Women Land and Water Defenders Are the Real Peacebuilders

Nov 27, 2019 | Gabriela Jimenez
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Large-scale resource extraction often perpetuates violence, even in countries with peace accords. Those who mobilize to protect the land and water to build peace are often women.

Such is the case in Guatemala and Colombia, where extractive mega-projects with Canadian interests hinder peacebuilding processes.

Guatemala's civil war ended in 1996 with the signing of the peace accords. In the nearly four decades of internal conflict, hundreds of thousands of people died, and tens of thousands went missing, the vast majority of whom were Indigenous.

Guatemala's peace accords included articles specific to Indigenous land rights.

And yet, the same peace agreement further opened Guatemala to foreign investment by taking advantage of lands from which Indigenous communities had been dispossessed. Since 1996, the number of Canadian-backed extractive projects on or near Indigenous communities, particularly mining projects, has increased.