In Honduras’ mountainous southern department of La Paz, mornings are chilly and the altitude is ideal for coffee growing. Here, the dark-skinned indigenous Lenca people make up 80% of the population. Yet, from the poverty and the discrimination they endure, one might think they were a minority.
In this community, four out of ten children die before they reach the age of two from a poverty-related disease. Most of the girls become pregnant while still minors, and in the community of Santa Elena alone, eleven women died last year in childbirth.
Development and Peace partner NGO Forum in Cambodia is working to defend the land rights of Indigenous communities in the country. They recently released a report entitled "Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Development" that shows how communities are not being consulted when land deals are being made between the government and private companies.
