ACTIVE: Community Consultations

Community Consultations: A model of resistance under attack in Guatemala

A bill currently before Guatemalan Congress seeks to co-opt the consultation process and violate the rights of indigenous communities to free, prior, and informed consent. Add your voice in calling on the Guatemalan government to respect the results of community-organized consultations.

Three ways to take action:

1. Print out the postcard and mail it to NISGUA’s office for delivery

2. Read more about the incredible role that consultations play in community organizing to protect land, life, and self-determination

3. Sign the extended action! Petition available here.

Photo: Graham Hunt

Download a postcard

Additional reading about community consultations

15April, 2015

Tahoe Resources’ Administrative Manager detained on charges of industrial contamination

(Guatemala City/Ottawa) Monday, a Guatemalan judge denied bail to the Administrative Manager and Legal Representative, Carlos Roberto Morales Monzón, of Tahoe Resources’ subsidiary, Minera San Rafael S.A., and ordered him to pre-trial detention on charges of industrial contamination. The Guatemala's Public Prosecutors' Office for Crimes Against the Environment launched [...]

15April, 2015

Two more human rights defenders from Huehuetenango imprisoned for opposing megaprojects

Since 2011, communities in northern Huehuetenango have organized more than 50 peaceful protests and dozens of community referenda in which they have actively expressed their opposition to the expansion of hydroelectric dams and other megaprojects in their territories. This demonstration of community strength and self-determination has been met with [...]

14April, 2015

A report-back on NISGUA’s Rivers for Life Delegation

When Víctor Caal Tzuy came to the U.S. last fall to speak about indigenous peoples’ fight for self-determination in Guatemala, he ended many of his presentations by inviting people to his home to see for themselves how and why more than 50 communities have united in opposition to the [...]

13April, 2015

ACOGUATE turns 15!

This year, ACOGUATE honors 15 years providing a physical international presence to threatened Guatemalan human rights defenders as they work towards social justice and transformation. In 2000, NISGUA joined international accompaniment organizations from Canada and Austria to form ACOGUATE, drawing from experiences accompanying refugee communities during their return to [...]

10April, 2015

Civil Society Organizations Speak Out on US Central America Plan

Honorable: President Barack Obama, President Otto Pérez Molina President Juan Orlando Hernández President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, President Enrique Peña Nieto We, the undersigned civil society organizations and groups, wish to address you as your meetings begin at the Summit of the Americas in Panama to express our urgent concerns about [...]

8April, 2015

How a quasi-military project was created to protect the Escobal mine

An affidavit given on November 24, 2014 by Donald Paul Gray, vice president of the Canadian mining company Tahoe Resources Inc., has shed light on the strong interests at play since 2011 in contracting private security companies for the Escobal mining project in San Rafael Las Flores, Santa Rosa. [...]