Meningkatkan dukungan bagi pembela lingkungan, tanah dan masyarakat adat dengan perangkat digital
Peluncuran Situs Mikro Perlindungan Kolektif, Buku Telepon dan laporan "Mendukung Pelindung Kita"
Foto: Rio Santiago di Peru Utara. Kredit Vicky Brown
Pada tanggal 28 Juli, Zero Tolerance Initiative , bersama dengan Universal Rights Group mengadakan acara daring untuk meluncurkan perangkat digital baru yang mendukung para pembela lingkungan, tanah, dan adat.
Dalam sambutan pembukaannya, David R. Boyd, Pelapor Khusus PBB untuk Hak Asasi Manusia dan Lingkungan Hidup, menyoroti urgensi situasi bagi para pembela hak asasi manusia, menyebutnya sebagai “krisis global dan lingkungan hidup yang belum pernah terjadi sebelumnya.”
"Selama Covid-19, kita telah merayakan para pekerja kesehatan garis depan...tetapi ketika kita berbicara tentang krisis planet ini, para pembela hak asasi manusialah yang berada di garis depan. Mereka adalah para pahlawan. Kita tidak menghormati, melindungi, atau merayakan mereka," katanya.
“[Sebaliknya,] mereka justru mengalami kekerasan dan intimidasi. Mereka membutuhkan akses ke sumber daya; mereka membutuhkan lebih banyak dukungan.”
The Collective Protection Microsite
The Collective Protection Microsite is an easy to use, accessible and open space for exchange of best practices, training, and resources on collective protection. It consists of a library of over 100 resources, fully accessible on low-bandwidth connections, backed up with support from the ZTI coalition, for all indigenous peoples, afro-descendant and local communities to use and provide contributions.
“We hope the microsite will allow defenders to engage in collective protection strategies and have a positive human rights impact,” said Frederic Wilson, Human Rights Campaign and Policy Advocacy Programme Officer at Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) when presenting the tool.
The Phonebook
Created by the Universal Rights Group (URG) in collaboration with ALLIED, the Phonebook is a consultation tool that contains up to date information on organizations that can offer support to rights defenders. It is an open tool that can be accessed online on their webpage, or via a WPA app, that once downloaded, provides access to the information without an internet connection.
Mariana Montoya, Consultant at the URG, explained that they had carried out in-depth research and consulted many rights defenders to ensure that the tool would effectively respond to their needs.
“[We want to] have a positive impact on those who risk their lives defending ours and our planet,” she said.
They discovered that there was a big knowledge gap in what organisations could offer support to rights defenders, and a lack of understanding of who they could and couldn’t trust.
"We want to maximise the impact of our support because we understand that there are limited resources. We want to really reach the people who most need support and who don't have access to resources and funding,” she said.
Currently, the Phonebook directory covers support organisations in Colombia, Mexico and Kenya, but URG and ALLIED are already developing other private directories in countries where the political situation doesn’t allow them to release a public tool.
Tom Bicko Ooko, an environmental defender in Kenya, spoke of the positive impact he sees the Phonebook having.
“Kenyan Climate Environmental Defenders barely have the information of existing organizations in times of need. The Phonebook is important to help defenders search for organizations to support their needs,” he said.
"Supporting our Defenders" report
The report, soon to be published on the Environment Rights website, is a result of ongoing research aimed at support organisations and donors to ensure that support and resources reach those who need it most.
It uses the information and experience that URG and ALLIED have compiled over the past three years developing the Phonebook, and offers clear and concrete steps so that available resources reach widely and with more impact.
Photo above: The Phonebook homepage
What do these resources mean for rights defenders?
FECONAU in Peru
A leader and human rights defender of the indigenous organization FECONAU, who preferred not to be named for security reasons, described the complex situation rights defenders are facing in the Peruvian Amazon.
“We are facing constant threats and harassment,” he said, citing the example of illegal deforestation of thousands of hectares of forest in the Peruvian Amazon due to oil palm plantations and drug traffickers. However, it is difficult for defenders to face up to the perpetrators.
“We feel isolated, we feel alone in this struggle, as even though we present extensive evidence [of illegal activity], there is no state presence,” he said. “Our only allies are you [ZTI, URG, ALLIED], who have created the invaluable space for us to highlight the issues we’re facing.”
"We see natural resources as a belonging to us collectively, and this is why we protect them. We want our future generations to enjoy the same resources and opportunities that we enjoy [as] a community. Without natural resources and land, we will cease to exist.”
"We will defend our land, our forests, even though it is costing us our lives, because it’s all we have.”
He added that even though communities often lack an internet connection, the microsite provides strategies and tips on how to effectively share knowledge with people in more remote areas.
“We are fighting above all as indigenous defenders so we don’t just become just another victim, just another statistic of people murdered for defending their land. These spaces allow us to carry on strengthening our work, strengthening our strategic alliances, that allows us to carry on existing as a community.”
The president of FECONAU also added that they were launching a fundraising campaign to build a maloca [traditional Amazonian collective house/shelter] for indigenous leaders in Pucallpa.
“It is important to have a physical, safe space for our brothers and sisters who are being threatened,” he said.
Marcela Epiayyu
Legal representative of the Association of Traditional Authorities Shipia Wayuu in Colombia
Marcela Epiayyu asked the URG and ALLIED to create The Phonebook, and she shared her thoughts on how she came up with the idea and how important it is for her community. She started off giving an overview of the issues facing communities in Alta Guajira, a remote desert in the north of Colombia.
“We have fought alone. We have been persecuted, threatened, we have been putting our hearts and souls into this, we’ve been close to death and living with the reality of death. In our eyes, that’s the situation we are in.”
“Our children are dying of hunger and of thirst. When our children started to die…[we realised that] all the members of our community are facing an abhorrent, disgusting extermination, a genocide that is happening with the complicity of the state.
“Sometimes we get demotivated and start to lose faith to carry on fighting. But, when one finds this type of backing and you see that you’re not alone on the journey, it helps you to get that motivation again. Because of people like you, it makes us feel like it is worth fighting, and worth fighting for the dignity in defending the land and our lives.”
“[Our problem] is that we don’t have the economic resources to get to the places where we can access the support we need. When we talk about this, and when we find ourselves in situations where we are threatened, we saw that we are alone, that we had nobody to defend the defenders. That’s where the idea of the Phonebook [came from].
“With all the happiness, with all the admiration, gratitude and hope, I celebrate this initiative and this tool that we see here today. To be able to have these tools and to share them with every single member of our community, even if they don’t have internet access, will ease our burden. We will be able to get to places we couldn’t even have imagined, we will be able to succeed and be able to make our fight visible and combat our situation.”
“It was done with us, by us, and for us,” she said. “It has renewed my energy and my faith. It’s the first step in a journey that we must continue on replicate; it’s a tool that will save many lives.”
Tom Bicko Ooko
Representative of the Center for Justice Governance and Environmental Action in Kenya
Tom Bicko Ooko was heavily involved in developing the Kenyan chapter of the Phonebook, and spoke of how the phonebook will help defenders, and how he hopes to see the tool evolve.
“The directory of support organisations, and the fact that you can search them by priority areas, will go a long way to help defenders identify the support groups that can help them according to their specific needs. This is also the first time all this information has been consolidated into one place, so defenders will spend less time searching for information”
However, he highlighted that it will require a lot of legwork on the ground to ensure popular usage of the Phonebook. “Currently, there is a lack of proper channels to share support information locally,” he said. “[We’ll need] intense information-sharing on the ground with the environment and human rights defenders, as well as the organisations, to ensure that they are aware of the resource that is being launched today.”
He echoed the other rights defenders in celebrating the fact that the resource is available offline for those who work in remote areas, and proposed another idea to make the Phonebook more accessible.
“The Kenyan chapter is in English, but I’d like to translate it into other languages so that other people can benefit from it.”
Foto di atas: Deforestasi di Bethany, Guyana pada tahun 2020. Kredit: Vicky Brown
Memberikan alat kepada mereka yang membutuhkannya
“Kita dapat memiliki semua informasi di dunia, tetapi jika orang-orang yang membutuhkannya – para pembela – tidak memiliki akses terhadapnya, maka informasi tersebut tidak ada artinya,” kata Marc Limon, Direktur Eksekutif Universal Rights Group.
Beberapa pertanyaan diajukan selama webinar mengenai apakah akan ada versi luring dari situs mikro Perlindungan Kolektif yang akan membuatnya lebih mudah diakses di daerah-daerah tanpa koneksi internet. Perwakilan ZTI mengatakan bahwa mereka sedang menjajaki opsi untuk memastikan bahwa materi yang dikumpulkan di situs tersebut memiliki jangkauan seluas mungkin. Situs dalam bentuknya saat ini dioptimalkan untuk bandwidth rendah dan banyak sumber daya tersedia untuk diunduh yang kemudian dapat diakses secara luring atau dicetak.
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