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 Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a Brazilian Indian shaman from the Yanomami people, delivered a letter this Wednesday, October 17, to the British government calling on the UK to ratify ILO (International Labor Organization) Convention 169, the key international law on tribal peoples.
In the letter Davi says, "Yanomami land in Brazil is threatened by loggers, miners and ranching. My people are suffering and our survival is threatened at every moment. But this international law could protect us.
"Our own country has signed the convention, but we are very unhappy that other countries, such as yours, have not. The more countries that ratify it, the more weight it will have in international law, and the more we can rely on it to protect our lands and our people.
"I have heard that your government does not want to sign the convention because there are no indigenous people in the United Kingdom. But indigenous people in other countries can still be affected by development projects funded by the UK. British businesses working in other countries must also be encouraged to abide by ILO 169.
"It is therefore essential for indigenous peoples such as the Yanomami that your government ratifies ILO 169. I ask you to support the millions of others like us around the world by agreeing that our rights are important and signing the convention."
ILO Convention 169 is the most important international law on tribal peoples. It recognizes their land ownership rights and says they should be consulted on developments that affect them. Unlike the recently-adopted UN Declaration on indigenous peoples, ILO 169 is legally binding on governments that have ratified it.
Davi, winner of the UN Global 500 award, went to London with his son to launch a new report by Survival (an international organization that supports the human rights of tribal peoples) about the crisis in indigenous peoples" health.
The report "Progress can kill" details for the first time how separation from their lands leads to the physical and mental breakdown of tribal peoples.
The Yanomami leader will also travel to Germany to talk to senior politicians there.
Speaking about the desperate health situation of his people, Davi argues that the only way to save the rainforest is to save the Indians, by recognizing their land rights:
"You napëpë (whites) talk about what you call "development" and tell us to become the same as you. But we know that this brings only disease and death. Now you want to buy pieces of rainforest, or to plant biofuels. These are useless.
"The forest cannot be bought; it is our life and we have always protected it. Without the forest, there is only sickness, and without us, it is dead land. The time has come for you to start listening to us. Give us back our lands and our health before it's too late for us and too late for you."
Growing concern about global warming has led to an increase in organizations buying up areas of rainforest, often claiming that it can help offset carbon emissions. One of the best known is Mayfair-based Cool Earth, set up by millionaire businessman Johan Eliasch and MP Frank Field. It urges the public to "protect an acre" for about US$ 140 and would like it to believe that this will help contribute to "saving the world".
But new research from Survival reveals that more than 162 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest have already been secured - through their protection as indigenous territories. This is over 15,000 times more rainforest than is involved in the Cool Earth scheme.
Research by Brazilian and US scientists shows that the most effective way to stop logging in the Amazon is to protect Indian lands, which occupy one fifth of the Brazilian Amazon. But the lands of many tribes remain unprotected.
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
and sell them to wood mongers for a nice chunck of change