2007 Grantee successes

The Fund’s grantees are changing the world for the better, every day.  Here are just a few of their accomplishments in 2007:
 
• In Congo, thanks in large part to advocacy and documentation by Fund grantee AJEDI-Ka and its partners, in January the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) militia, for use of child soldiers in 2002 and 2003.

• In India, several Fund grantees, including DISHA and ASTHA, won landmark legislation for the rights of India’s long-oppressed tribals.  After decades of struggle by grassroots tribal rights movements, the lower house of India’s parliament passed the Recognition of Forest Rights bill.  The law, which took effect in January 2007, recognizes the historical and legal rights of tribals to their homeland and livelihoods, and strengthens the rights of tribals and other forest dwellers to protect their lands against ongoing, rapid de-forestation efforts by logging, mining, and other industries.  This bill affects the estimated 40-50 million forest dwellers in India who previously had little if any protections in the face of abusive interlopers after their traditional land.  

• In April, LAW-Uganda convinced the Ugandan Constitutional Court to overturn unequal inheritance laws that limited widow’s rights to property and guardianship of their children. These laws, the Court agreed, treated women as second class citizens, in violation of equal treatment guarantees in Uganda’s Constitution.

• In Sierra Leone, Fund grantees LAWYERS and FAWE successfully pressed the country’s parliament to pass a new law in June that provides equal protection and rights to women in marriage, criminalizes forced and early marriage, and grants women the right to inherit property. 

• In Mexico, Centro Mujeres pressed state officials in Baja California to adopt new protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, sexual identity, ethnicity, age, and disability. The law, which went into effect in July, is the first of its kind in the country and can serve as a model for human rights organizations challenging discrimination in other Mexican states.

• Fund grantees in Mexico, working jointly, won a groundbreaking legal victory in August 2007 when a federal judge in Guerrero ordered the temporary suspension of all work related to the construction of the La Parota Hydroelectric Dam.  The judge’s decision sought to prevent irreversible damage to the farmers’ constitutional rights to a healthy environment, a fair trial, and adequate judicial protection. The dam would have flooded approximately 41,000 acres of land, displacing 25,000 poor farmers and indigenous people with no opportunity for genuine participation.  Another 75,000 people would have lost access to their farmlands and forests.  This legal decision is the culmination of two years of public education and legal work by the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, Institute for Environmental Law (IDEA), and Maderas del Pueblo.

• In August, Fund grantees in Guatemala helped secure the creation of a new International Commission Against Impunity.  This unprecedented independent body will investigate the clandestine paramilitary groups—including their financing and links to state actors—that run rampant in Guatemala, terrorizing judges, attorneys, human rights activists, and ordinary civilians.  The UN-led Commission will help Fund grantees and other local human rights groups to investigate and dismantle these criminal networks, prosecute those involved, and bring justice and peace for Guatemala’s people.

• The Moroccan Association of Disabled People convinced the government to open school classes to children with disabilities and promote their right to education. Currently, an estimated 68 percent of children with disabilities do not attend school because of lack of appropriate facilities.

• In Mexico, the Center for Women’s Rights won two precedent-setting legal victories.  In August 2007, Center lawyers convinced a judge to approve the request of a twelve-year-old rape victim and her family to terminate the pregnancy that resulted from the assault—the first time a Chihuahua court has approved an abortion in the case of rape. Also in August, Center lawyers successfully used Mexico's new General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence and CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) to win a second violence suit. This is the first time in Mexico that these instruments have been used successfully in the prosecution of violence against women.