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Amnesty International Website:
Direct Link to Full Report:
Paraguay's
Indigenous Peoples in Peril - Land Rights - Women & Girls
Belén Galarza outside her
home where she lives with 10 family members, Sawhoyamaxa, Paraguay, 27 November
2008.
© Amnesty International
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The Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous communities
have been displaced from their traditional lands and have been living at the
side of the Pozo Colorado-Concepción highway for more than 10 years. Without
access to their land they live in precarious conditions, unable to source water
and food for themselves and with inadequate provision of health and education.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in 2005 and 2006 that the
Paraguayan authorities must return the land to each community, in light of
their desperate situation.
“In these conditions, the very survival of the Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa is at
risk,” said Louise Finer, Paraguay researcher at Amnesty International. “But
the government has the power to show its commitment to Indigenous Peoples’
rights by fully complying with the Court's rulings. These two communities have
waited long enough.”
The Court set a deadline of 13 July 2008 for the restitution of traditional
lands to the Yakye Axa and of 19 May 2009 for the Sawhoyamaxa. The Court also
ordered that the Paraguayan state must provide the communities with basic
services – such as sanitation, medical care, food and water – to ensure they
are able to survive until their lands are returned.
More than 27 members of the two communities have died of preventable causes
since those judgements were passed. In the past four months, six of the
Sawhoyamaxa have died after suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting, among them
four infants under the age of two.
Some action has been taken by President Fernando Lugo, including the
presentation of a bill to expropriate the lands claimed by the Yakye Axa that
is currently awaiting congressional approval.
“Steps taken by the Paraguayan government to help Indigenous Peoples are
positive but much more needs to be done, and much faster,” said Louise Finer.
“The clock is ticking fast for the Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa and unless their
lands are returned and funds are made available for their development, more
lives could be lost."
The Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa have been demanding the return of their traditional
land for more than 15 years.
"We’re only demanding our land, the land where our grandparents were born
and buried, where we were born,” Venancio Flores from the Yakye Axa told
Amnesty International in November 2008.
According to the last Census of Indigenous Peoples in 2002, 45 per cent of
Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples do not enjoy definitive legal ownership of their
land.
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