAGI works to maintain the territorial integrity of the Huichol people, who have been displaced by a succession of settlers, ranchers, loggers and narcotics growers.  Through over 150 legal battles in the Mexican judicial system and a precedent-setting UN resolution for the return of tribal territories, AJAGI has helped families reclaim nearly 50,000 hectares of indigenous land.


• SOS Disparus successfully pressed the United Nations Committee on Torture to demand that the Algerian state (1) investigate cases of “disappeared” people and (2) repeal provisions of Algeria’s amnesty law allowing those who committed torture, rape, and forced disappearance to escape prosecution.  During Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s, over 200,000 people died; thousands more were “disappeared” by the government, tortured or raped.  The UN Committee’s actions are a major victory for the human rights movement in Algeria in generating international attention and bringing pressure upon the government to hold perpetrators of abuses accountable.


• In Guatemala, the Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala / ICCPG (Institute for Comparative Penal Studies) won a groundbreaking case on behalf of a woman who was raped by two police officers while in detention.  Both officers were convicted, in the first example of police being held accountable for such crimes.  ICCPG also worked with a broad coalition to pass a new law to increase prison sentences for gender-based violence.  The previous law established sexual assault sentences based on whether the woman was “honest” at the time. 


• In Liberia, Fund grantees, working jointly, secured a Liberian Environmental Protection Agency decision and a Presidential Order establishing a moratorium on expansion by a long-time corporate abuser, the Liberian Agricultural Company.  The EPA decision cited extensive reports from Citizen Advocacy for the Protection of the Ancestral Land in Grand Bassa County, Bassa Concerned Citizens Movement and Green Advocates detailing the company’s responsibility for forced displacement, destruction of property and toxic dumping.


• In India, tireless advocacy from Fund grantee DISHA convinced the Gujarat government in July 2008 to double the minimum wage for agriculture labor. DISHA played a critical role in the 2006 passage of landmark national legislation recognizing economic, social and cultural rights: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Forest Rights Act. They are now working on implementation.

December 2008