This Spanish-language article in Pagina Siete describes recent testimony by Ruth Alipaz to the United Nations. Ruth Alipaz, “an indigenous leader of the Amazon community of San José de Uchupiamonas…was in charge of reading the report prepared by the Alliance for Human Rights and the Environment, a coalition of 50 organizations and the National Defense Coordinator of Indigenous Territories, Native Peasants and Protected Areas of Bolivia (Contiocap).”
In her testimony, she denounced the Morales administration “for carrying out a model of agribusiness and livestock that caused deforestation and forest fires this year over more than 5 million hectares of forests in the Amazon, promotes extractive activities in Protected Areas and fails to comply with free and informed prior consultation with indigenous people in eight emblematic cases.”
Alipaz asked for support from the United Nations “to improve this situation and not be invisible by our State; especially in the international community. For this we provide the following evidence of non-compliance with international obligations, based on 23 emblematic cases, among which we highlight Tipnis, El Chepete-Bala, Rositas, Tariquía and now Chiquitanía.”