Two Major Successes!
#1 —Talli Nauman, program associate of the IRC’s Americas Program, has been working in concert with cross-border NGO efforts to keep pressure on the Mexican government regarding environmental right-to-know issues for over a decade. The Mexican government has responded: On June 3, President Vicente Fox signed legislation to implement a mandatory, public Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR). The national inventory will help bring Mexico up to par with its North American neighbor countries in providing citizens access to site-specific data on industrial discharges to air, water, and soil. Mexico is the first Latin American nation to require such public reporting. Talli also represents the IRC on the volunteer PRTR Advisory Group of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
This is one success, but 32 Latin American countries still need to pass even minimal right-to-know legislation. To date, no one living in Latin America has the kind of access to environmental information that U.S. and Canadian residents take for granted, meaning that unmonitored hazardous discharges south of the border have been affecting the Americas’ ecosystem without any oversight. What’s more, many Latin American countries lack freedom-of-information acts—or have very new ones that citizens are only beginning to utilize.
The IRC’s involvement is part of the crucial element of nongovernmental organizations’ participation in achieving effective PRTRs. As seen in the Mexican example, the NGO community is the only consistent actor capable of functioning nationally and locally to ensure continued pressure for the emergence and use of this important instrument at the domestic level, country by country. Cross-border collaboration among NGOs, such as that fostered by the IRC, is key to success.
#2 —The General Board of Global Ministries and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church recently passed two forceful resolutions based on FPIF’s Global Cop or Global Leader. Both resolutions use language that FPIF formulated. Resolution #318, officially titled “The United Methodist and Peace,” encourages the religious body’s nearly 43,000 worldwide churches and more than 10 million members to “take actions that make for peace and to act in concert with other peoples and groups of goodwill toward the achievement of a peaceful world.” Resolution #289, titled “Globalization and its Impact on Human Dignity and Human Rights,” reminds the United Methodists that “the indivisibility of human rights underscores the understanding that freedom is hollow without food, that justice without jobs is like a clanging cymbal, and liberty is a sham when people do not have land to inhabit and farm.” Through these two landmark resolutions, Methodists in the U.S. and all other G-8 member countries are implored to “advocate for their countries to work in defense of international law and cooperation, through multilateral efforts.”
Other IRC Activities:
Continuing a 24-year IRC tradition, our Americas Program is getting re-involved in immigration issues. (We first published El Otro Lado in 1980.) Laura Carlsen, Americas Program director, says, “Migrant work seems to facilitate active networking even more than our trade work.” Expect to see more leadership coming from the Americas Program regarding immigration and migration issues.
The Americas Program is participating in a quiet but explosive revolution that threatens the World Bank and transnational corporations’ program for economic globalization. In a recent column titled “The Movement to Defend Traditional Maize,” Laura reports on the successes that campesinos have achieved in their fight against the World Bank and other institutions of neoliberal globalization.
Laura Carlsen participated as a guest on the June 30th “Uprising Morning” radio show of Pacifica’s KPFK station in southern California, speaking on the Bush administration’s new measures in Cuba. Laura also spoke on the impact of U.S. policy in Iraq at the popular Mexico City lecture series at Casa Lamm.
The IRC Americas Program is co-sponsoring a panel on “Pax Americana: The New Foreign Policy of the United States in the Region” with participation by Enlaces America, CEI Managua, and CLAES/D3E Uruguay at the Latin American Social Forum (a subgroup of the World Social Forum) in Quito, Ecuador, July 25-30. |
