19 November 2008 e-News

Panama's violations of Indigenous Peoples' property rights were the topic of last week's hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Ernesto Lopez, a Ngöbe leader from Charco la Pava, and four other Panamanian indigenous leaders, Leonides Quiroz (Wounaan), Félix Sánchez (Ngobe), Hugo Sánchez (Naso), and Feliciano Santos (Naso) participated. Cultural Survival's Executive Director Ellen Lutz represents the Ngöbe from Charco la Pava and surrounding communities in their petition to the IACHR to halt a hydroelectric dam that is being built, without any meaningful consultation, by the government and AES, a Virginia-based engineering giant, that will inundate their communities and destroy their way of life.