In six countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, AJWS supports 148 social change organizations reaching thousands of people across the region. The work we fund here there goes deep: Indigenous activists in Mexico protecting their communities’ land and natural resources. Advocates in the Dominican Republic working to ensure health and safety for all. Community …
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On March 3rd, unknown assailants murdered Berta Cáceres, a Honduran human rights defender and environmental activist who dedicated her life to protecting the land and human rights of indigenous people. Berta and the organization she founded and directed, AJWS grantee Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras (COPINH), had received violent threats in recent months because of its work to resist the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, which was threatening the survival of the indigenous Lenca people.
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Yesterday, we received the tragic news that Berta Cáceres, a champion of human and environmental rights in Honduras and longtime AJWS grantee, was murdered in her home. We are devastated by her loss. Berta was a hero to so many of us at AJWS. She was a globally-recognized human rights leader who gave a voice to the indigenous people of Honduras, as she bravely fought for their land and water rights.
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Last month, 10 rabbis from across the U.S. spent a week in the Dominican Republic as part of a Global Justice Fellowship trip with AJWS. Focusing heavily on the Dominican government’s policies related to the citizenship status of Dominicans of Haitian descent, the delegation met with grantees working to address some of the most pressing human rights issues in the region. Rabbi Elyse Winick, the Jewish chaplain at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, wrote this reflection at the end of the trip.
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Nikhil Aziz, Director of Natural Resource Rights at AJWS, visited AJWS’s grantee organizations in Guatemala and has been sharing stories from his travels. Lesbia Morales is in her early 30s. She was the first woman president of AJWS grantee Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA), a grassroots organization of small-scale farmers supported by AJWS. The group works in 11 …
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“We are telling the truth. We want to be heard, and we want justice,” said a petite, elderly woman to a room full of journalists and human rights activists in Guatemala City on February 13, 2016. A survivor of sexual slavery during Guatemala’s decades-long civil war, the woman’s face was obscured by a Mayan scarf to protect her identity.
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