Both ENDS
On 28 November 2007, the Saramaka people won a ground-breaking court case against Suriname at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). The Court ruling included the provision that Suriname could no longer grant concessions on tribal territory without the permission of the inhabitants. Ten years later, little has come of implementing this ruling in practice.
Karin van Boxtel (35) is the new director of environment and human rights organisation Both ENDS. Karin has been running the organisation temporarily, together with Annelieke Douma, since the departure of the previous director, Danielle Hirsch. She has now been appointed permanently to make Both ENDS stronger and more future-proof. Karin will take up her new post on 1 September. Until then, she will continue as co-director on an interim basis.
A race track for international motor bike events in Lombok continues to worry human rights experts around the world. Both ENDS and its partners are increasingly concerned about the project’s implications for ethical standards in global development financing going forward for it continues to hurt the most basic social and environmental safeguards.
The Dutch MFS-2 WASH coalition on water and sanitation - of which Both ENDS is a member - welcomes the decision taken by the Human Rights Council to interpret the human right to water and sanitation as legally binding under international law.
Both ENDS expresses its profound concern over the recent decision by the Philippines Court of Appeals to deny legal protection to Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano against unlawful harassment and reprisals from state forces. Castro and Jhed are two young environmental human rights defenders who were violently abducted by Filipino armed forces in September 2023, for almost 17 days, in a case that made international headlines. The two women had been working as community organizers in Northern Manila Bay, where large-scale land reclamation's have wreaked havoc on communities and ecosystems.
Last September, approximately 30 women and men from community based organizations of Honduras and El Salvador learned the tool of analog forestry which uses natural forests as guides to create ecologically stable and socio-economically productive landscapes.
